Aditya_V wrote:Throughout late 90S and late 2000's, MOD was "saving money", by buying cheaper Ukrainian R-77 AE missiles, The Russians also started inducting the R-77-1 only around 2015, post 27-Feb-19, we quickly inducted the R-77 SD since we realized the necessity while Astra numbers come online, the Russians also cannot deliver all 400 missiles in 1 go, its probably some Astra and some R-77 BD are being inducted paralelly, this will try and get 50 Astra + 248 Astra + 400 R-77 BD by end of next year while Astra-1 production picks up and SFDR comes online in 3-4 years, while this is going on Rafale+ Meteor combination will also help.
So how many BVR missile types is that in the active inventory over the next decade:
R-27 (and its variants)
R-77 AE (expired? Ukranian?)
R-77-1
R-77 SD
R-77 BD
Meteor
Astra Mk-1
SFDR
Am I missing something in the list?
How many Astra missiles have been ordered? Has that been published?
Aditya_V wrote:Older R-27 and R-77 will be expended with Mig-21 Bissons and shoot down Paki UAV's, people forget we shot down some 4-6 Paki UAV's mostly of the wing long type in 27-Feb-19 to 15-Mar-19 which convinced the PAf there no major radar gaps they could exploit.
Were these shoot-downs with AAMs?
Secondary roles for the Bisons are certainly expected. I mean, what else is the IAF going to do anyway? It is not ordering the replacement for the Mig-21s (LCA), so it will have to force them into the fight somewhere.
Aditya_V wrote:The loss of F-16 and SU-30 dodging 5 Amraams from multiple aircraft was a huge shock for the PAF.
The F-16s launched their AMRAAMs at maximum range under full knowledge that the IAF AEW coverage was tracking the launches. Was it really that much of a shock that these shots missed?
It is much more likely that they got the effect they wanted: Su-30s taking evasive maneuvers and opening a brief corridor for them to get their strike package in. Of course, that ambush by the Bisons caught them off guard and foiled that action.