he is simply wrong.
The knid of interception role Mig-21 specializes does not exist to day. In the post word war two era massed bombers fleet with huge lumbering bombers carpet bombing cities and strategic assets was the biggest threat faced by the nations.
With no worthwhile ground based missile system Mig-21 was designed as a fighter than climbs quickly and engage this lumbering fleet in high numbers . It was a simplistic design with even no radar when it was imported into india. And it had a very low range with very low fuel, because its role was not to do the role of true multi role long range fighter bombers of today.
It had to rely on ground based radars to find the bomber fleet location and designed with the intent of flyin in agile high speed flight profile to engage them.
But today due to advances in SAM tech these strategic bomber fleet is not the main threat. Fighter bombers like Mirage-2000, SU-30 MKI and F-16 do the job of hitting the target with long range stand off bombs fired from close to 100 Km distance away. They also have powerful radars to track and shoot down targets at 100 Km distance,
So the fast climbing small radar tracking range, low fuel load(very low range) interceptors like Mig21 are obsolete now.
tejas was designed for the same role as the much admired Mirage-2000 , which is a versatile multi role fighter bomber.
It was the only fighter that impressed IAF in kargil , as with high wing area structure it had the specs to precision bomb pak camps at kargil with huge impact.
because high wing area, low wing loading, high thrust to weight ration, Relaxed Static stability tail less delta airframe of Mirage-2000 was ideal for that.
That is what p2p extolled in the post cited by me.
tejas goes one step further on the above specs of mirage-2000 in every parameter.
If mirage-2000 has analogue fly by wire, tejas has 4 channel digital fly by wire,
If mirage-2000 has a thrust to weight ratio of 0.95 in half fuel load config, tejas has 1.07,
If mirage-2000 has a tail less delta relaxed Static Stability Airframe with small strakes for vortex generation, tejas has the same RSS fly by wire airframe with F-16 XL like compound or cranked delta for vortex generation,
Then how come tejas is inferior to Mig-2 in any role?
By the same token will he say that Mig-21 is superior to rafale in interception as rafale too has a top speed of mach 1.8(may be lower in hot indian weather conditions which bleed 10 percent of engine thrust and lift from wings)?
Answer is a flat no. because eventhough Nig-21 can start 30 seconds earlier than Tejas once in air its radars wont lock on to even a JF-17 at 100 Km range. If it has to face a JF-17 in interception , in a stand alone mode it will be the JF-17 which will track first and fire first and not Mig-21. So mig-21s are now good only when they are used in larger radar Su-30 MKI as we have seen in excercises with US.
But tejas like Mirage-2000 is a stand alone platform like gripen and raflae with radars bigger radar disc dia than all three of them.
And it will have 100 Km range Astra version which is being test fired from SU-30 MKI besides all other russian missiles availbale for Sukhoi. And in mk-2 ADA chief has said that tejas mk-2 will have the interface to fire meteor, the same primary weapon of rafale and gripen, but with 45 km trackin range Mig-21 can not use such llong range missiles.
So thats what I have been higlighting here. he is simply fooling folks with comparing useless topspeeds , which can not be sustained for more than a few minutes, because due to high drag the fighter will burn all its fuel and fall out of the sky. neither does it can be used to evade modern 4.5 mach BVRs. Also fighter can not undertake tighter turns at these high speeds the primary requirement to evade a missile.
I neither contest youe claim on DRDO nor approve it. What I said was that there are many labs some good, some average, some bad and some average, some not doing the work eventhough they can , some hampered by attrition and patchy fund allotments.
So we just can not say that other than missile division everything was bad. On the contrary my suspicion is the success of missile divission owes more to the non interference of armed forces and the high priority and regular funding available to them.
because there are no brokers peddlling MTCR breaking missiles with alluring bribes to higher civilian defence set up which includes the MOD, politiicans and top brass.
So the astra , tejas ,arjun and nirbhay team have to struggle and come up with world best on their debut to enter operational services against competition. That is not the case with missiles. For example when prithvi was first introduced it was a liquid motor missile with high CEP, meaning before launching it it has to be pumped with liquid propollent , which will take hours and easily detectable abd vulnerable at that time. It also had a very short range of 300 Km which meant it had to be deployed near border amplifying this vulnerability.
But since no one else was offering any competing product Army accepted this. And a production set up was created with all the inffra and priority funding. It led to world class missile development labs and infra which has now reached the level of sub launched ballistic missiles.
that is what i was saying.
Say if the army accepted tejas with R-60 missiles as mk-1 with an order of 40 odd, and let the further R-73 missile version as mk-2 and the now tejas mk-2 as mk-3(as swedes did with gripenA?b, C/D ,and noe E in the form of NG) ,
a production facility would have been set up in 2006 itself and work on present mk-1 and mk-2 would have gone on faster with better infra. But by insisting on FSED phase-2 project got only delayed. Same with Arjun, it started as a 105 mm gun 40 ton tank project. Army changer GSQR four times without giving any limited production order till mk-1 and delayed setting up of private sector firm participation and faster development.
example is the MRF facility to make rubber tracks for Arjun was set up and shut down after low order from Army. Then which private sector will guy come forward to sink in his money. But look at how TATAs are working with US heli makers Sirkosky.
By offering lame excuses and delaying phased product induction of DRDO products , what happens is many talented minds in DRDO labs get frustrated and switch jobs to lucrative shores , since there is no job satisfaction , as you and I, along with pretty much every one else(even defence journos) keep lampooning them forever.
This is what happened to fly by wire software team of tejas, with even marriage proposal not going their way, due to the poor prospects, what do one expect a talented engineer to do in DRDO lab.
And no incentive driven salary structure is adopted further compounding the woes. A product like tejas, Astra,arjun and Nirbhay save 100s of billions of dollars in cumulative forex over the years, Why not the govt announce some incentives on the completion of the products with intermediate goal based rewards? Then many indian professionals abroad will start coming back to this country.
There is no point in equating them with every other govt official who do the routine work of spending govt money.
Somehting Modi govt should focus on.
its is a Light multi role combat aircraft.... 
. I said you are a moron if you think that customer is to be blamed for 
