.....As I said in the other thread, it would be nuts to allow DRDO to develop a 360° version on a new plattform again, because that only causes more delays, while we already are in disadvantage to Pakistan and China.
That is foolish.
2 AWACS would cost us more than 1 Billion $ ..i.e.
Five Lakh Fifty Thousand Crore Rupees.
If you want to put that money in perspective .....try to calculate the number of Houses that can be built, schools that can be built, Free health care that can be provided, Scholar ship for higher education that can be provided, improvement in police force that can be provided (to prevent rape).....
The entire spend on developing the LCA (Tejas) was 1 billion $ !!!! and that included
building infrastructure from scratch, test Jigs, spending money on research, building prototypes, giving employment to at least 30,000 people ...not to mention building knowledge base for Aerospace in India.
India is now an declared Nuclear power. No one is going to attack us in a hurry.
Pakistan is incapable of attacking India and China knows it cannot attack India and sustain it over the Himalayas. Besides we have nothing to fight for. Its not like India has Oil and Gold Mines
India has already developed/developing airborne AESA radars for LCA and AEW&C. AWACS development is the next logical step. Sukhoi Superjet 100 is available at a purchase price of 35 million $ an aircraft. Its a new aircraft and I am sure they will be happy to modify it for us to try out as AWACS.
Joint development for MTA is already signed and when its finally ready ,we can make that as a standard platform for Indian AWACS.