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You dont need maneuvering there. Have u seen TVC on MiG-31 - the dedicated high altitude interceptor?
Then you just break down and push max g.
Dassault Rafale, tender | News & Discussions
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sudhir007
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Fighter jets: Bomb bays to Delhi | The Economist
“WE’VE been waiting for this day for 30 years,” said Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s president, on the news this week that India had gone into exclusive negotiations with Dassault Aviation, a French firm, to buy 126 of its Rafale warplanes for $15 billion-20 billion. France has not sold a single Rafale overseas, and until this week the plane’s future looked iffy. Shares in Dassault Aviation soared by 18.5%.
The loser, ironically, was the Rafale’s cousin, the Eurofighter Typhoon, built by a consortium led by EADS, Europe’s defence and aerospace champion, which is jointly controlled by Germany and France. EADS itself owns a 46% stake in Dassault, a legacy of earlier French government meddling, so its own shares inched up on the news.
Dassault won its exclusive-bidder status by offering the lower price. Both European jets had satisfied the technical requirements of the Indian Air Force, which wants zippier planes to guard against China’s Chengdu J-10 combat aircraft and Pakistan’s ageing American F-16s. In tests over the Himalayas and the Rajasthan desert, India had eliminated the F-16 and F/A-18, the Russian MiG-35 and Swedish JAS 39 Gripen from the process during 2009-10.
The capabilities of both the Rafale and the Eurofighter were on display during the Libyan war. The Typhoon is the superior air-to-air interceptor. The Rafale switches more easily into a ground-attack mode.
After seeing the Rafale rejected repeatedly over the past decade, by the Netherlands, South Korea, Singapore, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and Switzerland, the French were desperate to win a contract. The plane was becoming a costly embarrassment, especially for Mr Sarkozy, who has long promised a sale to Brazil but has nothing to show for his efforts. Some even wondered if the Rafale could survive with France as its only customer.
Now Dassault must seal the contract with India in a series of detailed negotiations over technology transfer and other conditions. India is known for switching to other bidders before finally signing a contract. “The Indians will now squeeze the French hard,” says an executive on the Typhoon side. That said, India has used Dassault’s Mirage jets for many years, and last year signed a $2.4 billion deal with Dassault, Thales and MBDA, two other French defence firms, to upgrade its French planes.
For the Eurofighter consortium the Indian deal is crucial too. David Cameron, Britain’s prime minister, said this week that the Typhoon is “far better” than the Rafale. Sales of the Typhoon, which went into service in 2004, have disappointed. The Eurofighter member governments (Germany, Britain, Italy and Spain) have all ordered planes, but only Austria and Saudi Arabia have bought them from outside the group.
Eurofighter may now lower its price to rejoin the bidding for India’s contract. It may also offer India the carrot of equal status as a partner in the programme, alongside the four European nations. Eurofighter says it will be helped by what is turning out to be a transparent procurement process. Whereas previous Indian arms deals have been dogged by accusations of corruption, this one has so far been exemplary, says an executive involved.
Having opted out of the Eurofighter project in 1985, France’s determination to go it alone in defence matters has led to the spectacle of two expensive European combat planes competing for the same big contract. “Europe should not have two jets fighting each other,” says Zafar Khan, a defence-industry analyst at Société Générale, a French bank. The next generation of European fighter jets, he says, should be a more co-ordinated effort.
“WE’VE been waiting for this day for 30 years,” said Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s president, on the news this week that India had gone into exclusive negotiations with Dassault Aviation, a French firm, to buy 126 of its Rafale warplanes for $15 billion-20 billion. France has not sold a single Rafale overseas, and until this week the plane’s future looked iffy. Shares in Dassault Aviation soared by 18.5%.
The loser, ironically, was the Rafale’s cousin, the Eurofighter Typhoon, built by a consortium led by EADS, Europe’s defence and aerospace champion, which is jointly controlled by Germany and France. EADS itself owns a 46% stake in Dassault, a legacy of earlier French government meddling, so its own shares inched up on the news.
Dassault won its exclusive-bidder status by offering the lower price. Both European jets had satisfied the technical requirements of the Indian Air Force, which wants zippier planes to guard against China’s Chengdu J-10 combat aircraft and Pakistan’s ageing American F-16s. In tests over the Himalayas and the Rajasthan desert, India had eliminated the F-16 and F/A-18, the Russian MiG-35 and Swedish JAS 39 Gripen from the process during 2009-10.
The capabilities of both the Rafale and the Eurofighter were on display during the Libyan war. The Typhoon is the superior air-to-air interceptor. The Rafale switches more easily into a ground-attack mode.
After seeing the Rafale rejected repeatedly over the past decade, by the Netherlands, South Korea, Singapore, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and Switzerland, the French were desperate to win a contract. The plane was becoming a costly embarrassment, especially for Mr Sarkozy, who has long promised a sale to Brazil but has nothing to show for his efforts. Some even wondered if the Rafale could survive with France as its only customer.
Now Dassault must seal the contract with India in a series of detailed negotiations over technology transfer and other conditions. India is known for switching to other bidders before finally signing a contract. “The Indians will now squeeze the French hard,” says an executive on the Typhoon side. That said, India has used Dassault’s Mirage jets for many years, and last year signed a $2.4 billion deal with Dassault, Thales and MBDA, two other French defence firms, to upgrade its French planes.
For the Eurofighter consortium the Indian deal is crucial too. David Cameron, Britain’s prime minister, said this week that the Typhoon is “far better” than the Rafale. Sales of the Typhoon, which went into service in 2004, have disappointed. The Eurofighter member governments (Germany, Britain, Italy and Spain) have all ordered planes, but only Austria and Saudi Arabia have bought them from outside the group.
Eurofighter may now lower its price to rejoin the bidding for India’s contract. It may also offer India the carrot of equal status as a partner in the programme, alongside the four European nations. Eurofighter says it will be helped by what is turning out to be a transparent procurement process. Whereas previous Indian arms deals have been dogged by accusations of corruption, this one has so far been exemplary, says an executive involved.
Having opted out of the Eurofighter project in 1985, France’s determination to go it alone in defence matters has led to the spectacle of two expensive European combat planes competing for the same big contract. “Europe should not have two jets fighting each other,” says Zafar Khan, a defence-industry analyst at Société Générale, a French bank. The next generation of European fighter jets, he says, should be a more co-ordinated effort.
sudhir007
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A simple matter of buying a fighter jet - Views - livemint.com
On Tuesday, a decade after India decided to equip itself with a new fighter jet—replacing the MiG-21 —the process acquired a sense of finality. For all practical purposes, the French Dassault Rafale is the government’s choice. Each step of the journey—from the initial request for information (RFI) in 2001 to the announcement of Dassault as the lowest bidder—highlights interesting weaknesses in the country’s defence equipment procurement process in particular and strategic thinking in general.
Consider the timeline first. By early 1990s, the backbone of the Indian Air Force (IAF), the MiG-21, had outlived its utility. Apart from outdated avionics and weapon systems, the large number of crashes led to doubts about the jet’s airworthiness. By that time, the Pakistan air force had been operating F-16s for at least six to seven years. The MiG-21 is no match for the F-16. Yet, it took another decade for the RFI to be issued. In all, more than a quarter century will have elapsed between the realization that new planes were required and the first flight of an IAF Rafale across the Indian sky.
That is not all. By the time the full complement of 126 aircraft is in place, the Rafale would be an “outdated” plane. Early last year, China carried out the first flight of its fifth-generation, stealth fighter, the Chengdu J-20. The J-20 is expected to be inducted in the Chinese air force by 2020. Like the MiG-21 vs F-16 comparison, equating the Rafale with the J-20 is, perhaps, unfair. But that’s the point missed in the entire acquisition process. A country does not buy weapons for current use—those requirements have to be met by the existing stock of weapons—but for future contingencies. That requires careful, and imaginative, planning about future scenarios. While the country’s armed forces—the users of weapons—are keenly aware about these developments, the buyer—the government—is in a time warp. By 2020, India will need a different type of fighter jet—a fifth-generation plane. While India has begun the process to acquire a fifth-generation fighter, it is an open question if by 2020, that plane will be in service with the IAF.
This problem could have been avoided easily during the ongoing process. The US had offered India the F-16 and F-18 planes as medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA). India rejected those aircraft and for good reasons. With a little bit of imagination, it could have tweaked the MMRCA contract, imparting it a futuristic direction. The year 2005 marked the high-tide of the Indo-US relations. The civilian nuclear deal had just been agreed on; the countries were truly on the path to a strategic relationship—unlike the phoney expression it has become now—and high-level political negotiations on defence ties would have imparted it greater depth. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the country’s national security leadership could have held a sustained dialogue and asked the Americans for the F-22 Raptor—a fifth-generation fighter. Whether the Americans gave us those planes or not, an effort should have been made to get them and the ball thrown in the US’ court. Had that happened, it would have given India an air power edge and lifted it above the ruck of countries in the region. What needs emphasis here is that chasing equipment made in the US does not mean slavish acceptance of what it dishes out (clearly the F-16 and F-18 are goods past their sell-by date) but getting the most out of such deals. If buying jets from the US helps India further its political interests, then they should have been bought. Period.
That, however, would have required geopolitical imagination and discarding doubts about friendship with the US. Historically, India has never had that kind of leadership. India simply does not have the institutions that enable the grooming of such leaders. The National Security Council—established in 1998—is now another sarkari department. The one place where such ideas could have flourished—universities—seldom produce scholarly work that can spur strategic imagination—in leaders and citizens alike. The contrast with China is marked. While the latter rediscovers its ancient strategic roots (see Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power by Yan Xuetong, Princeton University Press 2011), powers ahead with its defence modernization plans and, in general, exhibits a confident worldview, India is busy creating roadblocks on the path to its progress. Even relatively simple matters such as sharing river waters with Bangladesh have been blocked by regional leaders like Mamata Banerjee. It is one thing to hanker for a position on the global high table, but an entirely different matter to create conditions to achieve that goal.
To be fair, it is easy to overlook the fact that it is for the first time in two millennia that India—as an independent entity, that is—is enjoying geographic unity, something that has been imagined culturally for long but has existed politically for less than 70 years. Under these conditions, the required imagination—at the level where it is needed most, among policymakers—will always be in deficit. At the operational level, it leads to a sense of timelessness: the false belief that adversaries will exhibit behaviour similar to one’s own; that perspective plans on paper will automatically bear fruit and, generally, that opportunities always abound. The acquisition of aircraft whose utility in the future will be limited is only one aspect of this much greater weakness.
---------- Post added at 11:31 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:30 AM ----------
With defence purchases on the rise, the policy on offsets calls for clarity - The Economic Times
Policy clarity on defence offsets and indigenisation is of vital import, now that several big-ticket military hardware purchases from abroad have been finalised of late, the latest being the $10.4-billion deal to procure 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) over a 10-year period from France's Dassault Rafale. Clear-cut norms for offsets are essential to boost domestic capability and manufactures of defence equipment. An offsets policy was first made specific in the Defence Procurement Procedure of 2005, requiring that vendors executing defence contracts worth .
Rs 300 crore or more source at least 30% of the total value from here in India, in the form of sub-systems and products. It was also envisaged that offsets could be met via investments in Indian defence JVs, or by funding research and development in the sector. But in the last five years, we seem to have had a new annual revised policy on offsets, with the criteria steadily loosened and watered down. So apart from the initial policy of "direct offsets," the procurement procedure of 2011 also has provision for "indirect offsets," permitting vendors to meet offset requirements by funding, say, civil aviation or training programmes. Such wider interpretation of the offsets policy is questionable if they are unlikely to shore up domestic technological and manufacturing capability.
Reportedly, the first lot of 18 MMRCA would be directly imported from Dassault, and the rest 108 aircraft manufactured in India in partnership with domestic firms. It is entirely possible that sticking to a rigorous offsets plan would add to overall costs, initially. As a rule, green-field projects set up across borders tend to be dearer and timeconsuming. But the whole idea of offsets is to augment capability and the objective ought to be to boost indigenous design and manufacturing for next-generation defence equipment. Reportedly, sections of the defence ministry view offsets as a procedural hurdle. Instead, a more integrative strategy and coordination with defence production are warranted. In defence matters, eschewing long-term strategic thinking is not an option.
On Tuesday, a decade after India decided to equip itself with a new fighter jet—replacing the MiG-21 —the process acquired a sense of finality. For all practical purposes, the French Dassault Rafale is the government’s choice. Each step of the journey—from the initial request for information (RFI) in 2001 to the announcement of Dassault as the lowest bidder—highlights interesting weaknesses in the country’s defence equipment procurement process in particular and strategic thinking in general.
Consider the timeline first. By early 1990s, the backbone of the Indian Air Force (IAF), the MiG-21, had outlived its utility. Apart from outdated avionics and weapon systems, the large number of crashes led to doubts about the jet’s airworthiness. By that time, the Pakistan air force had been operating F-16s for at least six to seven years. The MiG-21 is no match for the F-16. Yet, it took another decade for the RFI to be issued. In all, more than a quarter century will have elapsed between the realization that new planes were required and the first flight of an IAF Rafale across the Indian sky.
That is not all. By the time the full complement of 126 aircraft is in place, the Rafale would be an “outdated” plane. Early last year, China carried out the first flight of its fifth-generation, stealth fighter, the Chengdu J-20. The J-20 is expected to be inducted in the Chinese air force by 2020. Like the MiG-21 vs F-16 comparison, equating the Rafale with the J-20 is, perhaps, unfair. But that’s the point missed in the entire acquisition process. A country does not buy weapons for current use—those requirements have to be met by the existing stock of weapons—but for future contingencies. That requires careful, and imaginative, planning about future scenarios. While the country’s armed forces—the users of weapons—are keenly aware about these developments, the buyer—the government—is in a time warp. By 2020, India will need a different type of fighter jet—a fifth-generation plane. While India has begun the process to acquire a fifth-generation fighter, it is an open question if by 2020, that plane will be in service with the IAF.
This problem could have been avoided easily during the ongoing process. The US had offered India the F-16 and F-18 planes as medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA). India rejected those aircraft and for good reasons. With a little bit of imagination, it could have tweaked the MMRCA contract, imparting it a futuristic direction. The year 2005 marked the high-tide of the Indo-US relations. The civilian nuclear deal had just been agreed on; the countries were truly on the path to a strategic relationship—unlike the phoney expression it has become now—and high-level political negotiations on defence ties would have imparted it greater depth. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the country’s national security leadership could have held a sustained dialogue and asked the Americans for the F-22 Raptor—a fifth-generation fighter. Whether the Americans gave us those planes or not, an effort should have been made to get them and the ball thrown in the US’ court. Had that happened, it would have given India an air power edge and lifted it above the ruck of countries in the region. What needs emphasis here is that chasing equipment made in the US does not mean slavish acceptance of what it dishes out (clearly the F-16 and F-18 are goods past their sell-by date) but getting the most out of such deals. If buying jets from the US helps India further its political interests, then they should have been bought. Period.
That, however, would have required geopolitical imagination and discarding doubts about friendship with the US. Historically, India has never had that kind of leadership. India simply does not have the institutions that enable the grooming of such leaders. The National Security Council—established in 1998—is now another sarkari department. The one place where such ideas could have flourished—universities—seldom produce scholarly work that can spur strategic imagination—in leaders and citizens alike. The contrast with China is marked. While the latter rediscovers its ancient strategic roots (see Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power by Yan Xuetong, Princeton University Press 2011), powers ahead with its defence modernization plans and, in general, exhibits a confident worldview, India is busy creating roadblocks on the path to its progress. Even relatively simple matters such as sharing river waters with Bangladesh have been blocked by regional leaders like Mamata Banerjee. It is one thing to hanker for a position on the global high table, but an entirely different matter to create conditions to achieve that goal.
To be fair, it is easy to overlook the fact that it is for the first time in two millennia that India—as an independent entity, that is—is enjoying geographic unity, something that has been imagined culturally for long but has existed politically for less than 70 years. Under these conditions, the required imagination—at the level where it is needed most, among policymakers—will always be in deficit. At the operational level, it leads to a sense of timelessness: the false belief that adversaries will exhibit behaviour similar to one’s own; that perspective plans on paper will automatically bear fruit and, generally, that opportunities always abound. The acquisition of aircraft whose utility in the future will be limited is only one aspect of this much greater weakness.
---------- Post added at 11:31 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:30 AM ----------
With defence purchases on the rise, the policy on offsets calls for clarity - The Economic Times
Policy clarity on defence offsets and indigenisation is of vital import, now that several big-ticket military hardware purchases from abroad have been finalised of late, the latest being the $10.4-billion deal to procure 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) over a 10-year period from France's Dassault Rafale. Clear-cut norms for offsets are essential to boost domestic capability and manufactures of defence equipment. An offsets policy was first made specific in the Defence Procurement Procedure of 2005, requiring that vendors executing defence contracts worth .
Rs 300 crore or more source at least 30% of the total value from here in India, in the form of sub-systems and products. It was also envisaged that offsets could be met via investments in Indian defence JVs, or by funding research and development in the sector. But in the last five years, we seem to have had a new annual revised policy on offsets, with the criteria steadily loosened and watered down. So apart from the initial policy of "direct offsets," the procurement procedure of 2011 also has provision for "indirect offsets," permitting vendors to meet offset requirements by funding, say, civil aviation or training programmes. Such wider interpretation of the offsets policy is questionable if they are unlikely to shore up domestic technological and manufacturing capability.
Reportedly, the first lot of 18 MMRCA would be directly imported from Dassault, and the rest 108 aircraft manufactured in India in partnership with domestic firms. It is entirely possible that sticking to a rigorous offsets plan would add to overall costs, initially. As a rule, green-field projects set up across borders tend to be dearer and timeconsuming. But the whole idea of offsets is to augment capability and the objective ought to be to boost indigenous design and manufacturing for next-generation defence equipment. Reportedly, sections of the defence ministry view offsets as a procedural hurdle. Instead, a more integrative strategy and coordination with defence production are warranted. In defence matters, eschewing long-term strategic thinking is not an option.
Capt.Popeye
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Can Harry Potter (on his broom) beat a Jinn (on his magic carpet)?
What?? Just Answer me
notsuperstitious
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Di Wen Sun, get out more.
KS
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Agnostic_Indian
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though i doubt the intention..the answer is No..and there is no need also...we will have fgfa to counter j 20.
kingdurgaking
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sancho
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This dumbo (Sidharth Singh) is the Editor of Live mint. Awesome Editor indeed !
Livemint was also the source of the baseless rumors about EF beeing L1 and selected, so a little bias was obvious. I find the British and German reactions to the selection kind of interesting. The Brits are blaming the Germans mainly (besides us), Germans are saying India just wanted a cheap fighter (although reports hints of just $5 millions difference, which would be surprisingly close) and both are saying that the deal is not done yet. It shows how desperate the countries and the EF consortium must be to get a deal and divert their orders, after loosing Japan.
sancho
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Not necessarily, because that are head on head engagements. An MKI will detect a the F16 from way greater distances and will bring itself in a position where it will stay out of the opponents field of view, while closing in.
Also most airforces will visually identify the opponent first and then fire the missile, to avoid friendly fire, so there are many points that have to be taken to account in BVR than maximim detection range or missile range.
KS
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Sancho $5 million per unit translates into about about $ 600 million for about 120 planes and considering the integration,logistics cost will be even more and is by no means a small amount.
Black Widow
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Exactly same question I raised in some of the forum couple of month ago. RCS doesn't matter for 4th gen fighters. Assume one fighter having RCS of 0.0001m2. Now load some external weapon on its wing. The RCS will go 3-5m2. Under no circumstance we can make use of low RCS on 4th gen fighter planes.
I remember Gambit once clarified this problem beautifully in one of the forum.
kingdurgaking
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Dude first of all i am not telling who will detect whom first.. i am just mentioning RCS is not a factor for 4++ gen fighters. Even if the RCS in clean config is less, the missiles loaded will shoot the RCS atleast more than 7 m2 depending on the loading.. so enemies no something is beeping on there radar monitor..
Second to identify it is an enemy, there is IFF and AWACS which will do the job.. so the chance for a friendly fire is very very low ... This you can relate it to Red flag
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