Which Brings back to my earlier question, why would Navy select Naval LCA if it did not see any benefit in this. Please do not reply with " they are incompetent " .
That's not from me, but as I told you from IN officials themselfs!
LCA-Navy Not What We Want, But It's Ours
"It may not be what we want, but it is our own aircraft," says the Indian Navy's Flag Officer Naval Aviation (FONA) Rear Admiral Sudhir Pillai on the LCA Navy in an interview to FORCE magazine. He was asked how effective the LCA Navy would be for a carrier-based role given that it "only an eight ton platform". The officer's response: "I wish wish we could straightaway develop a Rafale. But seriously, we have to look at the Indian Navy and it commitment towards indigenisation. I agree that we have made a modest start, but it has been a huge learning experience. LCA Navy will remain a modest platform with an uprated engine which will give us adequate capability at sea. While it is easy to buy from abroad, sometimes it is extremely difficult to support those platforms. Our past experiences tell us that it is worth committing resources to develop our own assets."
Livefist: "LCA-Navy Not What We Want, But It's Ours": FONA
(Article of former Indian Navy admiral Arun Prakash)
As I said...
...no operational importance that makes the fighter special for IN
...support for Indian industry to develop an "own" naval carrier fighter
...pride factor of putting India in an elite club
You have the idea that only because IN or any other of the forces takes a decision, it must be the only right thing to do and definitely right, but they are just humans like us and they makes mistakes too. When you look back at the recent years you will find plenty of such mistakes or incompetences in IN tenders and procurements:
- P75 competition, selecting a modern SSK without AIP (IN infact is one of the few navies today that is inducting modern subs without that capability, while our opponents already have it!), while it is a requirement in the P75I now)
- the mentioned misjudgement of their technical teams, on how much work must be done on the carrier and how much it will cost
- the fact that they kept procuring it, although it has nearly 6 years delay and more than twice the costs
- procuring it without air defence guns and now after commissioning setting up a tender (I will give IN the credit that the Barak 8 development delay was not their fault though)
- procuring the Migs without weapons, which limited the training to basic flight tests, since neither weapon trials, nor take off or landings could be trained by the lack of shore based facilities and of course the lack of the carrier
- not being able to set up propper RFIs/RFPs for ASW helicopters, MRMR aircrafts or LDPs, where the vendors don't even know what the navy wants, because the specs are so broad that several different aircrafts or vessels should fit the bill
Just to name a few and I am not blaming IN or Indian forces alone, such mistakes happen all over the world (German army is the only force in the world, that has a modern combat helicopter, without a chinmounted gun, because a smart official once thought that a gun pod is enough, the air force evaluated and even started the procurement of a Global Hawk varient, although it doesn't comply to Europen laws for the use in civil airspace and the deal needed to be cancelled after millions were spent...)
But in India, the pride factor for indigenous developments play a big role too, be it for the forces, even more for the industry and even for a lot of forumers. But when that comes in, rational thinking goes away and then we waste money on N-LCA, let DRDO develop radar, engine and other core parts of LCA instead of taking off the shelf parts first, or let them dream about AMCA and AWACS India before they even have delivered the predecessor developments...and at the end of the day we are weaker and not stronger, because we wanted too much and the developments got delayed or even failed.
I want indigenous developments and a time when we see 70 to 80% of Indian or joint developed arms too, but that's not going to happen with blind pride, but with being effective! Be it by making developments in a more simpler way, or by easing tenders to save time and money.
.....Indian Pride and Indian ego!!
