Re: IAF grappling with free fall in fighters, will have to fly upgrade
The question you should be asking is, why aren't Tejas being produced in numbers.. oh wait... the number of Tejas delivered till date is too large to fathom
. Only two birds will be delivered next year, 8-12 the year after that, another 8-12 the next year and 12-16 the year following it before LRIP of Tejas-2 starts. And this is the best case scenario that is being talked about, assuming our sub vendors can deliver that fast. How many MiG-21 and MiG-27 that have to be replaced ? over 350. How many years will it take to make up those numbers for a maximum production rate of 20 Tejas and 12 Rafale an year ? around 12 years. All the subvendors will have to deliver components at around five to six times the volumes that are being delivered today for Su-30Mki, and that too belonging to different product families and being tested to different standards and quality checks. While you can rant about fictional Tejas squadrons that will not exist for good part of another decade, IAF will have squadron infrastructure and pilot skills that will wither away.
production rate is lower because IAF is giving just 40 fighter order for tejas mk-1.
While IAF is delighted to pay for and retain the initial 40 SU-30 which were not built to its specs in non weaponised form for a decade ,
it is setting a different standard for Tejas with IOC-1 , IOC-2. WHen the money was given to the Russians there was no such thing called SU-30 MKI. The plane was built for IAF specification using IAF money . IAF did not ask for FOC or IOC for fully tested Su-30 MKI before putting the money. But when it comes to Tejas it is far different story.
Even the flight manuals for Su-30 MKI were supposed to be prepared by IAF pilots as per a few forum posts.
Even now a higher number of orders for Tejas mk-1 will surely result in 16 per year capacity production line and fast filling up of retiring MIG-21 squadrons with Tejas mk-1.
Surely 60 tejas mk-1 won't undermine IAf fighting strength in a way the obsolete , unreliable 350 odd Mig fighters are doing so now. By refusing to gtive just another 20 extra tejas mk-1 orders IAf is adding to the delay.
What if the forex crisis worsens and the new Govt after the elections cancel the MMRCA?. Then IAF will give more orders for TEjas mk-1.the possibility of this happening is very high.
Since the MRCA tender itself is legally flawed because initial tender specs insisted on total life cycle costs and suddenly a few years before it was changed to per unit cost. And a few officers have put file notes covering their reservations over this as well.
Why MOD-IAF combine insisted on total life cycle cost as the deciding criteria initially and then changed to per unit cost?
Coupled with forex crunch the IAF certainly can not hope to get 30 billion for RAFLE and another 30 billion for FGFA simultaneously from the GOI. So it must have to make a choice someday. It is the stupidity of the IAF which gets exposed when the chief says ,"there is no back up plan" . It is a lie. Infat Tejas mk-1 and Mk-2 can cover the shortfall to some extant and more Su-30 MKIs which were completely indigenized recently can simply fill the gap.
The MMRCA originated as an outright buy of 120 odd Mirage-2000s initially. Then only it morphed into the present MMRCA tender. So it is a blatant lie on IAF chief's behalf to say there is no back up plan if MMRCA fighter fails to materialize.
US pushed F-16 into service mere three years from the date of first flight.
Most of the delays on LCA by IAF happened in it's initial years when it failed to set aside any money from it's budget and insisted on controlling the project after presiding over 4 decades of failures to put into service any meaningful fighter platform with it's ,"joint management " of projects with HAL.
Only due to it's opposition in early years 4 or 5 years were lost when allocation for TDs were released much later after PD was finished.
And it was the opposition from IAF which resulted in a truncated program of two TDs first to prove all the tech and delayed production of further PVs and LSPs. Delays in radar and engine did not affect the project as a whole because long before LRDE used the Israeli help in radar and for the past five years GE engine is readily available for tejas Mk-1, whose prototypes were flying on these engines for decades.
Unlike the MARUT failure where the fighter was designed with a presumed availability of higher power engine , ADA built tejas around GE engine.
Even then the short sighted on the part of IAF which gave only lower weight , lower range , lower launch stress air to air missile requirements initially for tejas ASR , and changing it subsequently to higher weight missiles which led to FSED phase two with complete redesign of wing added a few more years to the delays.
And nuclear test related sanctions made the delay by IAF much worse. If at all IAf set aside some funds and fully backed the project in earlier periods much of the Fly by wire software work would have finished by the time India carried SAKTHI series of nuclear tests. These sanctions delayed the project even further.
Since IAF joined the program late in 2006 as per Philip Rajkumar's book much of the 200 odd requests for actions from IAF further added their own share of delay in redesigning.
had the IAF put up a few hundred crores besides what ADA got from the GOI and participated with full commitments from earlier times at least 6 or seven years worth of delay could have been cut short.
So if IAF was desperate it too has a part responsibility for the blame.
