Rafale doesn not have folded wings. And both the fighters are nearly tight in the lifts. SH has the advantage. Issue is strategically none of the Ac can be modified as per wishes by India.
Yeah, mig-29k or F-35 are the only choices and F-35 can be eliminated for obvious reasons.....defaults to mig-29k I guess unless India can negotiate the mig-35 improvements into mig-29k and buy them in numbers to fill the gaps for both navy and airforce simplifying the fleet and logistics? Irbis-E is a decent radar and N036 would be even better at the same rating but we mess around too much trying to integrate bunch of stuff from other countries and make it a mess.....wonder if pure all Russian equipment would actually be more reliable? On the other side, China may be too familiar with Russian stuff and corresponding tactics, so India has no choice than to get other subsystems from various countries or in house? Migs are fine jets....
What Ada can even do is take one mig29K and develop the whole avionics suite themselves. All avionics related issues can be solved by Indian industries with help from Israel.
At some point India should do it on its own or else Israel will be new Russia in terms of dependency and that is worse than Russia. Anyway, roughly 400 nm range should be good enough to defend Indian interests for now in areas we typically operate which is mostly Indian Ocean and to protect our other ships from air attack. Arm them with long range weapons and powerful radar and possibly modification for Bramhos-NG (wonder if its possible). Are our K's capable of aerial refueling? It is increasingly becoming difficult to enter airspace with AD systems now without taking a big risk anyway....
Rafale is a better option for the price we pay.
I agree on that, but my point is package wise, avionics, weopanry wise
In every way possible in comparison to Typhoon it is better.
Hmm no....India should stay away from consortium based makes and stick with French, Indian and Russian makes when it comes to fighters and interceptors. Can you imagine the logistics to do maintenance w.r.t human, skill and materials not to mention costs and upgrades? They should do the same in transport fleet, just stick with US and Russian make in fixed wing and Russian, Indian in rotary wing and optimize the costs and maintenance.
Well apparently mods have to be done. Naval fighters are heavier than land based ones and subsequently less payload.
At a time when we're fighting tooth and nail to increase squadron numbers it would be foolish and wasteful to get rid of the MiG's - even with their alleged engine/maintenance issues.
Instead of coastal air bases Airforce will benefit more specifically in the air bases situated in mountain region like laddakh which have short strip for land and takeoff.
India may not do that because operationally there is no need to put airplanes in Ladakh, just too close unless there is an offensive mindset. At that altitude, performance of planes will be even less compared to lower altitude take off.....in other words it will not give us that much benefit. Advantage we have over China is that our planes can take off with full load while Chinese ones have to take off from high altitude which impacts take off loads.
The second carrier need aircrafts ... If they go for Rafale then you are right there will not be much fund left. But if it is hornet they may replace mig 29 k too.
You will need them for interception and 20 are already there anyway.
They are at a huge disadvantage when it comes to air war in that area with us, certainly we should be on level 1 alert and India can react to an attack like that in many sectors across the border from ladakh to Arunachal. It is possible I guess, where did the migs got deployed?
