But that deal is still short of 90 aircrafts. It does not meet the initial requirement of your air force. You guys are floating another tender to get the rest because the French jets are too damn expensive.
Well, actually, that is the core of the problem. If 126 is too little, what is 36? At 18 planes to a squadron, we needed around 10 squadrons (pardon my sloppy arithmetic; there are enough posts that offer a year-by-year analysis of the retirements and the acquisitions, and the nett effects on inventory, and it does not seem necessary to adopt that precision here), and instead, we are getting these two weird decisions, one just about enough, cheap enough but not sufficiently provisioned with spares guaranteeing a certain 'up-time', the other well-provisioned, but at a cost that created furious opposition and dark suspicions.
This government is a particularly inept one; the quality of the ministers is alarmingly bad, and they take the most incompetent decisions. Unfortunately, given our experiences with Antony, we are faced with a choice between the devil and the deep sea.
The new tender may go in any direction. Some background: the original requirement was for lighter, multi-role aircraft to supplement the Sukhois, those being capable but all too captive to the vagaries of an unreliable Russian spare parts production system, and not too amenable to indigenisation. Big tough planes with feet of clay, in terms of 'up-time'.
So the next set were to be the plugs between the Sukhois and the Tejas that would hit mass production only in a few years more, leaving a time and numbers gap to be plugged. In the original tender, six aircraft were short-listed and sent through extensive testing. Personally - this is entirely personal, and is not reflective of official opinion anywhere - the good choices were the expensive but extremely competent Rafale, and the extremely flexible and admirably priced Gripen. The Rafale took the lead, a large tender was floated, and suddenly abandoned; almost immediately afterwards, the same plane was bought out of tender, 36 of them, for a stiff price. Perhaps technically the right decision, but politically so laughably stupid, almost a red rag to a bull, as far as the opposition is concerned.
Right. Now we had a number of mechanically vulnerable air superiority behemoths, and a much smaller number of extremely good, well-designed, well-maintained and cutting edge (except for lacking stealth characteristics, thereby rendering them potentially vulnerable in the northern front) aircraft, AND a continuing huge gap. At this point, the word was that small and cheap was good, but not under-powered like the Tejas, that is more and more being positioned as a short-range interceptor that would have been ideal in the ground controller days of air warfare. So the thing to look for was another cheap and cheerful plane like the JF17. The tender called for single-engine planes, a zany stipulation, since there was NO specific requirement for a single engine, and there were ample requirements to build in robustly powered aircraft not subject to the dangers of failure of their single engine. However, it was out there, suddenly, and it was pulled out, equally suddenly; suddenly, equally, the common sense notion that the engine configuration should not be tendered dawned on people, so the current tender says, any numbers of engines on each aircraft, but the chosen aircraft should fill in the gap between the Tejas and even overlap with the Rafale.
The cross-currents here are that the Rafale is already bought; adding to their numbers will only spread the risk, so that materials management will be a wee smidgeon less of a three-icebag headache. On the other hand, the Donald will be mightily pleased if the F/A18 is bought, and might say something nice to the Indian prime minister on the phone. And we mustn't let anything, ANYTHING, interfere with that, must we?
There was also a report a few years back that the majority of the Arjun fleet in IA had to be grounded for lack of spare parts and other technical problems.
I would trust the Armoured Corps on this as far as I can single-handedly toss the Taj Mahal. This just does not compute.
If the tank cannot be operated during peace time, what guarantee is there that it can utilized in case of any hostilities. Its performance is also questionable as there are varying media reports on it. Some are praising it to the moon while others think it is the most pathetic peace of equipment ever produced. The same trials that you mentioned were claimed by IA to have been rigged (which seems a bit far fetched honestly). If a service is this much hell bent on not inducting this tank, then there has to be something wrong with the equipment or their minds.
Their minds. They don't want to go through the horrible days of sanctions once again.
If you haven't been through it, you can have no idea of what it felt like not to have access to the equals of the stuff facing you across the borders. All through the 65 war, the fears were focused on the Sabre jet, against which we had the Hunter, the just-coming-into-squadron-service MiG 21, and the Gnat. This was a psychological burden until it dawned on everybody that the Sabre was not unbeatable. The same thing happened with the Armoured Corps; they were in awe of the Patton, but the Centurion met it on even terms, and after the holocaust of Asal Utter, it rapidly got deprecated, as unfairly as it was built up as a bogey.
My information from every quarter is that the Arjun was superior equipment; one foreign team, brought in to test it in secret and anonymously, called it a sports car compared to the lumbering, truck-like T72 (not the T90 at that time).
Also, I would think that IA personnel would like to sit in a tank, however cramped, that has at least fared better than others even in a mixed war. I am not glorifying the T-90s here. Many resident experts!! here hate it. But seems to me that IA, for whatever reason, is still willing to bet on it that the Arjun.
Yes, you are right, and the reasons are very good reasons, just that they are psychological factors, difficult to place in a decision matrix. These psychological reasons absent, there is not much possibility of contradiction of the superiority of the Arjun.
To my Indian friends, Arjun looks too heavy with not enough horsepower to support that heavy armor. Can't blame Indian army as this tank will make them sitting ducks on the battlefield. T90s are on spot or just go for Leopord instead, since its based on it.
Incorrect. The Arjun actually turned out to be more agile and manoeuvrable in field trials. T90s are sturdy, rugged brutes, but the Arjun is simply better.
The Leopard has had its spots torn off in Syria; if battlefield experience counts, neither the Abrams nor the Leopard can match the T90. And we are looking at a tank that is better than the T90 in abstract, the problem being that it has never been tried in combat.
This could also be the delusion induced by one's own "wanna believe" and the "make believe" effort by the other "lobby" party. This view is quite popular among Indian members, you guys assume INA is corrupt, and DRDO makes the best tanks.
It is a little more complex than that; if you would please take the trouble to go through some posts on that subject in this thread, matters might become clearer.
incompetent losers will only blaming others, in this case, those joke Indian are blaming Russian lobbies````
What incompetence and what losses are we talking about?
Nothing is better than supporting domestic weapon system
...especially when the domestic weapon system comes out on top in the user service's own trials.
Indian army is changing the goal posts too frequently... and yes several senior army officers do have a taste for Russian delights... Arjun is a classic example of army's biased view towards indigenous platforms... while Tejas mk1 and mk1A are out dated due to long delays, Arjun has proved him self in several trials...
Last time army wanted him to fire lahat missile... but the missile was not upto the mark... therefore they decided to leave that option but now the army wants it again... just a tactic to delay the acquisition process...
I have talked to one of my friend who have operated both Arjun and T-72 (the upgraded ones) and he told me that how good Arjun is in terms of agility, target acquisition, crew comfort and accuracy.
Well for T 90 he says that the real plus point is the commission (buy + spares + training + upgrades) available with it...
Exactly.
Any tanker who has operated both will know what a hollow sham this whole controversy is.
