Sir one Question only 350 birds ! Are they enough for 800+ IAF advance Birds ? and don't you think its the right time to have a 4.5++ Bird ? , we are already 10 to 15 years late for that.
And I totally agree with you these F16s are best if we want to add some good power without extra this and that. But is it safe and good enough to have 250 JF17 (even now it have many short comings) , and lots of fellow members here talk about many upgrades in JF17 , if we do that the price of the bird will go up , when the price go up we will lose the dream of a cheap and affordable Bird (although I am against this logic from day one) so when the price is going up Y not we look for some other Bird with TOT or we have completely new bird of our own or we can change the airframe designee of JF17 to make it new Bird???????
Thank you
If you reread your post it answers itself. As mentioned poverty is a situation we have suffered through for a long time. These decisions to buy this or that platform are like moves on a chessboard.
The comparison with our neighbour is a zero sum game and we will lose out in any scenario on account of respective sizes, economies,and more importantly the changing dynamics of world politics in the region as well as in relation to new world order.
You cannot take things in isolation and need to look at things in perspective with regards to the 3 factors I have mentioned in my recent posts( ie availability,our pockets and whether they are subject to sanctions) on the subject. The reason we will never win the arms race with India is that there will always be other comparable platforms that they can buy whereas your choices are limited. The world does not love India but loves its economic boom and the market it provides which is massive compared to ours.
So in this game you survive by having as much of an independent and indigenous industry as you can possibly have and keep our self relevant till you achieve the end. The end in sight is probably 2035 when we start making significant inroads into the aviation industry. Till then it is a case of survival with whatever means we have to hand and secondhand 16s and JFT are one means to that end.
If things are managed properly and efficiently (major bugbear)all the little projects we have started will come together. I dont think the world of 2030 is going to be a polar one and one of isolated efforts. Recent forays will give you an idea of whom we are going to choose as our partners and why. This in short is how I see things evolving.
The debate of the 4.5gen platform is a difficult one from many perspectives. What choices do we have and what actually is the utility of such a platform in our grand designs? As to the former if you trawl through the list of platforms available you can see where the problems are. None of them are sanction free and the ones that are are currently(capital letters and underlined) unavailable. So the question is where do we go and what do we do.
I think PAF takes the line that the current plan will tide things over till 2025. In order to get past 2025 we need to have a suitable platform available to order/induct by 2023 so that we are reasonably comfortable till the next phase in 2035 when the indigenous hybrid platform comes along . Take it further and a picture emerges of what you will buy when and from where.
This is my view of what the PAF plans but like you I am as much in the dark as anyone else. So lets wait and see. Do we see another platform in the interim and what the plan B is, is something PAF is closely watchiñg.
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I must apologize, I remember we saw that great capability @ Kargil.
That is bereft of facts and is an outright fallacy. The induction of AF would have been an open declaration of war and against the very plans with which Kargil was initiated. That plus the fact that the plan was perhaps very supercficially thought of and half baked with no prior input from PAF did not help matters. As to war in the Indo Pak arena it will have disasterous consequences for the region and perhaps for the world. This rather than your conjectures ars the reason for things not escalating in 2002 either.
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