Indian AWACS Reloaded: Competition For 6 Aircraft Announced

[SQ8]

Till when we can keep ordering planes after planes after planes from foreign companies. India is expected to buy over 1000 passenger and military planes over the next decade and the potential in the foreign market is well over 10000 planes in next 20 years.

A country of 1.3 billion is unable to grab even a small pie of this market which keeps growing. We are not even daring enough to make an attempt.

Do you guys know that India was the first nation outside of Europe and America to build a fighter called HF-24 Marut. But building upon the experience of Marut we chose to lick Russian Balls and today South Korea, Japan, China and even Brazil have outpaced us in aerospace.

I am not against foreign acquisitions but an aggressive attempt is required to capture a fair pie of world aerospace market.

No, Please stop having the usual desi delusion of being the first, tallest , largest etc.. there were other nations outside that beat you to it decades before...AND.. were poorer than you even then.

Thanks to the genius of Dr Kurt Tank from Germany..the Marut had great potential.. but I still don't understand why that the initial Indian Cadre at HAL that worked with Dr Kurt Tank who without a doubt must have learnt and been inspired a lot did not go on to achieve more and more..

 

[karan21]

No, Please stop having the usual desi delusion of being the first, tallest , largest etc.. there were other nations outside that beat you to it decades before...AND.. were poorer than you even then.

Thanks to the genius of Dr Kurt Tank from Germany..the Marut had great potential.. but I still don't understand why that the initial Indian Cadre at HAL that worked with Dr Kurt Tank who without a doubt must have learnt and been inspired a lot did not go on to achieve more and more..

Give me an example of a nation that built a modern fighter jet after world war 2 outside of Europe and USA. None??

At the time, Japan was under sanctions, China was making Russian Mig-21s.

Anyways yes, we should have built upon the Hf-24 marut planes, but we Indians have a habit to lick balls for money. We are worthless people with even more incompetent rulers.

 

[he-man]

Give me an example of a nation that built a modern fighter jet after world war 2 outside of Europe and USA. None??

At the time, Japan was under sanctions, China was making Russian Mig-21s.

Anyways yes, we should have built upon the Hf-24 marut planes, but we Indians have a habit to lick balls for money. We are worthless people with even more incompetent rulers.

China
J-20

U don't get more modern than that.
Yes they don't have indigenous engine yet

 

[SQ8]

Give me an example of a nation that built a modern fighter jet after world war 2 outside of Europe and USA. None??

At the time, Japan was under sanctions, China was making Russian Mig-21s.

Anyways yes, we should have built upon the Hf-24 marut planes, but we Indians have a habit to lick balls for money. We are worthless people with even more incompetent rulers.

Argentina.. back in 1950..
FMA IAe 33 Pulqui II - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
After which the designer came to India to build the Marut.

Give me an example of a nation that built a modern fighter jet after world war 2 outside of Europe and USA. None??

And the Marut cannot be qualified as modern.. it was comparable to the Q-5 at the time with basic attack systems. the aircraft never realized its potential due to the lack of a powerful engine to meet its needs.

 

[jha]

Chalo.. Finally... Maybe we will see these flying in 2020..

 

[Wave]

My Air Force just received an AWACS aircraft few days back. It is very sophisticated and advance.

Indians wish they could have such systems. But they are not mighty Turks. lol

Dafuq is wrong with that falseflagging Nutjob?

 

[sancho]

Chalo.. Finally... Maybe we will see these flying in 2020..

"Hopefully", the problem however is that IAF will be left with just half of the required number of AWACS to defend the country and is still asked to fight a 2 front war. That's simply insane and shows how unreasonable DRDO is working wrt to the defence of India.

 

[Abingdonboy]

A no, you can have 360° coverage with such jets as the G550 Phalcon AWACS shows, B who says we need 360° detection? IAF will have 5 x A50 Phalcon AWACS with long range and 360° detection, what is needed from DRDO is an additional system that is cost-effective, can be procured in numbers to increased the overall coverage of our borderline air space. That is not possibly when IAF gets only 3 x EMB DRDO AWACS and at least the optional 3 should have been ordered as well. But DRDO didn't finished this development and is dreaming about the next one. In the meantime Indias defence capability is hampered, because they want to develop a bigger system like other world class competitors does.
The DRDO AWACS is mainly meant to fly alongside the border, with A50 Phalcons at overlapping flight path, so it's not the capability of a single aircraft in a certain area that is important, but a propper 24/7 coverage of the whole borderline, linked with each other!

@sancho, what the IAF clearly wants is an AWACs with a 360" AESA radar based on a wide bodied commercial airliner akin to the E-3 Sentry and their A-50 PHALCON (although the latter being based on a converted cargo plane). The DRDO/CABs AWACs was a nice and very much required learning experience for DRDO but, it isn't what the IAF wants (as I have outlined above) long term. Yes the DRDO AWACs are impressive systems but the radar and the small-bodied a/c it is mount don are limiting and inferior to the PHALCON in pretty much every way. The IAF wants an Indian PHALCON as it were. Hence where the AWACS (INDIA) project comes in.

The DRDO, sensibly, adopted a crawl, walk, run principal in the form of Project Airavat, CABS AWACS (on the EMB-145) and now the AWACS (INDIA) with a 360" radar based on a wide-bodied airliner.


I really don't see what your gripe is with the IAF wanting or the DRDO developing such a system. It seems only logical to me.



As far as this news goes, my money is on the A330 airliner being selected for commonalty purposes as the IAF will be procuring at least 12 A330 MRTTs.

Why is there no indigenous manufacturer included in the bid?

No Indian companies manufacture wide-bodied airliners for the same reasons there are no Chinese manufacturers included in the bid.....

 

[sancho]

@sancho, what the IAF clearly wants is an AWACs with a 360" AESA radar based on a wide bodied commercial airliner

Says who? IAF never came up with a new requirement for either a new radar system, nor about a new platform. The whole AWACS India idea is a pure DRDO project and the only IAF share in it was, that they gave DRDO certain requirements the platform should fulfill, like the 12000m ceilling that sometimes were reported.
It's DRDO that wants to show off by developing something comparable to the A50 Phalcon and not IAF that wants something like that, they have asked for additional A50 Phalcons for years instead.

The DRDO, sensibly, adopted a crawl, walk, run principal in the form of Project Airavat, CABS AWACS (on the EMB-145) and now the AWACS (INDIA) with a 360" radar based on a wide-bodied airliner.

Not really! Therefore they would have to field an propper radar system into operational service, which they haven't yet, in fact they didn't even seem to have installed the radar to the Embraer platform yet and have only made ground tests. So they didn't have achieved, let alone delivered anything yet and want to jump from crawling to running, without even standing or walking! The same habit that we see from them wrt LCA and AMCA, or UAVs and UCAVs...

The best solution for India would be, ordering at least 3 x more EMB DRDO AWACS right aways, field the system into operational service and mature the tech. THEN start developing of a more capable system, on a more capable platform. Why not chose the MTA as an independent choice from India as the base for AWACS India later? It is much bigger than the Embraer 145 and could take the weight of a rotodome, fulfills the speed, ceilling or refuelling requirements of IAF, can be modified and maintained much easier than any foreign platform. It could replace the EMB 145 DRDO AWACS from the land borders, while they then could be diverted to the sea borders to cover the shore based AWACS requirement of IN.
That would be crawling (Project Airavat), standing (developing DRDO AWACS), walking (inducting and maturing the system in operational service), running (further improving the system or own capabilities in this field)!

 

[Abingdonboy]

It's DRDO that wants to show off by developing something comparable to the A50 Phalcon and not IAF that wants something like that, they have asked for additional A50 Phalcons for years instead.

The reason the IAF have likely pursued additional PHALCONs is that this is a much quicker solution (2-3 years from signing ) to be delivered than the AWACS (India) project which is at least 6-7 years away.

Why not chose the MTA as an independent choice from India as the base for AWACS India later?

The A-50 is the only example of a cargo a/c being converted into a AWACS, all other AWACS are based on either smaller business jets or wide-bodied commercial airliners and for good reason. It makes logical sense the IAF would want to go for the latter as every single other AWACS is based on. The MTA, if it is even big enough and capable of fitting the DRDOs radome, is still a long way away from its first flight and it would make sense to go for an established and proven a/c rather than an unproven and new a/c like the MTA- sounds like a recipe for disaster, one project holding up another and so on and so forth. If the platform for the DRDO AWACS (INDIA) is picked within the next 2-3 years the DRDO will have quite a few years to use this proven a/c for flight tests and validating the design of their radome as opposed to waiting for the MTA to emerge.


As for commonality the A330 will be a good option considering the IAF will be getting A330 MRTTs and their is a huge Airbus presence in the Indian civil aviation market with India being a MRO base for Airbus in the region as is.

 

[500]

G-550 Phalcon is good solution. Its about 4 times cheaper to operate than Il-76, it has higher ceiling and endurance. It also has 360 coverage, the only downside is that front and rear range is lower than side.

 

[Abingdonboy]

G-550 Phalcon is good solution. Its about 4 times cheaper to operate than Il-76, it has higher ceiling and endurance. It also has 360 coverage, the only downside is that front and rear range is lower than side.

The G-550 is a nice solution no doubt. However for a nation like India the IAF is after a large wide-bodied airliner for more crew, more comfort, bigger range, more endurance etc etc. The G-550 is a nice cost effective solution for smaller nations and AFs...

 

[500]

The G-550 is a nice solution no doubt. However for a nation like India the IAF is after a large wide-bodied airliner for more crew, more comfort, bigger range, more endurance etc etc. The G-550 is a nice cost effective solution for smaller nations and AFs...

G-550 has more range (12,500 km vs 10,000 km) and endurance (14.7 h vs 12.5 h). It has also more speed (can faster reach the desired destination) and more ceiling (can observe at larger distance).

 

[Omega007]

I disagree on that, since they have proven before that the mountain areas are no issue for them to attack India. They ground forces today are so capable, IA doesn't stand a chance in numbers and capability, especially since their infrastructure around the borders is also far better than ours.

On air force level we can compete with them at the moment, since they can't afford to divert too big parts of their fleet to our borders, since their real threats are in East Asia and quality wise IAF remains ahead so far, but propper surveillance and tanker support will be crucial!

The biggest threat for India however are Chinese SSBNs and SSNs, which poses a huge offensive threat to our costal areas, are hard to detect in the wide area of the Indian Ocean and even harder to counter with our current state of ASW capability. So it's not their bulk surface fleet that we need to worry about, which mainly will be used for defence and control of their costal areas anyway, but even a few of these subs that can cause havoc for us.

You may disagree all you want mate,the reality is you have never been to NE in your entire life.Yes,I admit that we lack in transportation infra very badly,but you have no idea about the formidable static defensive nodes that have come online lately all along the LAC.Trust me,I've been to both Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh multiple times and defensive nodes are quite formidable.

And don't compare 1962 with now because back then,IA had next to no defensive structures in place.They were fighting virtually into open under heavy PLA artillery barrages,without food.They didn't even have been provided with proper clothing.Heck if we are to believe the late Brigadier John P. Dalvi,each soldiers were supplied with just 50-100 round of rifle ammunition when the PLA stuck the positions of the 7th brigade.Beside,IA soldiers were equipped with WWII era Lee Enfield bolt action rifles where as the PLA troopers were equipped with automatic weapons like SKS rifles,Belch guns,PKs and Dushkas-what did our infantry forces have??

Beside,there was not even many troops,the IA in the NE and Ladakh had been been outnumbered by 9-10:1,moreover those few troops were neither acclimatized nor adequately equipped to survive in the chilly high altitude terrain where the battles took place.

I could go on and on but you should do your homework first.

So before you start comparing both cases,first read up on that matter.There are many good books on that subject and then we can have a talk.You are a so called Think tank analyst doesn't automatically transform all you say into Gospel truth,is it??

If they want they can attack us and ruin us financially any time,thats a reality.
We cannot sustain the war,niether militarily nor financially.
But it will never happen,and hopefully after a border aggrement they are our future ally to counteract the nato.thats the order of progression

A defeatist and cynical individual,simply not fit to run a debate with.

 

[Rajaraja Chola]

I believe we should buy Embraer platform and build many more of this as possible, as it will give experience and reduce production costs.