Contd post 1285
Unfortunately, the 1962 war was a brutal wake up call to the politico elite and the pandora's box of imports was opened, with the soviet easy monetary policy our coffers could take it. India till the rest of the cold war remained a soviet client in the security arena, always warm under the soviet security and economic blanket, against any adversary that prosed a threat of a long drawn out war the chinese and the United States. The present situation is an hour glass upside down. India has come to terms of the pre-eminence of the United States. Has opened up and has decided to stand on its own, Still maintains relations with Russia primarily through arms trade , but Russia is a nation totally different altogether, its claim to super power status withdrawn, India is in most spheres other than military might a better power than Russia. The USA threat has reversed and the only irritant is sale of arms to pakistan, but the Chinese theat has reached catestropic proportions and has forced a common front with pakistan. With the receeding of United States military might, the security of the world is increasing getting multi-polarised. When one day, as the chinese economy eventually overtakes the USA, they can act completely indifferent to rules imposed by washington and europe after ww2, every multi-lateral treaty will be under the auspices of China. hence India inevitably will be pushed to the background even if we play by international rules. What this means is Chinese submarines will torpedo any civilian ship carrying supplies not only spares and raw materials for new mmrca, but also food and fuel imported for war efforts with precious foreign exchange and war debt which will take no less than 50 years to clear out, ask Britain they just paid their last installment of ww2 debt in 2007. Other than the slender chickens's neck India's reach overland to other nation states will have to pass through either pakistan or china India is effectively an Island in the security scenario. Every fancy import can only act as a deterant, if the threshold is breached it can't take the losses of attriction, but LCA tejas can. closed to the outside world IAF, IA and IN will have to rely on our own inherent strength, which cannot be built up unless the services share some of the burden of indigenisation. The Soviet war machine was comparitively very poor in quality to that of the nazis. But eventally they were able to overcome due to their built up inherent capability to absorb losses. Of course, the western alliance did come to their rescue, but just like them we need to atleast hold off till they do.
I understand that u emphatise with the armed forces that they should get what they want, but LCA tejas is precisely what they wanted, if not exactly. The treat that Tejas was need to meet as an air-superiority fighter still exists china is totally armed and moving high gear and pakistan is in its best pace of modernisation with blessing from USA and china, and down to ground we still have 200 flying coffins to replace and another 200 that have already retired.
One thing that I see in the mentality of IAF is mig-21 is mig-21 replacement, which Tejas is not. branding it mig-21 more than confirms my suspicions of IAF trying to box it within mig-21 replacement, when tejas has clearly out grown than box. tejas is more than capable to replace mig-21, mig-27 and hawk as lead in fighter trainer. I see that u respect jaguars for their roles, but they were discontinued from manufacturing by HAL once in the 80s, because they were obsolete then itself, check out global security if u may. So rahul is kind of correct in assesing them obsolete and unnecessary to upgrade, but our policy makers had already come to that conclusion two decades ago, its only sheer lack of direction that keeps them flying and costly upgrades being planned.
Just tell me how could IAF buy hawk in 2001, when requirements were formulated in late 1970s, while rejecting tejas because its requirement was formed in 1985, isn't that grave injustice to your own, while favoring a firangi. The only plausible conclusion is IAF was just doing an ad hoc job to escape the flying coffin quagmire. Just the same when they threw a spanner on DRDO AWACS programme, instantly after pakistan acquired saab erieye. While people generally accept that Tin-90 was a knee jerk purchase to al khalid, they refuse to accept the fact that mmrca is trying to fit in a gap that does not exist between the roles of Su-30 and lca Tejas, whose profile on several cases themselves overlap one another. the medium category crap thrown by the parliamentary standing commitee still stinks through out most media and aviation forums. Just ask yourself if Was there was even a 100 kn engine of the class and weight we required when the tejas mk-2 was proposed by IAF in 2005 inspite of the fact that the prototypes were powered by 75 kn f2j3 and the production models were to powered by 85 kn kaveri or in20. eventually they had to climb down to 90 kn which is just 5 kn higher than f404 in20 which was then only ordered, the air force initially wanted the second squadron to be made of exclusive trainers to replace mig-21 ub operational trainers later, but the performance improvement and the threat of war after nov2008, forced them to restrategize, again ad hoc decision. If 117 s engine which owes its heritage to al-31 which initially had thrust of 121 kn could power its latest variant at 142 kn, mathematically f404 could have provided 88 kn of thrust and even more exceeding 90 kn requirement if orders of the scale 300 were confirmed. Its the air force throwing unnecessary demands like completely new engine, completely indigenous aesa thats draging their own goals of operational preparedness. In any day. I would trust crapy DRDO browshe to a weapons seller with loads of promise of turning their frog into a prince if India signs on the check book dotted lines.
I'm thinking of painting a grafitti of Tejas on my house, just to spread awareness. Would like to hear such ideas,
