deejay wrote:^^^ KaranM, the best aircraft for the MMRCA needs remains Su 30. Unfortunately, that is not in favour among the decision makers. JMT.
Unfortunately IAF doesn't agree with you ... otherwise why on earth would they limit the MTOW basic requirement to 30T effectively excluding it (remember the original intended platform was a 18T one).
And then you had, legions of ex-IAF AM, AVMs etc went to town about how effective and professional their technical evaluation against those MRCA requirements were.
(
if fact, most would agree to the "level of evaluation" claim bit - atleast I do. As long as it seen in complete isolation wrt the veracity of the requirements against which the evaluation is being done in the first place).
If you are now saying that Su-30 class would have been the best platform for addressing those requirements, then it puts a severe question mark on the veracity of that very requirement-specification exercise itself.
I think, we simply can't afford the platform that'd meet those requirements - so either we dilute those a bit (e.g. high altitude TO max weight, twin engine etc) and fit a platform that we can afford or we stick to those requirements and go with a smaller number.
Looks like the second option is not working, so we are back to F-18 etc which is essentially the first option.
Betw F-16 example, was a nice canard spread by the French gent (as was that laughable analogy of "Strategic Partnership" etc talk).
Not sure why shuklaji didn't ask him about the nice bait-and switch game they played by quoting a ridiculously low value to effectively eliminate the other contenders at the L1 down-select stage - most notably the EF (it wouldn't have been any cheaper, but hey who knows what we could have got as a part of that negotiation etc).
What a mess!!