Yes the IAF evaluated it and found the Super Hornet to be the least attractive of all the MMRCA participants when it came to it's flight performance.nachiket wrote:All of these issues exist on the Super Hornet as well. Yet the IAF did not outright reject it. They went ahead with full flight evals etc. ADA website says TEDBF MTOW is envisaged to be 26 tonnes. Nearly 4 tonnes less than the SH with the same amount of thrust available. Not sure of the empty weight, but it should be less than the SH too I guess. This should enable IAF's unique requirements like being able to take off from Leh with usable payload to be met.Kartik wrote: It's pretty obvious that the IAF will not take a Navy optimized TEDBF as is without changes to the landing gear and folding wings. It does not suit their operational requirements to have a fighter that is heavier than it needs to be for land based use, and restricted from 9G due to wing folding that they don't need.
Rest of the strengthening of the structures to absorb and transfer the arresting hook loads may not be completely optimized, since all we'll get is a sturdier ORCA. But then again, sturdier than what it needs to be based on IAF's operational requirements is not necessarily good. Any extra kgs of weight the ORCA carries is less fuel/payload that it could've carried instead.
Changing the wings to be non-folding so that the 8G restriction is removed might be relatively simple, but redesigning the entire landing gear assembly and lightening the airframe won't be. If you have a few years to work with, yes you can most certainly do all that and build a kinematically superior fighter. But the TEDBF itself will not be ready before mid-2030's. So you need yet another parallel program for the ORCA. The IAF might as well just wait for the AMCA at that point.
The Super Hornet lugs around a LOT of extra weight from it's naval design that is completely not required for a land lubber. I've seen the Super Hornet's landing gear up close and it's massive to say the least. Not in the least bit optimized for land use. Comparatively the F-15's landing gear looks positively spindly, even though they can bring back quite similar payloads. Because the F-15 pilot doesn't have to "controlled crash" the F-15 onto a small strip of land, so the sink rates don't have to be so high and the landing gear and structures can be much lighter and weaker as a result.
If you read up on the F-18L, you'd see how much of an improvement that fighter offered over the F/A-18 A/B. However, no Air Force was interested in spending the amount required to make those changes and get it qualified so it stayed the way it was and the RAAF, RCAF, Swiss and other Air Forces accepted it the way it was.
With our engineering costs, it will be a lot more affordable to do those changes. Albeit, the IAF needs to be onboard as soon as possible, so this "modularity" of sorts is considered from the beginning.
If ADA expects the TEDBF MTOW to be 4 tonnes less than the Super Hornet while having similar engines, there will be correspondingly less fuel or payload than the Super Hornet. Or lower bring back load. TEDBF is being designed primarily for Air to Air and Air to Ship missions, rather than as a land attack fighter. Again, the Indian Navy's requirements are different from those of the USN, hence different MTOWs possibly.
I believe it is the landing gear re-design that is the easier task than having to redesign and qualify a wing without the wing folding mechanism and the hinge. The landing gear simply has to be lighter, the attachment points don't need to modified or changed. The paths for the loads to the transferred to the structure don't have to be changed. It is basically a lot easier to do it from a naval fighter to a land based fighter. It's essentially reducing the strength and correspondingly the gauge and thickness of the structures that absorb the landing and arresting forces.
But the re-design of the spars and ribs for the non-folding wing may be more effort and time consuming. Again, doable for sure and our engineering costs will not be anywhere near those of Western OEMs. But it will require separate tooling for producing those spars for the ORCA than for the TEDBF. It will mean higher costs since the supplier that supplies TEBDF wings will need to do it differently for ORCA.