@
sancho will be best person to tell us why Rafale is equally important as fgfa.
i will tell u what he will say
1)rafale is gonna replace mirage 2000 and jaguar as it has potent ground attack ability
2)spectra is just awesome,there is nothing like it(laughable)
3)IAF knows best
the problems here are
1)pakfa's side facing aesa are dedicated for ground mapping and attack
2)pakfa has way more passive sensors than rafale
3)iaf didn't test pakfa vs rafale or even su-35 vs rafale
No matter what anyone says here the fact is due to limited sise of rafale radar and its unserpowered engines it will not standup to competition post 2020
The best thing that can happen to PAF is for India to cancel Rafale contract and go for addition of LCA instead and wait for Russian 5th Gen.
the problem is lca will never get strike capability
if we cancel rafale we will start taking early delivery of pakfa somewhere in 2018 and thats worse for paf
The best option is to cancel this deal and stick with just LCA, more MKI's if necessary and PAK-FA. The current inventory itself is an overkill against the PAF. And the Chinese have far bigger headaches on their eastern border.
This light, heavy, and Goldilocks fighter bullshit is pure public propaganda by the IAF. Kids born in the 90's who populate the majority this forum dont even know of this. IAF wanted the Mirage-2000 back in the 80's, but Indira Gandhi shot it down and forced them to get the MiG-29. Hence the subsequent order went for the Mikoyan. Again they didnt give up and wanted the Mirage in the 90's, but MoD forced a tender and Mirage went head to head with the Su-30. Su-30 clearly beat the mirage black and blue, plus with lesser cost as well(where was this heavy medium nonsense when that tender took place.. huh???). IAF again got a swift kick on the behind going for a ridiculously costly platform. Then came Kargil where the IAF's PR machine worked overtime to showcase the Mirage in more limelight than the other jets. I'm not saying the Mirage performed poorly but Mirage got more coverage than all other jets put together!!! I still remember the Mirage shelter on the Airbase where NDTV was allowed access to but other jets were ignored. After the economy started booming IAF saw its chance and went for the Mirages AGAIN in the 2000's under the guise of Medium multirole combat fighter (since they knew Mirage wont stand a chance against the Su-30.. all this eventhough EVEN the USAF operates only 2 kinds of fighters not 3), only to be shot down again by the MoD which forced a tender. Everyone who knew this history KNEW rafale will come out as the winner in this tender, the next best thing after the Mirage whose production got closed down(I bet the IAF chief was wasting himself with brandy that night when news came out that the production line got shut down).
we cannot get more lca's as its not good enough quite simply.
we can go for upgraded su-35 with pakfa electronics.with pakfa aesa and sensors it will kick anything's arse.
besides we lack fighters especially for ground attack operations(CAS, SEAD, deep strike etc). No airforce can rely on just air-superiority. Both China and Pakistan have better capabilities for ground operations than India as we just rely on Mirage-2ks for that though mkis can perform some of them.
as already told u ...........the times have changed,,,,,,pakfa will have very good air-groung capability and we are not getting 5 aesa radars for no reason