tsarkar wrote:Vina, nowhere in that document are structural changes mentioned.
It is in the very first line. There is no way in hell any plane can have a 2ton MTOW increase without strengthening. What they did was increase the percentage of composites from A/B to C/D. Per the info I have, it increased from around 25 odd % to close to 35% or so for the C/D model. In fact Saab Aero would be very very cross with you if you said that he Gripen is a "metal" plane. So lets put that piece of fiction to rest. It uses a lot of composites by any measure. Sure the Tejas uses more, but it does weigh less !
don’t need to google, those who operate and maintain the birds, as well as my own eyes have seen that Gripen ABCD isn’t 45% of weight in composites like Tejas is. And frankly, the Swedes do respect Indians for all-composite-wings-and-empennage decision, it was a bold and respectable decision from a development perspective, though risky and time consuming from a user perspective.
Well, the Gripen C/D is close to 35% or so. The Swedes went to BAe and got an all composite wing made for them. The composites were NOT risky . In fact that was the LEAST risky part of the LCA design. What was more risky was the FBW. But without that, you cannot have a modern plane. In fact, the Swedes used the same FBW vendor (Calspan) that India was using to develop the FBW (the swedes got it off the shelf) and despite being off the shelf , they had huge problems with the FBW which CALSPAN debugged and fixed for them.
I would have been impressed, Vina, if you used the words, better maneuverability, STR, payload, etc. The Gripen A/C still carries more useful load than Tejas Mk.1, despite Tejas Mk1 having “more powerful engine”
Oh no, it doesn't. The A/C have a 2 ton MTOW difference. In fact in the Gripen A, the forward fuel tank of close to 300kg was UNUSABLE, basically dead weight . So there you are! It got fully enabled only in C/D I think. In fact the A model of Gripen has LESS usable load than the MK1 , even on paper!. With the C version with full internal fuel, the useful payload is nearly the same as the Mk1!
If you want to be "impressed", well off the bat, without any further thing, just looking at T:W ratio and wing loading, the LCA Mk1 will easily out climb and out accelerate the Gripen A/B/C/D in a similar weight and fuel state! And given the dead fuel tank in front, the A/B versions (and also C/D) carry something like 400/500kg less internal fuel than MK1 leading to less endurance!
I will reserve my opinion until I can compare the actual performances of the Mk.2 vs NG
.
Well, who is talking about Mk2. Lets look at MK1 and it's current analog. All I am saying is that the MK1 is very very competitive and at FOC . So all that thing about "they used too much glue" kind of urban myths are misplaced. With that level of equipment and specs, the weights are pretty well managed. Could they do much better, sure, but that can come only after engineering feed back from operating it, just like the Swedes used nearly decade of field experience from A/B into the C/D!
Look around the other way, a designer designs a plane with similar capabilities knowing fully well no catapult is available. That too is an achievement!
Yeah. You cut up an old sari and stitch a shirt and say that is a great achievement, sure. At a system level, the Gorshkov/Mig29 combo will be had for breakfast by a similar sized Cat equipped carrier like the CDG or Foch launching Rafales. The point is that the Russians simply had never built a CAT and could put a limited capability system on the water. That it suffices for us is fine. But to make a virtue of it is stretching it.
The analogue system was not even considered by ADA. It is incidents like this,
How do you know that an off the shelf analog system would have worked perfectly without going through an entire development cycle ?. It didn't work for the Gripen without major problems!
We would have done double development. One for an obsolete Analog one and then again for a digital one and for what ?
You need to compare with Thomson RDM radar in service with Mirage 2000 in late 80s early 90s.
That was just a little step up from the continuous wave Cryanos of the earlier Mirage IIIs . The performance was no great shakes, it's A2A mode was actually inferior to the radars in the Mig 29As and there was lot of ground clutter thrown up in the A2G. It really wasn't the best out there by a long shot. All that was probably upgraded fixed subsequently.
Thomson RDM already had these modes and A2A performance in 80s & 90’s.
If you are talking about stuff like GMTI, SAR, ISAR and all the whiz bang A2G stuff, well it didn't.
Su-30 MKI package was signed in November 1996. Hence IAF knew the capabilities of the Kopyo and Bars very well in 1996.
The SU-30 MKI attained full capability only much later (in series III or something right) ? I doubt that the Bars had all those modes working or even if it was installed in a SU-27 back in 1996! We signed up for a development program which promised to bring those capabilities in at a future date!
So “No IAF fighter has had these features before Kopyo radar in late 2000's”
That part sounds pretty accurate to me.
The lifetime of an airframe is typically 20 years, extended to 30 by upgrades. Speculating if there was a metal+analogue FBW LCA 1990-2010 followed by a composite+digital FBW LCA 2010 onwards, the 1990-2010 birds could have aptly served the role that 18 Su-30K birds did from 1997-2007.
Nope . It is closer to 40 years. Why MRCA contest is seeing 2 airframes which debuted close to 40 years ago being quite competitve after 40 years and upgrades. No one produces anything for a production run of 18 aircraft. A metal+ analog plane would have been a complete waste of time and a severe duplication of effort when that effort could (and was) directed towards a plane that would be contemporary for a much longer time. Thank goodness we didn't do that thing in the 90s. The time to do that was in the late 70s/early 80s when they should have played around with an Ajeet or something and built an FBW version of that and proven the tech as the proposals that were put up at around that time showed (like the Brits did with a Jaguar and French with the Mirage III). That the IAF and MoD were hell bent of importing stuff and found any tech development wasteful and superflous meant that the tech development had to be done in a TD program for the LCA!
Today, in my personal opinion, the first 20 tranche and the next 20 tranche should be completely trainers, used extensively, and retired when Mk2 enters service.
Why did the ACM not say Mig 21++. You can replace a couple of operational squadrons of Mig 21 right away
. Why do you want to use them as trainers?