My point is, they cant be the same airframes. A jet designed for naval operations wont prioritise stealth, and stealth aircraft wont be geared towards point interceptor duties. As for the hopes, i hope the same too.
Yes, time will tell if we will make same mistakes again, LOL. In Engineering & Politics, we are very good followers, not leaders. Our IT, consumer & Defence industries for example simply follows the West, that's all. Our brains from IIT, NIT run abroad for dollars, pounds, euros.
Why not same airframe? That's the challenge. F-35 has already proved it (although with single engine). It depends on creativity & imagination of designers. CFD testing & prototyping comes later. For how long we will wait for Western entities like DARPA, NASA, Lockheed Martin, Northrop, BAe, etc to do the things 1st way too advance in time & then simply follow their designs?
And it turned out to be more expensive to develop f35 than 3 separate fighters for naval, marines and airforce. Even after that, f35 is crazy expensive to buy and worse to maintain. And yeah, US will have moved for 6th gen induction when we get to 6th gen designing phase, just how things are. We cant catch up so quick from not having any decent fighter of our own to suddenly being world leaders.
If they are planning for DIRCM then it should of stealthy type, like the Northorp Grumman offering for F 35 known as Thunder.don't know the reason but they didn't use it . Maybe they are planning to use it on the future blocks of F35.It is good & logical to have 2 IRSTs to cover upper & lower hemispheres.
F-16 ES (Enhanced Strategic) prototype was also tested with similar system of 2 IRSTs.
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F-16U also had similar arrangement
There was a videogame in late 1990s named "DiD's F-22 Air Dominance Fighter" & follow-on called "F-22 Total Air War". They showed a fictious future upgraded block of F-22 which had 1 nose mounted IRST & 2 belly mounted IRSTs/EOTSs/LANTIRN. But this version of F-22 never manifested due to stealth concerns & it was primarily Air Dominance Fighter. Lockheed Martin was already working with X-35/F-35 having EOTS because of which F-35 is less stealthier than F-22.
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Hence the optical sensors must have stealthy covers like F-35 EOTS.
Future variants of Su-57 may also have such stealthy covers on nose IRST
So the turret-ball design is unacceptable & needs to be replaced by such stealthy covers.
The external pod is also OBSOLETE & UNACCEPTABLE if AMCA needs to be ADVANCED jet.
There is 1 more thing required - DIRCM, like on Su-57, very important.
But these positions have been already occupied by IRST/EOTS in AMCA. So other positions for DIRCM can be explored like wing roots, like in F-16 AFTI
F-35's cost factor has 2 aspects or reasons:-
AMCA had not started until 2018 in any meaningful sense. Still remember former ACM PV Naik first initiated the discussion of India's own stealth fighter. There were debates at that time of having 2 programs i.e., FGFA and AMCA separately or (2009 I guess) to merge the program with FGFA/PAKFA.
"F35 is more expensive compared to three separate fighters" was something I said without context, because someone had posted that here in detail. Basically, research concluded that it would have been cheaper to make 3 separate stealth jets for the 3 branches (Marines, AF, Navy) than a single one for all. Not comparing price with the price of 4th/4++ gen fighters
J10 was a borrowed Israeli design . J20 and j35 are the only chinese origin designs out there .
Even in 21st century you will have to actually fly the jets to test them and that takes minimum 6 -8 years for a new design . You could cut that period short if you are iterating old design or if you copy an established design.
There are always people on both sides of opinion, for & against.
That sounds like inferiority complex, under-confidence & excuse for delay, again. 70+ years is a huge time to learn. everybody knows all these processes of designing, prototyping, testing, production. But small small countries have faced World War, regional conflicts, natural catastrophies, financial crisis & still managed to make their own jets, tanks, subs, etc & compete in global arena.
For context, read on..
J-10 was an Israeli tech that they borrowed, fair enough. But what about all the subsequent projects that I have written above?
I would love to be proven wrong about my apprehensions here, bhai sahab. Believe me, nothing would make me happier than being proven wrong and seeing AMCA fly in IAF and IN colours.
War does not see who is right and who is more talented - it only shows who is left. Bottomline is if China gets completely blocked in terms of defence, they have domestic platforms to use and fight with, while we are still reliant on external elements that can cause political problems now that we are an ascending power.
Either the French are bringing something very innovative to the table with the carrot of sharing it all with India, or else GoI is acutely aware of what US sanctions can do to our JV with RR and decided to de-risk the AMCA from the get go. This engine means GoI has sanction proofed the AMCA, with a back port into the TEDBF and LCA Mk2 programs as retrofit. Some 123 LCAs in Mk1 and Mk1A will remain under sanctions shadow though.
Ok even if it's a jet engine , there is one important question?
The reliability of the GE404s and the engines which have already been procured in some numbers may be enough to keep the Tejas Mk1 and Mk1As flying for their original airframe life, but airframe life extensions may mean cannibalising existing ones or grounding in case of sanctions. Or a less likely scenario a revival of the Kaveri once knowledge from the newer engines is applied to these programmes if it’s not already been attempted right now(knowledge from AL31FP production , HTFE-25 etc.)
We could always procure 100 F404s extra, as sanction buffer. They only need careful storage in a clean environment and periodic servicing and running.
