Contrarian
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2006
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I suggest to go for rafale as 126 + 74 as optional and ~100 MiG35 to quickly fill the numbers.
Mate, buying 2 types of planes is the biggest folly that the MoD can commit! IAF already has a huge variety of planes that are difficult to maintain. Commonality of planes leads to savings on infrastructure and logistics chain as well as enhances the operational readiness.
Even if you say that the MiG 35 is built up from the MiG 29 as a base, it still induces more problems. Better to go with one plane all the way.
And this is when IAF is spending big bucks to upgrade the infrastructure in about 30 of its airbases. IAF bases are by and large specialist bases, that means that they cater to a small variety of aircrafts as opposed to general bases which can take care(including repair, etc) of all the aircrafts in IAF. IAF is spending a lot of money now in the first phase to convert these 30 bases to general bases as well as connect all the airbases with an optical fibre network.
Having said that even im worried that in order to make everyone happy, MoD might just buy 2 planes!