Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat, who is mandated with prioritising capital procurement, says India will likely buy more submarines for the Navy too.
Stating Justice K.M. Joseph's judgment that the CBI can still take lawful action, Bhushan and Shourie said the agency should launch an independent inquiry.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi called for a Joint Parliamentary Committee investigation citing the Supreme Court's verdict that gave the Modi government a clean chit in Rafale deal.
The Supreme Court on Thursday gave a clean chit to the Modi government in the Rafale fighter jet deal case, and said the review petitions were without merit.
Supreme Court holds that there are no grounds to file an FIR into the Rafale deal. It also drops contempt proceedings against Rahul Gandhi in related case.
Naidu attempts to shield aqua farmers after Trump’s tariff hits the shrimp farming sector in Andhra Pradesh, leading to the cancellation of 50% of the state's exports.
Company builds microsatellites that are smaller, faster, cheaper to produce. ICEYE will develop & launch micro-satellites, hand them over to India, which will have full control & sovereignty.
What Munir has achieved with Trump is a return to normal, ironing out the post-Abbottabad crease. The White House picture gives us insight into how Pakistan survives, occasionally thrives and thinks.
Our focus right now is on procuring new submarines instead of adding a third aircraft carrier to the fleet and buy latest version of sukai-35 from Russia. It will strength our air force and good relation with Russia also.
Su-35 would be as useful to IAF as Su-30MKI or MIG-29, or MIG-29K… Look at what was used for the Balakot air-strike as well at what was used in Kargil : the REAL backbone of the IAF until Rafale’s introduction, the Mirage-2000, and everybody knows this! What are needed : 15 squadrons of Rafales, 15 squadrons of “Rafalied” Tejas (M88/98kN engine, RBE2/AESA radar, OSF-IT 2nd gen QWIP, active stealth, Meteor + MICA-NG/IR missiles, reinforced airframe with 3200L fuel inside), not a Mk.2 patterned on Gripen-E (while Saab engineers lament not to have modified Gripen-C the way I explained!). All these mods are ready to be applied since 2017 or 2018, but no one cares!!!!
India has lot of experience in using Russian , French , US and Israeli equipment. Slowly, they will bring all the best features from all the countries into Tejas .
Tejas is just a starting point as of now . In next 2 decades , India will have one of the best jets in the world
India already has the best with Rafale. Tejas can be “Rafalized” easily, it can be delivered this way within 2-3 years. Tejas is NIH (not invented here) : ADA bought a Dassault design in 1988 with 1 year assistance for $100 millions. Slowly, they’re bringing in the dumbest feature of the Gripen-E into Tejas by making the Mk2 by stretching the airframe to fit more fuel and one of the 99 GE F414 97.9kN engines they already purchased while a 98kN version of Rafale’M88 has been created on India’s request. The M88 ending as powerful as the F414, is way more advanced and takes much less room in the airframe, exactly 1.1m³ less, allowing to stuff as much fuel as Mrage-2000 without stretching the airframe, moreover, the engine has stealth exhaust, both for radar and IR.
India has more experience at being at the receiving end of US equipment, thanks to Pakistan!
If India goes on with the disastrous procurement decisionship it has now, in 2 decades, it will be half Pakistan, half China provinces! Within 3-4 years PAK will have more combat aircraft than IAF, and more with AESA radars.
When it comes to have the best fighter around by 2040, well, since Dassault is now Franco-Indian, it will be feasible by participating the NGF program with France, Spain and Germany, and considering 2 specs Dassault CEO spoke about at Paris Air-Show 2019, the NGF will be much more than an aircraft : a supra-conductive skin 100x tougher than steel that melts at 3652°C with reaction control systems, these are NOT aircraft specs, such assets are for exoatmospheric manoeuvres and atmosphere re-entry!!!! As DM Parly told French AF cadets : “stop thinking about the airs, start thinking about space!”
The Tejas, is still not up to the mark as the latest international fighter planes..
Tejas can rapdly become the best single engine jet fighter on market, would the Dassault advise to mount the 98kN of the M88 engine be fit in, which will allow to stuff as much fuel as in Mirage-2000 or F-16 as well as more combat systems and carry a good 7-7.5 tons payload! The blue-prints for this as well as a reinforced airframe are ready since 2017!
Moreover, the RBE2/AESA radar has been modified and flight tested on Tejas and approved by DRDO as well as a standalone active stealth system taken from SPECTRA. Add the OSF-IT 2nd gen QWIP that can lock-on stealth aircraft from VERY far and RBE2/AESA helping the cheap integration of Meteor and MICA-NG, for $45 million per unit, Tejas can club J-20 or F-35 like baby seals… Moreove, it could fly as much as Rafale (normal use : 5-6 mission pe 24h, intensive use : 10-11 missions) for an average annual cost of $3M (F-16 : $11M, MG-29 : $13M, F-35 : $20M)
But HAL wants a less capable Tejas Mk2 on the Gripen-E recipe so it’ll take many years and cost more money to govt… The thing is that with such a cost of purchase+use, this super-Tejas could sell no less than 108 units per country f not 180 or 270, to Thailand, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Taiwan, Argentina and maybe even S-Korea, New-Zealand and Australia, as well as others… Even Israel could be interested. If done this way, HAL could EASILY sell a thousand units, as well as come with a Rafale+Tejas package as Dassault and Safran have really settled in India!
Anyone with basic knowledge of advanced aircraft building knows that even nations like France do not have capacity to deliver more than 8-10 Rafale type jets a year. So there is no question of India wishing for big deliveries in one go in a short time frame. So, what Rawat is saying is self-evident and India does not have a choice of getting 110 fighters in short order.
We have to wait for 7-8 years delivery time PLUS about 5 years decision making time involving bid evaluation etc.
Dassault actually delivers 24 Rafales a year, if necessary, the assembly line can be pushed to 36 and the dismantled Mirage-2000 assembly line can rapidly be restored and put back to production. Moreover, Dassault now has a factory in India… You’d surely be surprised at how a French factory like theirs is robotised and automated! Actually, the 1st country having started with cars automated assembly line was France…
Thus, it takes 2 years to build a Rafale any way, so you have some reaction time to increase production, but, as Dassault CEO said, this is NOT a problem for them to do so: they could face much bigger building volumes in the past (1422 Mirage-III, 582 Mirage-5+61 Nesher, 720 Mirage-F1, 601 Mirage-2000) and… There are 5M people out of job in France… They’ve already trained 5000 techs and engineers in Mihan/Nagpur in the wake of the Rafale’s offset…
India should burymore Tejas rather than making other countries rich…..what was the use of buying 270 SU 30…..when PAF entered into India on Feb 27th last year…all this investment turned out to be complete waste…..These SU 30 could not match PAF JF 17 & F 16….If India had focused on Tejas in last 10 years it would have been self sufficient by now !!!
SU 30 and LCA are entirely different aircraft , for different roles. Of course our SU 30s are very capable, but they had a missile with lower range compared to the Pak missiles on board the F 16s. India is now filling that gap with emergency purchase of longer range missiles from Russia. Then the true capability of the SU 30 will come to the fore The recent actions also exposed our AWACS weakness since we could not keep them in the air for 24 hrs.
India has integrated Israeli I-Derby-ER and French MICA-EM/IR on Su-30MKI. Russia doesn’t exports K-77M or K-77ME, only the 70km ranged RVV-AE (izdeliye 190) , the export model of the R-77. R-27 export versions are degraded too… KS-172 (or R-37M) are not fit to go against jet fighters. IAF would like to add the Meteor to both Su-30MKI and Tejas but the integration cost is deemed too high by Sitharaman who doesn’t wants to pay the bill, as well as mas puchasing €2M/unit missiles…
very nice comments and info
Our focus right now is on procuring new submarines instead of adding a third aircraft carrier to the fleet and buy latest version of sukai-35 from Russia. It will strength our air force and good relation with Russia also.
Su-35 would be as useful to IAF as Su-30MKI or MIG-29, or MIG-29K… Look at what was used for the Balakot air-strike as well at what was used in Kargil : the REAL backbone of the IAF until Rafale’s introduction, the Mirage-2000, and everybody knows this! What are needed : 15 squadrons of Rafales, 15 squadrons of “Rafalied” Tejas (M88/98kN engine, RBE2/AESA radar, OSF-IT 2nd gen QWIP, active stealth, Meteor + MICA-NG/IR missiles, reinforced airframe with 3200L fuel inside), not a Mk.2 patterned on Gripen-E (while Saab engineers lament not to have modified Gripen-C the way I explained!). All these mods are ready to be applied since 2017 or 2018, but no one cares!!!!
India has lot of experience in using Russian , French , US and Israeli equipment. Slowly, they will bring all the best features from all the countries into Tejas .
Tejas is just a starting point as of now . In next 2 decades , India will have one of the best jets in the world
India already has the best with Rafale. Tejas can be “Rafalized” easily, it can be delivered this way within 2-3 years. Tejas is NIH (not invented here) : ADA bought a Dassault design in 1988 with 1 year assistance for $100 millions. Slowly, they’re bringing in the dumbest feature of the Gripen-E into Tejas by making the Mk2 by stretching the airframe to fit more fuel and one of the 99 GE F414 97.9kN engines they already purchased while a 98kN version of Rafale’M88 has been created on India’s request. The M88 ending as powerful as the F414, is way more advanced and takes much less room in the airframe, exactly 1.1m³ less, allowing to stuff as much fuel as Mrage-2000 without stretching the airframe, moreover, the engine has stealth exhaust, both for radar and IR.
India has more experience at being at the receiving end of US equipment, thanks to Pakistan!
If India goes on with the disastrous procurement decisionship it has now, in 2 decades, it will be half Pakistan, half China provinces! Within 3-4 years PAK will have more combat aircraft than IAF, and more with AESA radars.
When it comes to have the best fighter around by 2040, well, since Dassault is now Franco-Indian, it will be feasible by participating the NGF program with France, Spain and Germany, and considering 2 specs Dassault CEO spoke about at Paris Air-Show 2019, the NGF will be much more than an aircraft : a supra-conductive skin 100x tougher than steel that melts at 3652°C with reaction control systems, these are NOT aircraft specs, such assets are for exoatmospheric manoeuvres and atmosphere re-entry!!!! As DM Parly told French AF cadets : “stop thinking about the airs, start thinking about space!”
The Tejas, is still not up to the mark as the latest international fighter planes..
Tejas can rapdly become the best single engine jet fighter on market, would the Dassault advise to mount the 98kN of the M88 engine be fit in, which will allow to stuff as much fuel as in Mirage-2000 or F-16 as well as more combat systems and carry a good 7-7.5 tons payload! The blue-prints for this as well as a reinforced airframe are ready since 2017!
Moreover, the RBE2/AESA radar has been modified and flight tested on Tejas and approved by DRDO as well as a standalone active stealth system taken from SPECTRA. Add the OSF-IT 2nd gen QWIP that can lock-on stealth aircraft from VERY far and RBE2/AESA helping the cheap integration of Meteor and MICA-NG, for $45 million per unit, Tejas can club J-20 or F-35 like baby seals… Moreove, it could fly as much as Rafale (normal use : 5-6 mission pe 24h, intensive use : 10-11 missions) for an average annual cost of $3M (F-16 : $11M, MG-29 : $13M, F-35 : $20M)
But HAL wants a less capable Tejas Mk2 on the Gripen-E recipe so it’ll take many years and cost more money to govt… The thing is that with such a cost of purchase+use, this super-Tejas could sell no less than 108 units per country f not 180 or 270, to Thailand, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Taiwan, Argentina and maybe even S-Korea, New-Zealand and Australia, as well as others… Even Israel could be interested. If done this way, HAL could EASILY sell a thousand units, as well as come with a Rafale+Tejas package as Dassault and Safran have really settled in India!
Anyone with basic knowledge of advanced aircraft building knows that even nations like France do not have capacity to deliver more than 8-10 Rafale type jets a year. So there is no question of India wishing for big deliveries in one go in a short time frame. So, what Rawat is saying is self-evident and India does not have a choice of getting 110 fighters in short order.
We have to wait for 7-8 years delivery time PLUS about 5 years decision making time involving bid evaluation etc.
Dassault actually delivers 24 Rafales a year, if necessary, the assembly line can be pushed to 36 and the dismantled Mirage-2000 assembly line can rapidly be restored and put back to production. Moreover, Dassault now has a factory in India… You’d surely be surprised at how a French factory like theirs is robotised and automated! Actually, the 1st country having started with cars automated assembly line was France…
Thus, it takes 2 years to build a Rafale any way, so you have some reaction time to increase production, but, as Dassault CEO said, this is NOT a problem for them to do so: they could face much bigger building volumes in the past (1422 Mirage-III, 582 Mirage-5+61 Nesher, 720 Mirage-F1, 601 Mirage-2000) and… There are 5M people out of job in France… They’ve already trained 5000 techs and engineers in Mihan/Nagpur in the wake of the Rafale’s offset…
India should burymore Tejas rather than making other countries rich…..what was the use of buying 270 SU 30…..when PAF entered into India on Feb 27th last year…all this investment turned out to be complete waste…..These SU 30 could not match PAF JF 17 & F 16….If India had focused on Tejas in last 10 years it would have been self sufficient by now !!!
SU 30 and LCA are entirely different aircraft , for different roles. Of course our SU 30s are very capable, but they had a missile with lower range compared to the Pak missiles on board the F 16s. India is now filling that gap with emergency purchase of longer range missiles from Russia. Then the true capability of the SU 30 will come to the fore The recent actions also exposed our AWACS weakness since we could not keep them in the air for 24 hrs.
India has integrated Israeli I-Derby-ER and French MICA-EM/IR on Su-30MKI. Russia doesn’t exports K-77M or K-77ME, only the 70km ranged RVV-AE (izdeliye 190) , the export model of the R-77. R-27 export versions are degraded too… KS-172 (or R-37M) are not fit to go against jet fighters. IAF would like to add the Meteor to both Su-30MKI and Tejas but the integration cost is deemed too high by Sitharaman who doesn’t wants to pay the bill, as well as mas puchasing €2M/unit missiles…