Let's make this quick, and avoid all the generation of hot air that we have had to suffer through your posts.
Give us the Chinese crash statistics.
We have, in fact; check the period of manufacture under license of each and every aircraft type that we have taken up in India.
Precisely. That is what you were forced to do, in the absence of the drawings and the process charts. We were not.
On the contrary, all design drawings were NOT given to India. One of my organisations was responsible for converting all IAF aircraft manuals into SGML. For the Russian aircraft, even significant portions of the sets of manuals, significant portions of the maintenance manuals, were either not available in translation, neither in India nor in the factories in Russia where they had been originally manufactured; once they stopped manufacturing, they did not keep their manuals in good order, and not all variants supplied were properly documented. We had to send out the Air Force representatives to dig out the Russian language versions, translate them and then convert them.
That is with regard to manuals, and those who are responsible for manufacture will inform you that the manuals are just as important as the drawings; one without the other is of no earthly use. While this was not a problem during the initial stages of, first, fly away models supplied in CKD condition, second, of parts and sub-assemblies supplied for SKD based assembly, when HAL started manufacture of parts and sub-assemblies, it faced difficulties; just as China did.
Your fanciful theories about India not having the industrial capacity have to survive the statistics, that show clearly that parts manufacture was undertaken in house in HAL or its associated organisations (ours being among them), and all parts that were required and that were not supplied by Russia were manufactured. I am obviously not at liberty to give you exact details of what was done to bridge these gaps, but a lot of hard work went into them; every detail, from a particular date onwards, happened in front of me, a lot of detail before I was officially associated with these, but in open view; nothing was secret the way things are elsewhere, and anybody associated with the aerospace industry got need-to-know access.
To sum up, HAL got some assemblies direct, right through; engine parts to assemble engines, gears, ejection seats, and so on; other parts were made in house, mainly at a designated plant that was not Bangalore. Maintenance was done at three levels; the first two, field and base, were done by the IAF, the third, periodic maintenance (I am changing the designated names), at HAL in house. There was no lack of maintenance, except for occasions when the Russians couldn't give us a properly specified part.
Buys and assembles, with progressive manufacture of parts in the country. My organisation learnt how to do glass cockpits from a European firm, that gave us preliminary learning and training on components that had to do with a European design, as a planned effort to be ready when the glass cockpit had to be put into the Su 30 MKI. I was there at that time of learning and assimilation, although I had left service before the Su 30 work began. I don't have to trawl through the Internet and fish out tendentious figures and come to erroneous conclusions.
The Su 30 MKI is not the standard Russian version. Besides the glass cockpit, it has a large and significant portions of its avionics designed specifically for this variant, from Russia herself, our own (I have mentioned our contribution), French (partly through us, partly direct to HAL), Israeli (major contributions) and even South African. For two years, the IAF took into service fly-away aircraft, following that there was started the period of gradual indigenisation. The difference between what we did and what China did was that we paid for every step, for every small bit of technology, and we worked hard to do it right, from first principles. That is why our versions meet or exceed the original Russian specifications. That is why, although we have not navalised it, favouring the MiG 29 instead, IF we had navalised the Su 30 for carrier use, it would not have the deficiencies of the Chinese 'adaptations', that do not allow the aircraft to combine range with ordnance carrying capacity, so that either it flies far or it carries the ordnance needed, but never both. That, my dear Internet expert, is the basic difference. You certainly have the edge over us, a huge edge, of being able to make deficient and inferior copies in great numbers; as Stalin put it, quantity takes on a quality of its own. Every reasonable observer will grant that great advantage to China.
Just don't talk rubbish about the capacity of India to make quality products. All the facts are against you, and all you can do is point to whatever is known and is in full public view about India, and keep dodging the question about actual performance of Chinese manufactured versions.
Last question first. No, the LCA will NOT use the original Kaveri engine. That was a horrible failure. My organisation was responsible, under contract from GTRE, in our CAD-CAM-CAE division, to audit the engine design using CAD. It was simply not worth it. It was the worst that we examined of any engine, and we examined a wide variety under contract, for a wide variety of international engine manufacturers, including Rolls Royce. What we saw in those was superb design; in China, you would have shot the GTRE management.
That, too, is not a secret. It is in clear public view. On the other hand, we all know that the J-10, the J-20 and the J-31 are using Chinese engines; congratulations. Unfortunately for your tall talk, we also know that China is desperately still in the market for the equivalent Russian engines. Presumably you want them only to put them in glass cases on display, and have no technical intentions or objectives otherwise. Presumably Xuanzang and Faxian are still alive, but wish to go to Russia to learn at their lotus feet instead of going south. Times change; habits don't.
Certainly not fantasy from the Internet. There are others who are better at that. One proof is your notes and messages.
Next to your learning, what can we do? or say? Nobody else in the world comes close to you. Particularly not in concoction of fairy tales and in dodging the question of the real statistics relating to aircraft performance, an issue that you have tried to dodge through four or five blatantly evasive posts.
Put up, or shut up.
- Yes, we made an aeroplane in 33 years. We used technology that was rudimentary; we had the specifications changed more than a dozen times, and the process continues. We worked in the face of a technology denial environment that interrupted our work halfway through and illegally barred us from our own detailed specifications and working notes. Go to your famous Internet and check what happened when you wanted to make carbon copies of the MiG 21. Check how long it took you to make even a copy.
As for large transport aircraft, making similar copies of the AN 12 without licensing would have been easy enough; we didn't, you did. Did you design your own refuelling aircraft? Or your own air warning and control aircraft?
- Have you got the statistics? A schoolboyish remark like "...All the aircraft crashed..." shows how seriously you need to be taken.
- LCA against the JF-17? Any day. You know nothing about either type, from that remark.
There is only one fool in this conversation, and I leave it to readers, including the most critical and hostile Pakistani readers, to decide who it is.
