Abingdonboy
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You're absolutely right about that! The Wester (particularly the US) has refined logistics down to a fine art from top to bottom every element in the chain is fine tuned right down to the cargo loading vehicles. When the IAF purchased both the C-17 and C-130J part of the package that came with them were such specialised vehicles because the US is aware that to make the entrée system efficient every aspect of cargo transportation needs to be taken care of. As such at Hindon the IAF now has a fleet of around 20+ "K-loaders" a specialised vehicle that has never been used by the IAF until now given it has had to make do with Eastern a/c up till now. This is the value added by buying from the West.Let me draw your attention to some of the pics that we see. One of them shows a white Hyster FTT loading pallets into the aircraft. So my question was: why need a Hyster when even Godrej (among others) makes FTTs in India for years.
Answer: there is an extremely well co-ordinated "material handling system" that has come with the aircraft which are so well standardised that A/C turnaround time is minimised; apart from the inbuilt modular systems within the A/C. Even pallet rollers are designed to match. Incidentally these are ideas that have come laterally to/from Civil Aviation. The East-Bloc A/C paid scant attention to such aspects.
I really don't understand what you are arguing over sir. All I pointed out was that the C-130Js seemed to offer 100% availability at that point in time- a pretty outstanding accomplishment especially in the context of the IAF who have struggled with the availability and maintainability of their Russian-origin a/c. Are you disputing that Western a/c don't offer many advantages over their Russian counterparts particularly in this regard?Of course I don't think that Russian aircrafts have a better maintainability/availability than western aircrafts, but your conclusion based on numbers of aircrafts used is plain wrong as shown at the C17 example. Again the numbers used, have nothing to do with the maintainability/availability, we simply can use the C130J at the moment far better than the C17, that doesn't mean the C17 is worse to maintain or has a worse availability which also as explained has to do with how many sorties / mission the aircraft is able to do and not with how many numbers of aircrafts are used. We could use 100% of the AN 32 fleet now if you want, but the "availability" for sorties and missions would be clearly below, because we know that these aircrafts are more difficult to maintain. So mixing up numbers, maintainability/availability... is wrong and more over does not take away from the fact that the Mi17, the AN32 and the IL76 are doing excellent work at the moment and isn't that the most important point?
The lack of used C17s btw can be based on the fact that the rest are used in other missions, in or outside of India, or that the current situation simply makes them to not be the best choice for IAF (too little payload, ILs can transport more passengers).
As part of the C-17 contract with Boeing they are contractually obliged to ensure the C-17's fleet has 85% availability - AS A MINIMUM. From all I've heard Boeing have easily surpassed even this very high figure.
What we are witnessing is a tectonic shift in the IAF and how it is able to perform, it is not really a stretch to say that they have been operating with one hand tied behind their back for a while now thanks to the Russians and their after sales support (of lack thereof) and this is, in part, why I am all for the Indian Mil going for as many Western products *** possible and reducing their dependancy on the Russians where possible.
Again, what I am saying is not revolutionary nor should it really come as a surprise to you.
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