That is not comparable. The equivalent would have been the Air Force funding, sending folks across and in collaboration with academia and industry come up with a Passive Phased Array Radar.Cain Marko wrote:HOw do you know? IAF has done plenty of jugaad on its own as well. Even TKS's Darin story fits the bill.
No. Let me tell you why.If we did as you said, A simple Bandar would be something like this JL-9 /FTC2000.It is a good old Mig-21 with side inlets a big radar in the nose and as a mil-std 1553bus. Doable in 5 to 7 years with Mig-21 as a base. Next, 5 to 7 years, composites and after 12-13 years, FBW and in 18 to 20 years,like the Russians did with the Mig-21-97 update, put in a RD-93/GE-404/ whatever and you will have presto a Bandar as China/Pakistan with FBW and RD-93, are fielding entering into service at around 2000 or so, even everything was fine and dandy with no delays and you started the project in 1985 and everything ran in parallel. Problem is that it is entry and obsolete even as it enters service, something which folks like the former Navy Chief and others claim the LCA would be when it enters service. While you can contest that assertion here, it would be difficult to contest that with a Bandar entering service in 2000, being built in numbers by 2010 and retiring by 2020 and you would be in the market shopping for a 4+ gen fighter and talking to buy the Jas-39 Gripen!Disagree here. A simpler version of the LCA would have provided the IAF what it needed, WHEN it needed it, and by now they could have built upon this experience in tranches, adding more esoteric technology in a stepwise fashion. Has been done before quite successfully. A less riskier approach if you will.
Nope the Flanker airframe that IS competitive is not the Su-27 from the Soviet Union days, but rather the unstable, FBW stabilized, foreplane canard sporting versions, like in SU-30 and other versions.Again, disagree. That kind of airframe can still be very competitive. Flanker is another example.
.Not so. The M2K, at that point in time was still very much state of the art, and Dassault offered a hybrid FBW. 3 digital + 1 analog, and the IAF was quite satisfied with it
The Mirage is an all analog system. The 3 channel digital + 1 analog backup is the F-16s! In fact, if you read up Philip Rajkumar's book (I have a copy) , what the ADA/ Lockheed tie up wanted to do was exactly that, a 3 channel digital + 1 analog backup , the analog backup being the one that LM provided as chipsets. When the denial came, what was not available per the book was precisely the analog backup channel and we were forced to go full digital in all 4 channels. Ideally , you should have two sets of FBW laws, developed totally independently by two teams, with different laws, software, hardware etc the works to provide perfect redundancy (like what would have come from the LM provided analog). In fact before the LCA first flight, per the book, it seems that LM sent a note to George Fernandes about how "dangerous and unsafe" it was and that the system wont work, and to his credit, George Fernandes threw the LM memo into the dustbin!
That is exactly the point. The analog system would have to be replaced within 5 to 10 years and Dassault weren't willing to co-develop the digital FBW with us (could have gone into both the Rafale AND the LCA), while the Americans were willing to do so. It actually was a sound call.Even if it was completely analog, so what? Convert to digital later, no? The problem iirc, was that the Rafale's FBW was still not totally developed.
The only legacy soviet platform that continues to be competitive is the SU-30 today because of the technology infusions (largely thanks to Indian Money and Chinese Money in the 90s!). Same thing we did with the Gorshkov. The Russians took our money and rebuilt their skill base and industrial infra that they lost for that kind of thing to Ukraine when the Soviet Union broker up !Events show that the MiG-21 upgrade made the bird very competitive even in the 2000s.
That is one idiotic goof up where the Navy was suckered into a deal that was simply too good to be true. And like the old saying goes, if it too good to be true, it definitely isn't. The Navy should have stuck to their instincts and built the IAC-1 earlier rather than go for the promise of a short cut of an old burnt out semi cruiser hull with a compromised hanger space and air wing capacity, refurbished at cut prices.