shree835
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Like the most people of Indian origin, I have been an avid reader of news on the Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) tender. It is safe to say that in the last five years many of India’s defence projects have come if not of age, at least into adolescence. The Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) is now flying as a genuine albeit underpowered and slow combat aircraft. The indigenous Kaveri jet engine operates on target except at high altitude, the crystal turbine blades not yet a proven quantity. ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) just delivered big on the cryogenic engine. An indigenous aircraft carrier and indigenous submarine are the next big projects promising to reach fruition. Yet the MMRCA tender has literally dragged on for so long that it could become a security concern.
In the table below are some of the aircraft relevant to India’s Air Force wherein the specifications are from Wikipediaand the photo links point to Airliners.net. The first four entries are already in use in the Indian Air Force. The Mirage-2000 is at the top of the list because the MMRCA tender began as a consequence of the Indian Air Force (IAF) being unable to buy a new batch of Mirage-2000s, since the line was being replaced by the Rafale. Some of the existing Mirage-2000s in the IAF were modernised at a unit cost almost as much as the unit cost projected in the MMRCA which in fact was much criticised ignoring the fact that unlike the MMRCA contract, the upgrade of the Mirage-2000s is actually happening as we speak and so is something the IAF can depend on. So the Mirage-2000 is what is being replaced in the MMRCA tender for about a projected 126 – 200 aircraft. The chosen successor is the Rafale and most are hopeful that a deal will be signed in 2014.
Photos Engines Thrust (kN) Weight (lb) Speed (Mach)
Mirage-2000 1 x Snecma 64/95 16k/37k = 21k 2.2
LCA 1 x GE 53/89 14k/29k = 15k 1.6
Mig-29 OVT 2 x Klimov 162 24k/44k = 20k 2.25
Su-30 MKI 2 x Lyulka 246 40k/85k = 45k 2.35
Rafale 2 x Snecma 100/151 22k/54k = 32k 1.8
Gripen 1 x Volvo 54/80 12k/31k = 19k 2
F-16 1 x GE 76/127 18k/42k = 24k 2
F-18 2 x GE 97/158 23k/51k = 28k 1.8
MiG-35 2 x Klimov 106/176 24k/65k = 41k 2.35
Typhoon 2 x Eurojet 120/180 24k/51k = 27k 2
In the table above, the thrust numbers are without and with afterburner turned on. The
afterburner adds power but it produces a visible infrared signature which is easy to detect in the sky. Supercruise refers to the ability to maintain supersonic flight without the afterburner, a useful characteristic in a fighter jet. Supercruise is not stealth but at least it is not as visible as an afterburner. The weight numbers are dry weight and take-off weight, so the difference determines how much you can load the aircraft with weapons pods and extra fuel. The speed number is the speed at high altitude.
The space the fighter is slated to occupy is “Medium” which means, as compared to the Su-30 MKI which as can be seen has 246 kN of thrust and can lift 45k of weapons/fuel and travel at Mach 2.35. In the IAF only, the now retired MiG-25 Foxbat was capable of higher speeds. The IAF was literally the last air force in the world to retire the MiG-25. In USA, it was the SR-71 Blackbird which travelled at that speed and it did so at extreme altitude and was a spy plane, not a combat aircraft. Even the MiG-25 was not a dogfighter. Both the MiG-25 and the SR-71 travelled high above enemy territory at Mach 2+ taking photographs with a resolution of a few metres, and whereas the SR-71 evaded it’s stalkers by extreme altitude, the MiG-25 performed evasion by brief bursts of speed up to Mach 3.
And dogfighting was one of the capabilities which the IAF tested while evaluating the MMRCA contenders. Naturally, the Russian entries all performed spectacularly in dogfighting, the MiG-35 even having thrust vectoring which means the output nozzles of the jets can be swiveled in 3D almost at will. But dogfighting was only one of the categories evaluated, BVR i.e. beyond visual range being the new buzzword of fighter jets in the last ten years. I cannot even begin to imagine the relative importance of dogfighting versus BVR but I am sure the IAF evaluators did the most thorough job.
You see the IAF tender was closely watched worldwide for a more important reason than the money involved. After all, if you consider the per unit cost which India wants to pay, there is some profit and loss for the aircraft vendors in that the majority of the aircraft will be built locally under license by HAL which means fewer jobs generated in the European country. The Brazilian order for only 36 aircrafts was $4.5 billion, no paltry sum, so why was the Indian tender so important. It is because Brazil has no enemies whereas India has two enemies in collusion and in close proximity. So India is in the thick of it. Although, the West will never admit it, India suffers more from terrorism each year than any other country in the world and fights it on a lower budget. So, the winner of the Indian MMRCA tender is righty being coronated as the very best because the evaluation was so good.
To a layman like me, it is not clear if Russia’s historical dominance of dogfighting contributed to the emergence of Beyond Visual Range (BVR) or if it was inevitable. Most would agree that the West never made a better dogfighter than the Russians. Be that as it may, in today’s aerial war BVR means that “fire and forget” weapons are deployed at the enemy aircraft minutes before the aircraft is visible on the horizon. Some of these weapons travel at supersonic speeds, have sophisticated tracking of targets well beyond the heat seeking missiles of the past. This is one reason why India’s Brahmos missile is important, when deployed from combat aircraft. I can only imagine that an experienced pilot has a few seconds warning as the BVR missile hones in, and so maybe the ability to dogfight allows the pilot to evade the missile, although clearly it is situational.
Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) is a costly but critical component on newer fighter jets that allows scanning very large ranges of frequency and distributing your emission over wider ranges in very short bursts which are harder to detect. Although electronics and avionics can be retrofitted to a fighter aircraft, it is a costly exercise and for a country like India, if they don’t receive it as part of the original order, they will probably never receive it as there is little incentive for any defence company to sell that technology after the fact. Yet AESA and other such technologies are highly classified and meanwhile, the IAF needs to ensure that they get some technology transfer, which is one more reason why the MMRCA deal is taking so long to finalise.
So, in my opinion although the public may be disenchanted with the pace of the MMRCA negotiation, I believe that India has chosen the most technologically advanced and capable fighter in the Rafale, a worthy successor to the Mirage-2000 India is already used to and made by the same company, and it is better that India drags it’s heels and insists on a good deal with the French than in rushing the negotiation to a conclusion and getting second best. In the meantime shoring up numbers of Mig-29 and Su-30 is the way to keep strength in the air force and will make the Russians happy, after all keep in mind that at the end of the MMRCA tender India will then have to look forward to the best of the future, namely the PAK-FA for which only the Russians are willing to collaborate with India on stealth technology.
Rafale a worthy choice by the IAF | Niti Central
In the table below are some of the aircraft relevant to India’s Air Force wherein the specifications are from Wikipediaand the photo links point to Airliners.net. The first four entries are already in use in the Indian Air Force. The Mirage-2000 is at the top of the list because the MMRCA tender began as a consequence of the Indian Air Force (IAF) being unable to buy a new batch of Mirage-2000s, since the line was being replaced by the Rafale. Some of the existing Mirage-2000s in the IAF were modernised at a unit cost almost as much as the unit cost projected in the MMRCA which in fact was much criticised ignoring the fact that unlike the MMRCA contract, the upgrade of the Mirage-2000s is actually happening as we speak and so is something the IAF can depend on. So the Mirage-2000 is what is being replaced in the MMRCA tender for about a projected 126 – 200 aircraft. The chosen successor is the Rafale and most are hopeful that a deal will be signed in 2014.
Photos Engines Thrust (kN) Weight (lb) Speed (Mach)
Mirage-2000 1 x Snecma 64/95 16k/37k = 21k 2.2
LCA 1 x GE 53/89 14k/29k = 15k 1.6
Mig-29 OVT 2 x Klimov 162 24k/44k = 20k 2.25
Su-30 MKI 2 x Lyulka 246 40k/85k = 45k 2.35
Rafale 2 x Snecma 100/151 22k/54k = 32k 1.8
Gripen 1 x Volvo 54/80 12k/31k = 19k 2
F-16 1 x GE 76/127 18k/42k = 24k 2
F-18 2 x GE 97/158 23k/51k = 28k 1.8
MiG-35 2 x Klimov 106/176 24k/65k = 41k 2.35
Typhoon 2 x Eurojet 120/180 24k/51k = 27k 2
In the table above, the thrust numbers are without and with afterburner turned on. The
afterburner adds power but it produces a visible infrared signature which is easy to detect in the sky. Supercruise refers to the ability to maintain supersonic flight without the afterburner, a useful characteristic in a fighter jet. Supercruise is not stealth but at least it is not as visible as an afterburner. The weight numbers are dry weight and take-off weight, so the difference determines how much you can load the aircraft with weapons pods and extra fuel. The speed number is the speed at high altitude.
The space the fighter is slated to occupy is “Medium” which means, as compared to the Su-30 MKI which as can be seen has 246 kN of thrust and can lift 45k of weapons/fuel and travel at Mach 2.35. In the IAF only, the now retired MiG-25 Foxbat was capable of higher speeds. The IAF was literally the last air force in the world to retire the MiG-25. In USA, it was the SR-71 Blackbird which travelled at that speed and it did so at extreme altitude and was a spy plane, not a combat aircraft. Even the MiG-25 was not a dogfighter. Both the MiG-25 and the SR-71 travelled high above enemy territory at Mach 2+ taking photographs with a resolution of a few metres, and whereas the SR-71 evaded it’s stalkers by extreme altitude, the MiG-25 performed evasion by brief bursts of speed up to Mach 3.
And dogfighting was one of the capabilities which the IAF tested while evaluating the MMRCA contenders. Naturally, the Russian entries all performed spectacularly in dogfighting, the MiG-35 even having thrust vectoring which means the output nozzles of the jets can be swiveled in 3D almost at will. But dogfighting was only one of the categories evaluated, BVR i.e. beyond visual range being the new buzzword of fighter jets in the last ten years. I cannot even begin to imagine the relative importance of dogfighting versus BVR but I am sure the IAF evaluators did the most thorough job.
You see the IAF tender was closely watched worldwide for a more important reason than the money involved. After all, if you consider the per unit cost which India wants to pay, there is some profit and loss for the aircraft vendors in that the majority of the aircraft will be built locally under license by HAL which means fewer jobs generated in the European country. The Brazilian order for only 36 aircrafts was $4.5 billion, no paltry sum, so why was the Indian tender so important. It is because Brazil has no enemies whereas India has two enemies in collusion and in close proximity. So India is in the thick of it. Although, the West will never admit it, India suffers more from terrorism each year than any other country in the world and fights it on a lower budget. So, the winner of the Indian MMRCA tender is righty being coronated as the very best because the evaluation was so good.
To a layman like me, it is not clear if Russia’s historical dominance of dogfighting contributed to the emergence of Beyond Visual Range (BVR) or if it was inevitable. Most would agree that the West never made a better dogfighter than the Russians. Be that as it may, in today’s aerial war BVR means that “fire and forget” weapons are deployed at the enemy aircraft minutes before the aircraft is visible on the horizon. Some of these weapons travel at supersonic speeds, have sophisticated tracking of targets well beyond the heat seeking missiles of the past. This is one reason why India’s Brahmos missile is important, when deployed from combat aircraft. I can only imagine that an experienced pilot has a few seconds warning as the BVR missile hones in, and so maybe the ability to dogfight allows the pilot to evade the missile, although clearly it is situational.
Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) is a costly but critical component on newer fighter jets that allows scanning very large ranges of frequency and distributing your emission over wider ranges in very short bursts which are harder to detect. Although electronics and avionics can be retrofitted to a fighter aircraft, it is a costly exercise and for a country like India, if they don’t receive it as part of the original order, they will probably never receive it as there is little incentive for any defence company to sell that technology after the fact. Yet AESA and other such technologies are highly classified and meanwhile, the IAF needs to ensure that they get some technology transfer, which is one more reason why the MMRCA deal is taking so long to finalise.
So, in my opinion although the public may be disenchanted with the pace of the MMRCA negotiation, I believe that India has chosen the most technologically advanced and capable fighter in the Rafale, a worthy successor to the Mirage-2000 India is already used to and made by the same company, and it is better that India drags it’s heels and insists on a good deal with the French than in rushing the negotiation to a conclusion and getting second best. In the meantime shoring up numbers of Mig-29 and Su-30 is the way to keep strength in the air force and will make the Russians happy, after all keep in mind that at the end of the MMRCA tender India will then have to look forward to the best of the future, namely the PAK-FA for which only the Russians are willing to collaborate with India on stealth technology.
Rafale a worthy choice by the IAF | Niti Central
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