1)What a laughable statement,the first one....no one is anyways suggesting that rafale is not the best 4.5 generation out there.And for the love of god rafale is a counter to china and not pakistan,we dont need rafale vs JF-17,its required against J-20'S and J-31.
2)The posts are about the relative old inventory/subsystems and avionics of the frontline jets i.e su-30 mki and mig-29k.
3)IAF should know the defence budget restrictions better,for a country with paltry budget of 40-50 billion $ and that too mainly going in salaries and such benefits we must get the priorities right.Especially with tumbling growth rate of 6%.When the tender of mmrca was floated the country was growing at 9% on avearge and it was 10 years back with no guarantee on tejas or any plans for amca development.Now we have plans for mk1,mk1a,mk2,amca,su-57/fgfa and also buying rafale.No airforce on earth is this stupid and diversified,its actually baffling.
On the top of that we got super costly upgrades for mirage 2000 and those have just 12-15 years left.
4)On chinese electronics,no need to be an ostrich,we have to acknowledge the huge leap they have taken in everything not just over us but in general.
5)
Rafale can have the best avionics in class but with an rcs of 20 times compared to the 5 th generation(on account of the external weapons and fuel tanks............clean configuration probably has very low rcs but u cant fight war with ur gun only) it simply will be detected first every time vs a fighter jet with weapons that are inside the weapons bay.What the heck is so difficult to understand here??
6)
By spending just 4-5 billion $ we could have elevated the older mki's and mig-29k to 4.5 generation standard and although they still wont be as potent as rafale 1 vs 1 but think of the numbers here.We have 230+ mki's and 60 odd mig-29k.So u would have had state of the art 300+ jets.Thats the point i was trying to make.Now with all the funds diverted to 10's of other unnecessary projects we have delayed this for years and even when they are upgraded we will try to be economical.
IAF will be operating/looking to operate
Rafale
mirage 2000
mki
Mig-29k
Tejas mk1,1a,2
AMCA
Possibly su-57 in future
This is messed up at so many levels especially with a paltry defence budget.As a result of this we are unable to upgrade majority of the fleet.Something has to suffer obviously.
So in future we need to lock on either su-57 or amca.......doing both wont be feasable and will just divide the budget and lead to an inferior product.