Ajai Shukla: Where is India's light fighter?

[Birbal]

This is silly. It's inevitable that with the increased technology and cost of modern day aircraft, the air force is going to shrink in size. It's a phenomenon that's happening worldwide.

 

[Jon Snow]

This is silly. It's inevitable that with the increased technology and cost of modern day aircraft, the air force is going to shrink in size. It's a phenomenon that's happening worldwide.

Its happening because those countries do not need to increase capability - they are achieving the same capability they earlier had - but now it requires fewer fighters .
India, however, needs to increase the capabilities of all three armed forces because of increasing chinese military might - hence we need higher squadron numbers of high performance fighters, but for economic reasons we also need some good but cheap light weight fighters.

 

[Jon Snow]

I think the IAF needs to put an ultimatum on the HAL and DRDO - get the tejas mk2 ready for induction by 2016 or we buy the grippen.

 

[rockstarIN]

But, sadly, this unwise reliance on the views of fighter pilots alone has twisted the rationale for buying a fighter

I think this wise fellow should replace IAF pilots for evaluation of future fighter jets.

 

[Hu Jintao]

Sir it is here

 

[livingdead]

Do you know the reasoning for the F 35....its 5th gen...we are inducting a 4th gen aircraft while China has a 5th gen platform. F35 worked out cheaper then both Euro craft....and the US made it a point to supply asap. Also, its serves a btter purpose to align with the US with the Chinese threat.

The MMRCA aims to replace Mig 21, and is a stop gap arrangement till LCA gets inducted. We need a mature 4th gen aircraft quickly.
Where does F 35 comes to picture, when we ourselves are partner with russia for a 5th gen aircraft.

F35 will be in consideration in future, if the Indian JV collapses, and all present issues of F35 is solved.

 

[IND151]

I have stopped reading Ajai Shukla's blog long ago. He is extremely pro American and often irrationally so in his peddling of the f-35.I have no problem with some one being pro American but it should not be based of irrational and faulty logic. Every one knows that the initial IOC for the F-35A has not been planned before 2017/2018. The first operational F-35 will not be inducted before 2020 and then begins the wait for the Indian F-35s to begin arriving after the orders for UK, Japan, Australia etc have been met. So 2022/2023 at the earliest. That is if the problems with the design, range, shooting developmental cost and other outstanding issues are resolved satisfactorily. Can we wait till 2022/2023? What happens to our fighter strength by then without quick replacements. The FGFA will be arriving by 2020. Why do we need two hyper expensive stealth fighters?

Yes we do need light, singled engine fighters. So let us get the Tejas up and running. I don't see any other alternative. Yes quantity has its merits. But going by Ajai's logic of 3:1 being a favourable ratio for low end light fighters to overwhelm our fleet of 33 double engined high end fighters, the adversary needs 99 squadrons of lightweight and cheap fighters to overwhelm the IAF. Which adversary air force fields or will field 99 squadrons in the near future?

for bolded part> now that's a masterstroke