Taking the so called capabilities of SH one by one:aditya.agd wrote:Any plane that is bought as part of MMRCA must enable India to fight a war under all circumstances and be independent of foreign policy of that particular country.
F18 SH has following features:
Day/night strikes with precision-guided weapons
Anti-air warfare
Fighter escort
Close air support
Suppression of enemy air defense
Maritime strike
Reconnaissance
Forward Air Control (Airborne) (FAC(A))
Air-to-Air Refueling
Leaflet drops with Payload Delivery Unit 5 (PDU-5) containers[44]
Do other contenders also have similar features?
Day/night strikes with precision-guided weapons - All planes do it. In fact our Mirage/Jaguar can also do the same using LGB units
Anti-air warfare - Again any multi-role jet is able to do that. IMO, our Mig 21 Bison with the R 77 can do that pretty nicely
Fighter escort - Hang an escort Jamming pod onto any air-craft's pilyon and you are done with this requirement
Close air support - Our Mig 27 and Jaguar rock in this requirement.
Suppression of enemy air defense - For SEAD missions, all you need are a few anti-radiation or HARM missiles and again this can be fulfilled.
Maritime strike - Any jet with long legs can do it. Ofcourse if you are talking about the capability of ASCM, then we already have that fulfilled by the Rambha(s) taking in the Brahmos. Otherwise, any jet can strafe the enemy ship with it's guns also and you get a Maritime strike aircraft
Reconnaissance - All you need is an ELINT pod and this can be done by an aircraft having log legs
Forward Air Control (Airborne) (FAC(A)) - Now for this, you need a good radar. In our present inventory, Rambhas with their BARS radar does the job. Anyways with the Phalcon, this job can be done by the AWCAS. In the MMRCA competition, all the requirement is to have an AESA radar and hence all of them can be used for that role
Air-to-Air Refueling - This I believe is implemented in most of the air-crafts and if not, then all it takes is a few modifications and you are done
Leaflet drops with Payload Delivery Unit 5 (PDU-5) containers[44] - Are we talking about Afganistan type psy warfare in here ?? . Anyways, this can be done by any aircraft which can drop bombs India had done it previously in the Bangladesh war
So all in all, the brochure type capabilities (as correctly mentioned by Shiv Sir) can be done by any aircraft that is available in the market (including the guys who are fighting in the MMRCA) as well as most/all of the air-crafts that are present in our inventory.