India are to quick forget who has been supplying them with arms and technology for decades. Russia should start to hike prices in response to this blatant stab in the back.
I agree... and not just as punishment... new technology costs money so the new things they are demanding will cost more... but still a fraction of the cost of developing these things themselves so in that sense they are still getting bargains...
Computer printers are generally rather cheap to buy... the real cost is in the printer inks... over the life time of a printer the actual purchase price is only a tiny fraction of the money spent on ink.
In other words some guy walks in off the street and asks to buy a printer really really cheap but also demands to be able to refill the ink cartridges himself and you kinda thing that the money invested in developing the printer and producing the ink is not going to be returned in this sort of deal so in actual fact despite wanting to sell printers... so you can sell ink cartridges,.. you really don't benefit from 2 years negotiating a deal with this guy... especially if he tells his friends it is a crap printer anyway. (No printer is perfect... there are always things that can be improved or changed).
So effectively they could operate Su-30, mig-35, mig-29k, and mig-29M2/yak-130, FGFA , oh and there 36 rafale and this would streamline things and provide easier technology transfer and maintenance. In the future possibly the mig-41 could be of use.
And that is the problem... they went from a mixed fleet including MiGs and mirages and jaguars to a fleet with some MiGs and Sukhois... it was going to be an all Russian fleet.
In every airforce where there are western and ex Soviet aircraft you always get factions for each side all through the power structure and I am sure those that flew the Mirage 2000 are screaming that if they get rid of all foreign fighters except Russian then they will be held to ransome by the Russians and parts will take years to get and meanwhile their aircraft will be grounded and useless and India will be vulnerable blah blah blah.
Of course local production of aircraft and major consumables should resolve those issues but they wont hear that... some manager can save some money not buying spares right away and just ordering them when they need them... for which he will likely give himself a fat bonus...
I wonder if India will ever purchase Su-35 and Su-34?
I rather suspect they will continue to upgrade the Su-30MKI to their level, while the FGA can do anything the 30MKI can't.
Su-34 would be ideal for jaguar and mig-27 replacement.
I don't agree... the Jaguar and MiG-27 are pretty much medium weight short to medium range strike aircraft, while the Su-34 is a heavy weight medium to long range strike aircraft... I would say the short and medium range strike roles have gone and have been replaced by medium multirole aircraft like the MiG-29SMT/M2/35 type aircraft that can perform both attack (MiG-27, Su-17) and air to air (MiG-23, MiG-21, Su-15/-21) roles.
They sort of fill the gap between CAS (Su-25) and super heavy theatre strike (Tu-22M3, Tu-160) in the air to ground role and the short to medium range air to air role supported by the longer ranged Su-35 and Su-57, and the dedicated interceptor MiG-31 and soon MiG-41.
Mirage 2000 could be replaced by Su-35 in the distant future. Or more Su-30.
It could, but their model is diversity so a western plane needs to be replaced by a western plane or the model needs to be changed.
Air forces don't generally change models very easily.
[qutoe]As for the Apache Procurement I still think India should have just purchased mi-35 or a mix of mi-35 and mi-28. Or course ka-52 could be useful also. Always found it strange that considering the size of the Indian airforce and the small number of attack helicopters. [/quote]
No argument there, but they have made their choice. I think part of the low numbers is because of the cost and the fact that it is a new area for them and they have to learn to use it effectively before rolling it out everywhere.
Am also surprised that India never purchased Su-24M2 even as a stop gap for mig-27 I know that the mig-27 had upgrades which might have been the reason.
The Fencer is in a different class... I suspect if India introduced Fencers then the US might have sold Pakistan some F-111s... which would not have been in Indian interests. For the same reason I don't think India would buy Backfires either... even though they would be rather potent with hypersonic Brahmos II model missiles.
Seeing as they tejas had parts of mig-21 in it I am also surprised India didn't copy the mig-27 or buy rights from Russia with upgrades of course.
Aircraft have generations... and not just because the US says so... aircraft of the MiG-21 generation had that wing shape for flight performance... ie some ability to turn and supersonic speed potential. The next generation was the MiG-23 which tried to combine fast speed and short landing and takeoff strips... there were pretty much two options then... swing wing and lift jets... they went with swing wings.
The next generation was the MiG-29 and Su-27 with new shapes and engines that combined high speed and reasonable takeoff run length.
Because of this I would not bother upgrading MiG-21s or MiG-23s... I would look seriously at a MiG-29 shape with one engine for a light fighter... in fact I would look at the FGA for the shape and fit one engine in it and make it smaller and much less ambitious to make a light 5th gen fighter...
India is better off buying production rights saving them billions and they could still produce trainers and small arms and some vehicles. Really crazy the way they are wasting time and money. Iran is the same although in their defence they have sanctions.
I agree... and that is exactly what Russia did... at the end of the cold war the Soviets realised they had invested in low light level TV when there was clearly more potential in thermal imagers... but they were seriously behind. They set up contracts with the French company Thales and many other western companies to locally produce new model thermal imagers and then learned and caught up... it took a couple of decades but their new models seem to be every bit as good as western models now.
This is not new... the Soviets licence produced lots of aircraft and trucks and other things before, during, and after WWII.
But India will never learn they will continue to purchase expensive equipment with NO technology transfers and throw and waste billions into made in India projects. Nothing will change.
Their real problem is that they want the technology transfer but they don't want to pay very much for that... which is why the company that owns the technology rarely feels like actually transferring the technology.
What they should be doing is buying the technologies they need outright and locally producing them... an example would be modern jet engines... find an ideal engine and pay for a production facility to be built in India and then pay for the contracts to supply that engine to major users around the world... and of course use it widely domestically for every thing it could possibly be used for...
With the experience you get from that set up some of your existing engine makers and get them trained up... even if it is not super high tech bleeding edge... just a good useful reliable powerful engine that can be used for a wide range of things, from land, sea, and air... It wont make India a world leader in jet engines... but it is a start... they are never going to buy themselves to the top of the world game... and even if they could it would cost too much to stay there.
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