The delay of Tejas was emminent even in the early 1990s. The need for immediate induction of new fighters into the armory was imperative. The initiative was the GOI's, it was started with Su-30 and Mirage 2000 as the contestants. The requirement was a multi-role fighter aircraft. The Su-30 won out using its low cost edge. Apparently the IAF took the initiative to integrate DRDO developed avionics and other subsystems to make the aircraft truly multi-role. All other equipment that were not developed were either procured from third party system integrators of Israeli or French origin or conceptualised to be made indigenously.
The induction of the Su-30 wasn't without its share of problems. The average servicibility of the 10 Su-30MKs fell to 69% during 1997-1998 and further reduced to 62% 1998-1999. Similarly, the average availability of SU-30K aircraft for operations also declined from six aircraft in 1997-98 to four aircraft in 1998-99, out of total strength of eight aircraft. This happened because the MoD did not order spares for the aircraft and the IAF was using spares supplied at the time of induction - supplied back in 1997. The MoD finally signed the general spares contract in January 1999.
Problems were multiplied due to the poor poduct support from the manufacturers. Apart from delivery of eight SU-30K aircraft during 1997 the manufacturer was required to supply 72 associated equipment like tyres, brake parachutes, specialist vehicles etc. valuing US $ 347.85 million, equivalent to Rs 1252.25 crore during 1997-2000 in a phased manner. The contract explicitly stipulated that equipment to be delivered by the manufacturer would be new, unused, of current production and serviceable. However, the a large percentage of the equipment delivered by the manufacturer between 1997 and 1998 was old, used, corroded, defective and unserviceable, though full payment had been made. For example, the specialist vehicles supplied were old, corroded and inoperable and others items like parachutes were torn and damaged. Aircraft tyres were found to have cut marks during initial inspection. The IAF made 48 claims from sukhoi but only 15 were cleared as of July 1999.
Since then with Indigenous production upto 100% the issues have come down to acceptable margins. The Kagil conflict changed the IAF perceptions considerably. Probably the only aircraft that decisevely gave the IAF a good reputation was the mirage2000. The old school belief of maintaining a fleet of Russian accompanied by europeon aircraft clicked by pure chance. Hence the IAF was convinced their multi-role fighter was the miage2000. the Su-30 multi-role initiative was abandoned and replaced with an air-superiority agenda. If the Su-30 mki could be no more than an air-superiority aircraft, there is no point in developing and integrating Brahmos bk-2 airforce version on Su-30 airframe, is there? Anyway getting back to multi-role capability. The MRCA requirement still remained unfulfilled and the lame excuse was falling squadrons. It was the IAF's lack of will and Leadership to pursue its own agenda that should be blamed for low strength of Air Force.If the IAF had endured through the Su-30 mki multi-role program, we wouldn't be calling Su-30 a swing role Elephant in the Sky, But a true Muti-role aircraft in the Class of Rafale or Euro-fighter. If u don't agree with me look at the facts,
1.the French mirage 2000 lost the competition yet thales sold equipment meant for the same fighter to Su-30 mki program, Israeli target designators would not have been required for a pure air-superiority fighter,
2.the licenced production was already starting in HAL in 2002, the IAF could have continued the program with a road-map of product development which would have progressively added multi-role capabilities for the Su-30 than go for an all new fighter plane. such have time frame would have resulted in 126 multi-role Su-30 planes getting inducted starting from a while back atleast, I read on an forum in a post which was quite convincing with factual details and now turns true, with production of original HAL orders meant to end at 2014, production has been ramped upto 26 aircraft an year. The original target was 8 per year, how much more can u under-estimate your requirements! Had IAF the tactical & strategic thought to see this, they would have never projected an MMRCA requirement?
I'll give you realtime example of Indian Air Force and Indian Navy commitiments to its initiatives, their Facebook sites
First the Navy
http://www.facebook.com/IndianNavy?v=wall
then the Air force
http://www.facebook.com/IndianNavy?v=wall#!/pages/Indian-Air-Force/41806896956
I would also like to take a barb at the Army too
http://www.facebook.com/IndianNavy?v=wall#!/pages/New-Delhi-India/Indian-Army/26242325967
When u go through the sites, u will find that even with a fan following outstripping the navy, the airforce hasn't posted an update since 2008, the Army like u is very apprehensive of China and not about its actual capabilities, now I know where u got your China Genes from and it looks to its brother IAF to bail it out in a confrontation. My apologies for calling u xenophobic had u taken it that way.
Retuning to short of fighters;when asked about falling squadrons, the IAF shoots you back with another question "where is tejas?", and our Gullible journalists and defence analysts are taken aback by some unfelt guilt and begin to patiently hear stories from IAF spokespersons like hearing stories from Grandma. They return, start making up some logic about 'falling squadrons','late tejas','heavy Su-30' and 'which is going to be medium class aircraft, where is it going to come from, the prime contestants. proS& conS etc?' This viscous cycle has generated a sterotype image throughout all branches of Security establishment & allied civilian organisations including the press that there is something called a medium class aircraft in the world and the IAF is seriously in lack of such a type and hence lacking combat capabilities.
Lets turn to the MMRCA itself, I've already quoted in previous blog reply to Ajay why there is no class difference between the mmrca contestants and Su -30 mki spare the Jas-39 and F-16. So I would Stick with a qualitative analysis. The IAF due to its itch for getting everything on board has transformed the Su-30 from a colt into an Classic Indian War Elephant. It developed requirements to import the latest mirage 2000s, ended up getting shunned by CAG and other Audit watchdogs to go for a multi-vendor competition. As Tejas development got better and better the bar was increased further and further putting already operational fighters like Mirage 2000, JAS-39 c/d and F-16 bk 52 out of the competition. With Boeing F-18 e/f and Eurofighter 2000 muscling their way into to the competion the rules preset by IAF were slowly and steadily slipping out of hand. The initiative itself was seized by the media and foreign vendors each playing up their strongest points, only to be revealed hollow and the IAF chipping in with its 2 cents to clear the air when it got too tense. Apparently slogans like "the biggest defence deal of the 21st century" ,"the wings of your nation", "100% TOT" "Omni-role" and "Strategic 5th partner in the consortium" "US-India Strategic Defence relations" made headlines than what the aircraft were actually capable of.
Honestly what did these Foreign Whachos take us for, hilly billies? All of the F-16 Bk 70 capabilities are simulated, as of today the Euro fighter has no AESA radar to offer Source codes , same goes for Rafale, the Super Hornet probably the most developed of the fighters is as huge as the Su-30 with a heavy weight penalty due to naval design, in short, it has a stubby manhood for its size But still is Super Horny for Exports. The Mig-35 well grew up along with its sibling Su-27 to a size that would typically rival it. But I hardly believe the Air Force has any genuine interest in it especially for its engines(the pakistanis want to replace JF-17 engine with a western one), after sales service record of mig-29 and even the Su-30 mentioned above.
I have also come to notice that objections from various quarters might have been there as well, without which for there could not have been so stringent compromises. These compromises have provided justification to such an uneconomical & nonsensical deal and actually made it easier for the sale to be sold to various quarters.
1.60% TOT to HAL
2.50% offset to Indian industry
3.Buying Clout - Whatever that means
4.Geo-political Advantages - yeah right
5.Engine similarity for LCA tejas
6.Help in development of LCA tejas and its radar
The practice of Technology transfer
After HAL was established completely after independence,it was envisioned to create a very vibrant aerospace industry. But starting as a military small plane manufactured, HAL has never grown beyond that. Only now with the MTA has it ventured into the useful very large category. While HAL under V.M Ghatage designed the first ab-initio trainer HT-2, somehow along the growth path it faltered.The troika of P Nilakantan, V M Ghatage and Satish Dhawan worked together on dozens of national aeronautical committees, and virtually wrote the country's aeronautical R&D agenda for the future. Ghatge held very strong views on the direction, level and pace at which the Indian aircraft industry should operate and these were at variance with those held by the policy makers of the day. His step-by-step approach to develop the day signified a definite stage in the design knowhow in the country did not find favor with government machinery as the operational arm of the defence services became more demanding and the ministry decided to rely heavily on licence production. Perhaps the champion moment of HAL was the HF-24 Marut, which was meant to announce India's entrance onto the exclusive league of nations with capability to design and manufacture airframes according to their own requirements. Due to the unavailability of a suitable powerplant, the bird never realised its potential and the Jaguar an aircraft lower than the marut's defined calibre took its place. HAL which was manufacturing Mig-21 in a production line, dedicated the line meant for a indegenous fighter bomber to Jaguar. During this duration of its exixtence, some significant developments happened the Indian Aerospace industry got completely geared towards military utility and all the work related to aeronautics were completely consolidated under HAL to avoid red tape and make logistics simpler given the efficiency of Indian public sector units. Since HAL was the totalitarian of the Indian aerospace manufacturing, it had only the choice for anything it didn't posses interms of capability or auxilary. This tendency still keeps pace today, as from the latest CAG report naming HAL Dhuruv as 90% foreign. It was promply clear with the rejection of HAL Ajeet, it was amply clear that HAL could never spearhead Indian aviation development
or it could hardly come up with a product that fit the IAF requirements. it nevertheless served as the only licence producer of Aircraft for the vast Indian military requirement raising itself to become the largest Aeronautics company of Asia. For a company which wasn't manufacturing its own design, HAL had a lot of hot gas that it built its reputation around. It was extremely gratified with all kinds of Ratnas. Two production lines Churning out aircraft continuously perhaps gave it little incentive to indegenise. India has indeed rewarded failure tremendouly so that they may be continued for generations to come. Thus it is extremely justfied to have created the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA). It may not be explicitly available in the open domain, HAL harbours animosity towards ADA in that one of the reasons for the very creation of the agency and has been authorised with power to empower industry outside HAL so that India may be built into an aviation power from the grass roots. An indirect consequence has been the release of HAL's strangehold over research, manufacturing and progressive development of the aerospace industry in India. But HAL as any other bureaucracy views it as a challenge to its exclusive turf and has not been the most enthusiastic partner of ADA's efforts or those of even the individual system suppliers like its cooperation with Samtel Display systems for Su-30 mki program, though having no contribution in terms of technolgy HAL has muscled 40% of the holding company value, not that Samtal was cash strapped. One reason that tends me to view GTRE's failure is the lack of any technology that came to companies like samtel through offsets by thales, had GTRE been the nodal agency for overseeing of technlogy transfer of AL-31FP engine to India, it might have put into it some crude technology and maybe they could have pulled atleast a functional Kaveri engine from the hat a lot earlier.
After much hussle the move to decentalise DRDO has begun in earnest, I believe the time has come to dismantle and reorganise HAL as well, as Engine unit under an independent company which works more closely with GTRE than HAL, HAL that is responsible for the overall airframe design and system integration. as well as a separate independent avionics holding company
Industry to get Off-sets worth 50% of the deal
The defence minister while articulating the goals of the MMRCA programme quoted "indian industry should be given a chance to world standards", but the logic of forcing foreign vendors to give specifications to make components that are already available is quite flawed. In most cases of offsets, defence PSU seem to have imported the raw materials assembled the system and sold it back to the Systems Integrator. Normally a defence contact after finalised goes through a life-time that requires spares and upgrades, which feed back into the overall unit cost of acquisition raising the contact by 175% considering the life time of system to be 30 years. So by this calculation itself 50% is minusle. On contast Tejas programme has begun to show real dividends, companies like Kemrock industries have built 400 tonne carbon-fibre composite manufacturing units in Gujarat with NAL developed technology, not to mention freeloader HAL that manufactures forward canards for all Su-30 now sold and Reliance is also seeking NAL technlogy to manufacture the same on a larger scale. In a world where demand for CFC is exploding 70% of this demand is met by Japan. In 2007, thw world's requirement stood at nearly 8000 tonnes which is expected to triple by 2015, with India alone accounting for 1500 tonnes for its defence needs, its uses too range widely from Agni missiles to the Saras aircraft. This is a nacent stage for the Industry, Reliance is looking to setup a 4000 tonne capacity plant and kemrock adding 1200 tonnes more. we are really at a stage to launch into the future where we can feed the aerospace industry of other nations as well, lets not spoil it by importing 70s, airframe like F-16, F-18 and Mig-35 which are still metallic all the way on contast Tejas itself is 45% cfc. Among contemperory fighters only Eurofighter with 82% compsites(70% cfc) leads tejas. If we are truly going for an airframe to give the indian industry and IAF the critical edge then MMRCA is not the way to go. Samtel Display systems has already begun supplying Multi-function displays for Su-30 mki. It is only HAl's high-handedness that prevents it from getting involved in LCA tejas programme. The Tats Strategic electronics systems no doubt can come up with a wold class jamming pod.But they have been bitten before already to favour DPSUs like ECIL and BEL.
http://frontierindia.net/iindian-tests-laser-guided-bomb-again
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/defence/8114951/UK-closes-in-on-11bn-fighter-deal.html
The Typhoon's unique advantage, he said, is an integrated platform for its weapons, radar and intelligence- gathering systems. "It has this flexibility and adaptability at any one time," he said. Sir Stephen previously headed Britain's Typhoon development programme at the Ministry of Defence.
Military history is a humanities discipline within the scope of general historical recording of armed conflict in the history of humanity, and its impact on the societies, their cultures, economies and changing intra and international relationships.
Professional historians normally concentrate on military affairs that had a major impact on the societies involved. Amateur historians often focus on personalities or the details of battles, or of the equipment and uniforms in use.
The essential subjects of military history study are the causes of war, the social and cultural foundations, military doctrine on each side, the logistics, leadership, technology, strategy, and tactics used, and how these changed over time.
I’m beginning to believe the stinging observation by many foreigners that Indians don’t know how to argue at an intellectual plane. If we disagree with an argument, we try to discredit, not disprove.
http://www.stratpost.com/no-f-35-for-india
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