Rakesh wrote:Austin wrote:Aishwariya and Rambha side to side is not a fair comparison. Yes both are women, but that is where the comparison ends. You cannot ask Rambha to do what Aishwariya did in Dhoom 2 or in Devdas. Rambha excels in brute force, not finesse. And despite the Su-30 having a visual appearance of being similar in build quality to the Mirage 2000, the serviceability of the former when compared to the latter speaks for itself. Air Marshal Harish Masand's article on the MiG-29 va the M2k basically said the same thing. But the former soundly beat the latter in almost very performance parameter.
Sirjee , Build Quality and Serviceability are different things since you mentioned Build Quality and spoke about HAL Reputation , I stated HAL Build Quality of MKI is as good as Mirage-2000 or for that matter Rafale , I have seen both of them , Visually you find them equally good unlike previous gen aircraft say Mig-29 where shoddy build quality is visible.
Serviceability is a question of spares available to aircraft , We are paying to Dassault through our nose to maintain high servicibility of 75 % through PBL contracts , We dont have such contracts for MKI or other types of fighter in service , The entire Su-30MKI contract with TOT ,Lic Build , Make in India etc is worth ~ $12 - 15 Billion for 272 aircraft while just 36 Rafale cost ~ $9 billion , If we were to implement a PBL type contract for MKI storing spares rotable etc for 5 years like Rafale deal the cost will go up exponentially.
Still through MOD effort they managed to increase servicibility of MKI from 45 % to 55-60 % , plus parrikar himself said he would like to bring it up to 70 % with recent spare contract works $500 million signed with Russia.
Having said that I still think Rafale is the best aircraft for Nuclear Detterent and can serve SFC for the next 30 years with suitable upgrades cost not withstanding