Bharat Rakshak

If the ex-IAF chief says money is not a problem , then we should just zero in for Rafale or Eurofighter both are great fighter in their own way , Since Rafale dont not have too many cooks it is a wiser choice in the long run.

One never know how an individual countries in the future could delay spares/support for Eurofighter if the wind gets blowing in the wrong direction , Rafale seems to be more ready for multirole task then Typhoon is today so thats a big plus.

One big plus I could think of buying French Rafale is in Nuclear role , the french will not do much fuss on hardwiring these aircraft for Nuclear delivery while the Eurofighter countries and America might just end up being dead against it , something best avoided at the initial stage.

Any idea where our good old Philip is these days don't see him posting much ?

What you say is true, my points below....
1. If you detect the bogey before it detects you, you have an advantage in terms of tactics. think about staying out of the other aircrafts radar cone.
2. You are correct, the actual ranges are classified and I do not even ask.
3. The radars are not used full time as the transmitting aircraft is visible to anyone with a decent RWR, so the radars are only switched on when in search mode and used very sparingly in conjunction with the jammers.
4. My point was not that the MKI is not a great a/c (it is when used well), my point was that the stuff that the good Col. was making in the video was valid (according to someone who knows the a/c well) and the Col was talking about the WVR regime.
5. I am sure that the MKI is very good at BVR, otherwise the IAF would not be continuously making investments in the MKI and buying even more of them.

vcsekhar,
I agree with what you are saying. Some of what the Col said was vaild but I think you would agree that he was very selective in his description of Su-30. Also, his mistakes, which include his description of RWR and datalink among other things, have been well documented.

Regarding WVR, well that is a very fragile topic. The opinion of general public on that subject is very rigid and I think you know that as well as anyone.

But all that aside, no one can argue against MKI being the most potent "multi role" 4gen fighter out there.

The guy who saw the video did not focus on the other stuff, said it is easy to such mistakes as these are not easy to remember. They will know the performance characteristics very well but not necessarily know the names. Its like if Indian pilots were asked about the details of any F15 they would not be able to rattle off the names and numbers of the RWR and the Radar and stuff.
I know about the WVR issues discussed here , all the guy said was that the Col was not wrong in his assessment of the MKI, he made very valid points and some people in India also feel that way after exercising with the MKI in WVR. Size makes a huge difference in visibility and weight makes a huge difference to the management of energy. So a bison is capable of giving the MKI a very hard time.

All that aside, todays air war will be a combination of AWACS, BVR and WVR so the man with the best situational awareness and cockpit automation will prevail and as of now that would be the MKI. And like i said earlier, if the IAF felt that it was not the best, it would not be buyign 230 of them.

I think the libyan operation has ++ed Rafale, while EF2K on +0. We have to see more of A2G from the typhoons.

I wonder if manned nuclear strike platform Mirage2000N and ASMP missile had some special EMP hardening on its electronics side?

not sure if manned toss bomb delivery is viewed by IAF as a realistic role anymore....or they just need a shooter for a future nuke tipped ALCM?

you wont, none of the typhoons involved are A2G configured

it seems no typhoon in squadron service with user nations have that capability ?

It seems that F-18 E/F/G has been shortlisted. See the sudden change in tone regarding offset clauses. Boeing for longtime asking for changes in offset clauses so that civilian supplies also be counted as offsets. Probably Boeing if offering import of sections/parts for Boeing aircraft in lieu of 50% offset in military components and govt has taken it. If F-18 E/F/G is selected expect indigenous airframe, engines (to be used in LCA, AMCA and MRCA) and possibly sensors for AA/AG missiles. But strict no radar manufacturing and limited access to source codes. When force multipliers like P-8A has been selected and there might not be a problem with MRCA. JMT.

Then how did IAF manage to conduct all weapons tests?

RIGHT TIME TO FIND WHO ARE OUR REAL FRIENDS

How about (a) friendly neighbourhood peaceful nuclear explosion(s) in the next say 2 - 3 weeks ?

Let us see how USA, Russia, UK, France, Germany and Sweden react. Let them decide the winner !!!

K

the EF surely has a few protos with the advertised capabilities... but there is no aesa radar on anything but the f-18. so all the spooky aesa capabilities like jamming, datalinks, combined a2g and a2a work remain just a TBD statements and no tests would have been done there too. likewise "will fire meteor" , "can fire the storm shadow" (do you think they would expend a $10 mil missile for a demo?)...

followed your posts on BR for very long tiime Kesri ji. The above post is true to good form of the author! we can also see if the thermonuclear device actually works! Sadly our leadership do not have that mettle !

There is absolutely no logic in the nuclear explosion argument. Friends and allies depends on what you want to chew and how you want to project your force.. all driven by policies.. and keep dreaming about nuclear explosion on the planet all you want, and it would only derail real discussion here..

France or Germany or Russia, everything depends on how we write the contract document, and how clever we are to chew them, and make sure they don't chew us in any way. Russians don't chew us initially and look very good on first purchase, but choke us down on parts and supplies, for which khan production lines are the best in the world. IN has been shown some models of Ef2k naval variant, but we have to see more of their A2G though.. not sure, what they really did test for this.

Rafale seems to be the most potent, pricey, but can be drafted to be most friendly, and less choking of them all. But, never know how EF2K is going to turn out in the coming exiting months for this mrca saga to end.

Isn't air delivered nuclear weapons a bit old fashioned and obsolete delivery method by now? I mean, when would they be used? After all there are SLBMs, MRBMs, ICBMs etc. Or would it be used as France's Force de Frappe as a "warning shot" (which is completely ridicoulus when going up against another nuclear power btw)?

Not really. If sufficient air superiority is achieved, nuclear delivery through fighter a/cs could be very effectively used. If someone fires an IRBM, the other nation would know that it is facing a nuclear strike. No one fits conventional payloads on IRBM. But say if a bunch of Su-30s seem to be going towards an air base, it would seem like a conventional strike. Then, towards the end of the flight path, if a bunch of Su-30s break off and deviate to nuke a nearby place, the target Nation would get much less reaction time.
My point is that IRBMs can have only one meaning while a multirole a/c can be attacking for many reasons. So, it creates an opportunity of deception.

I see your point, but there's a but. You are forgetting about retaliatory SLBMs. Sure, you can use air-launched nuclear weapons in a surprise attack, but then what? After that you'd be showered with ICBMs, SLBMs etc. There's really no way to be absolutely sure you get all of the enemies retaliatory nukes in the "surprise attack". It sounds like a very risky endeavour.

Again, air superiority or not, you still risk retaliatory strikes, not to mention how India would achieve air-superiority against China for example?

I would image it as more of a last ditch option if the limited inventory of land and sea missile platforms are taken out by a clever first strike or some glitch prevents their effective functioning like taking out some satellites and lack of stellar navigation systems that work purely on dual INS.

true ICBMs btw never use GPS or take any sort of external update or signal after launch. they have internal INS and some star sensor pkg to make small corrections and thats it. external signals may be jammed or spoofed, so once u light the fuse they go off and 'do their thing' like single minded robots.

Wrong. 4 Tiffies in Lybia have been shifted from a2a to a2g duty.

Directly from the British MoD website: http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/DefenceNews/MilitaryOperations/ActionInLibyaHasPreventedhumanitarianCatastrophe.htm

good find march.. hope there is more to it? details of targets destroyed etc?

Henrik,
True, its a high risk option. Also, I was thinking more of Pakistan. I agree that this mode of nuclear delivery against China would be unpractical.

I hope this is a typo. I can't see a 747 at 5 NM (34,000 ft) let alone a fighter one-third its size. I would not be able to see a lo-viz MKI even at 2 NM. But If my life depended on it, I'd say the same thing that vsekhar's buddy did.

Hope its Not OT. Now a Canadian defence analyst frowns at the F-35 JSF.

http://www.theprovince.com/technology/fighter+expert+slams+deal/4566652/story.html

some mixed messages here:
http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Securi ... 301081002/

thats more like it! someone was reading BR

No its not a typo, I was surprised too. The distances that you can see when you are up in the air are very different from when you are down on the ground. There is no haze to hamper visibility.
The low viz camo is used precisely for this reason, but you cannot camo the canopy and it is usually the most distinctive in the air when the sun reflects off it. In addition you can also see the smoke trail for miles and miles. That is why low smoke engines are so important.
And once again, Mark 1 eyeball is still a hugely important sensor for the pilots and they usually have better than 20/20 vision.

saburo sakai and the initial crop of IJN elite airwings are said to have trained themselves to spot a/c at long distance, look away into cockpit and instantly look back at the exact same spot to re-acquire the target....you know normally how its so tough to spot a small moving object among banks of cloud and ground background...but they trained for it.

I don't dispute the fact that haze is less at high altitude. However I have read (and heard from IAF pilots) time and again that haze is much greater over Indian skies than temperate (European skies). Need to check on figures like 20 nm/36 km. At those distances vapor trails are more likely to be visible - but then again vapor trails are far more common in temperate climes.

Living in the UK (1980s) - on a clear winter day under the flight path of the trans-atlantic routes (near where the Lockerbie plane went down) could typically see 8 or 10 vapor trails simultaneously. In Bangalore - on a clear winter day - I am surprised to see even one vapor trail and even that is transient and never stretches from horizon to horizon. Using a 250 mm zoom lens (my pride and joy in that era) - I could still only get a small image of the aircraft silhouetted against the sky and realise that it was 4 engined - with 2 vapor trails from 2 engines coalescing on one side.

vapor trails will be prominent over tibet and kashmir though.

OT
Here is a scan of a dusty/fungus ridden transparency of a 1989 photo of a vapor trail producing 747 using a 250 mm lens at full zoom. The plane was nearly invisible to the naked eye and was probably between 31 to 36000 feet (10-11 km)

Possibly - but we see so many photos of fighters over the Himmer-layers (Himayalas ) and not one shows a vapor trail.

vapour trails are not from the engines
they are the vortices shed from the wings (always two)
sometimes the engine exhausts will be in the right conditions to trail, but they will merge with the wing vortices and only two will remain

Contrails are from the engines, in fact, the fighter pilots have prior information from their Met department as to the vapor condition in the sky and at which altitude contrails will be produced and they will avoid flying at those altitudes.
The vortices from the wing tips and leading edges are visible at low levels in certain environmental conditions.
Mr.Wikipedia has a good article on contrails, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrail

I was also surprised about the distance numbers, but, the difference in eyesight is pretty remarkable between civilians and fighter pilots. For example, i was at a air show with my friend and he was able to visually pick up fighters (Mig21's and Jag's) way before anyone else in the group. Where we could not identify the direction of the jet sound, he was easily able to do it. Training showed. The saburo sakai story really shows the difference in trained eyesight.
Another anecdotal "evidence", i play golf with some of these guys and I can track the ball in the sky but loose it when it comes into the vegetation or built up areas (very difficult to track a small white ball against white and off white buildings), they have no such trouble. (Not that I have great eye sight but these guys are something else).
His statement was from actual air combat exercises, so its hard for me to find fault in it. I have no idea how the view would be from a cockpit of a single engine fighter (i would love to find out ), but, I am pretty sure that the air would be a lot clearer than at ground levels.

Well fighter pilots must have good eyesight and training too. But I recall from when I had great eyesight that there are some things that one can't really see. I think it should be easy to calculate the angle subtended at the eye from a 20 meter long aircraft from a distance of 20,000 meters and the actual size of the image 2 cm behind on the retina. Could someone figure that out? I think that would produce an image that is 20 microns across on the retina. Not sure if that is "pickupable" by any human eye.

In a nation full of politicians/bureaucrats/judges gulping thousands of crores.. somebody's life is being destroyed for 20,000 buks.

I know you will say, its not about money, he is not fit to serve with such low morale standard blah blah.. whatever I don't think its fair. Different stick for different people! What kind of law is that.

If he lives in such a society, guided by such "leaders" I think he should legally/constitutionally get a second chance.

(Sorry OT)

Recent article referring to early thinking of GoI on MRCA
http://www.thehindu.com/news/the-india- ... 576918.ece


Strategically that would make sense - i.e. inclusion of F-teens to make it competitive. If the Euro birds do not come down in price, F-teens would still be an excellent option to add to IAF.

OT:
He represents an organization that is the very best (and therefore incorruptible) of India. There is no leeway - we expect the polity to be corrupt and smell like pigs, but the forces must remain above board. They are the ideal to which citizens will look up.