arthuro wrote:"Wells: Exactly. If they’ve got money on the table to say we need this capability and this number of aircraft in this time frame, then those requirements would be dealt with, together with those of the existing partner nations."
Anyone who comes with money and a development requirement will get what it wants. That's absolutely not specific to the Typhoon program.
"Wells: The immediate impact is that we will have a large set of operational requirements that we would need to fulfill in a pretty short time span. Currently, the only official future upgrade that is currently being funded is Meteor. There are indications that there will be additional new weapons, but funding is a problem."
It looks than behind the marketed partnership it is a way to pass the upgrade bill to the indians....
I agree with you Arthuro. There is no great shakes in developing upgrades
IF India has to pay for it. Any damn OEM will do that.
Compare this situation to Saab's Gripen NG which was being developed entirely on company and Flygvapnet funds to MRCA offered specifications, or Dassault's Rafale, neither requires extensive funding AFTER the bloody deal had been signed to bring them to the RFP specifications itself !! This is ridiculous since it is most likely not included in the sticker price (fly-away costs or whatever) that EADS must be mentioning in its pricing submission. And then have Indian defence firms work on those upgrades so that money spent by EADS on offset contracts eventually end up becoming funding for the Typhoon which can then be marketed to everyone else, including a Wahabi fanatic Saudi kingdom that is quite close to our biggest nuisance neighbour.
But presenting a Typhoon with great air-to-air capabilities and no-so-great A2G capabilities as an opportunity for India to get "upto speed" and gain technology transfer can possibly be viewed in 2 different ways.
1) Optimistic- It actually is an opportunity to pick up technology and knowledge that will be useful for the AURA UCAV and AMCA 5th gen fighter. And being a nation that may have funded these "upgrades" (which ideally should have been part of the baseline capabilities since its not a truly capable 4.5 gen multirole fighter if it can only drop LGBs), India should get IP rights to them so as to be able to install them as is on their own platforms.
This isn't a bad way in which to do things if funding is not a critical issue, but technology restrictions/denial or lack of advanced technology/knowhow are. This is the way in which South Korea went about learning how to do things- first take up Western platforms, take extensive help, then come up with variants with handholding and by the third iteration, you're pretty much on your own. For e.g the Surion helicopter or the T-50 (followed on from building the KF-16) which will lead on now to the K-FX.
2) Pessimistic- This is just a marketing gimmick. A half-baked product that has apparent funding issues that prevent A2G capabilities to be developed optimally is being presented as an opportunity, despite being the costliest in the entire competition.
Are they commemorating a special milestone? I see a number painted on the sides of the aircraft. Any idea what it means?
