Vips wrote:Hold on Rakesh, where did i mention that the Russian missiles were duds? My comment was with respect to the Range. I mentioned claimed range for the newer version of R-77 was because the older version of R-77 were supposed to be good for range of 80-100 Kms and subsequently it emerged the effective range was 80 Kms.
My very first sentence in my reply to you was that the IAF was
NOT OUTRANGED at Balakot with the R-77. BVR combat goes beyond advertised ranges and any missile's performance is dependent on a number of factors.
A range of 80 km to 100 km for the RVV-AE - when viewed in isolation - means nothing. After dissecting every facet of the air battle on Feb 27 - from a number of OSINT sources and covered in minute detail in the MiG-21 thread - it has been ascertained that the IAF was not outranged. I am not going to rehash the air battle, because it has been covered in detail in that thread. Now the newer version being acquired by the IAF - the RVV-SD with a range of 110 km - while having a longer range vis-à-vis the RVV-AE, again when viewed in isolation, has little utility. NaPakis claim that since JF-17 will soon have the PL-15, all IAF Rafales will be shot down because PL-15 has a range of 350 km, while Meteor has a range of only 150 km. Only a fool will believe that tripe.
This foolishness was amply proven by the PAF at Balakot on Feb 27 and confirmed by Air Marshal SBP Sinha (retd) in an interview to Nitin Gokhale. Air Marshal Sinha served as the AOC-in-C of the Central Air Command, Indian Air Force and is a former fighter pilot and qualified on the Su-30MKI. He was even the base commander at one of the Rambha air bases in India. I am posting the youtube link to that video for you to see - in this post. If you have not seen it, please see it --->
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUEX-Uu_KJc
And like I mentioned in my earlier reply, since the AIM-120C5 (< 105 km) has a longer range than the RVV-AE (80 km to 100 km)...the PAF should have had a field day against the IAF interceptors. Apart from the MiG-21 shoot down, the Su-30MKI pair (Avenger 1 and 2), the Mirage 2000 pair and Wing Commander Varthaman's wingman should have all been shot down. Why did that not happen? Please see below from Group Captain HV Thakur (retd), former Jaguar pilot in the Indian Air Force and presently HAL test pilot.
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https://twitter.com/hvtiaf/status/12356 ... 49856?s=20 ---> Abstract Example -
Think About It. Police gun range = 100 meters, but thief's gun range = 120 meters. Will this be reason enough for the thief to be allowed to escape? No. There's all kinds of tactics. For policing, as also, for air combat.
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How did Wing Commander Varthaman shoot down a F-16 with a R-73 close combat missile, when the F-16 in question was armed with AIM-120C5 AMRAAMs? The AIM-120 has a significantly longer range vis-à-vis the R-73. Its called tactics as Group Captain HV Thakur stated in his tweet above. If the IAF felt that the R-77 was really a dud (i.e. advertised range being blatantly false), why buy a newer version of it? What purpose would that serve? What is the guarantee that even the newer version will have a "reportedly" dismal performance as its older sibling?
Or perhaps -
JUST PERHAPS - the IAF actually knows what it is doing? You ever considered that possibility Vips? Air Combat is what they do for a living after all. They have been at it since 1932! Or as Sameer Joshi, former fighter pilot - Indian Air Force, states at the end of his article (
https://theprint.in/defence/how-pakista ... cs/291522/)
As has been a case time immemorial, the Pakistan Air Force did not cater to the resolute resolve and superlative training levels of the Indian Air Force fighter pilots.
But the larger point and issue I have with your post (and which is why I replied) is like I stated in the last sentence of my reply to you ---> In your disdain for Russian maal, you are throwing logic and reasoning right out the window. Almost every post of yours I am reading now is bashing Russian maal. It is getting to be nauseating. We get it. You dislike Russia. Move On and Please Stop.