Replying to your posts, I am not on crusade or something against Rafale in particular, but maybe on something like that to hope that someone takes actual notice of the state of defence in India.
A plane as per me should be selected by the actual requirement, India is not a small country, and its sizeable as compared to France, When I study the twin engine planes of Europe, I wonder why do these small European countries some of which are almost a little bigger than Kerala want twine engine planes with range of 1000 kms+, I think in a way they first got carried away. The Americans had their F-15 and F/A-18, the Russians had their MiG-29 , Su-27, the Europeans did not have a good fighter plane. What was UK and Italy using prior to Eurofighter? UK was using F-4 Pahntom jet and MRCA Tornado (yes Tornado was designed and marketed as MRCA) Thus the idea was to build a European plane by pooling resources together, There were potential orders from 5 founding members (including France) and there was bigger markets. As these two projects started to put their add ons, these planes actually ended up pricing higher than the planes that they could potentially replace (F-15 F/A-18 and Su-27) not a quantum leap over these planes but definitely quantum jumped for price.
What plane to use as you said depends on factors such as payload, Range, endurance, capability, avionics, cost of flying, cost of maintenance, lifetime of engines and air frame, budget cost of upgrades and perhaps very important, can we customise it to our need and the cost of customisation. I am not from the school of thought that sees planes in weight class, but see the planes in terms of the above. every plane (including transport plane ) fall in the above category. So when some "experts" talk of Rafale being "medium weight" to support their arguement, I feel baffled, I start to question their wisdom.
It is only IAF which has become "Gandhari" and covered their own eyes, and seems in doing so, also ended in covering their ears, and maybe that is why we see them banging their heads all around even when people are trying to give them directions.
Every air force needs a mix, this mix helps to have an asymetrical threat and also keeps the enemy guessing about the tactics. One plane may have flaw (almost every plane has a flaw) but when used in combination with another, it makes the force more potent, it becomes easy to exploit one flaw, but it becomes difficult when its twin threat and maybe with twin flaws but both the flaws are different,
Past many decades have seen the planes becoming more expensive, more capable, and able to do much more than what planes of WW2 could do, Planes like Tejas can carry more load than most WW2 bombers and fly much faster and able to be more effective than maybe a squadron of bomber during WW2, so automaticaly what needed a Squadron to take down a target, that needs two planes to complete the mission, and that has also brought in the need to reduce the squadrons and number of planes. India already has 220+ Su-30 MKI and this fleet is enough to take down PAF in less than a day. But due to the sanctioned strength of 43 Squadrons we need more planes, Now there are some people who want to have Rafale which they say is capable. No one doubts the capability of Rafale, but the point is, "IS IT THE PLANE WE REALLY NEED?"
When Rafale compared with Su-30 MKI, Su-30 MKI dominates Rafale in most attributes, the areas where Rafale apparently has an advantage is
a) Has more pylons (14 vs 12) and carries more war load with just internal fuel.
b) Has engines that do not need more maintenance.
Now the Areas where Su-30 MKI has advantage is
a) More than 200+ in service, much of the content is now Indian
b) Has avionics which was chosen by the air force for specific Indian requirements
c) Cheap to buy, fly, maintain, overall Life cycle costs are much cheaper than Rafale. Even the cost of engines is so low that we can afford to have 6 extra engines per plane.
d) Can carry India, Russian and Israeli missiles A2A missiles, can be customised.we shall need to test and certify the weapons ourselves with some help. in case of Rafale, it all depends on Dassault if they want to allow the weapon to be used or not.
e) Is being modified to carry Brahmos A which can be carried by few planes, Even Rafale wont be able to carry it.
f) Has 12 pylons but high internal fuel capacity enough to give it range of 3000 kms. thus about 10 tons warload, and 3000 kms internal fuel give it good Warload + fuel ability, for Rafale to be able to do the same mission, it would have to use 3 of its wet pylons, for carrying drop tanks, thus upto 7 tons of payload might be used for carrying external drop tanks, and that might leave just 5 tons warload, thus for a long range mission, Rafale would end up carrying 5 tons warload vs 10 tons of war load for Su-30 MKI.
g) We already have established production, overhaul and other facilities, and also well established Spares supply chain (and now the defence minister has fine tuned the system to ensure that the availabity rate is high, and to make a point, during Red flag 2016, Su-30 MKI had 100% availability.
When we talk of Rafale, what we hear is SPECTRA, as per most, SPECTRA is just data fusion of many sensors, same as DASS for Eurofighter Typhoon, but seems SPECTRA has better data fusion which helps pilot to make decisions. There are many claims about how excellent SPECTRA is, but on questioning the details, there is answer that details of SPECTRA is classified. If its classified, where are the leaks from?
India has two immediate threats, Pakistan and China, Pakistan threat can be taken down by most planes that we have in IAF inventory. China is going to be a totally different cup of tea, with it having vast resources. Now the question is that would Rafale be capable enough to taken down Chinese threats? China will not be threatened by any attacks close to border but attacks to its important cities. Rafale cannot attack any important Chinese cities, it simply lacks the range, and if given external fuel tanks, then it lacks the bite, It might be cheaper to give a guy a ticket to China and ask him to throw rock at the building, He might both do the job, and come out safe at fracton of the cost and same results. Rafale if purchased can be used with its full warload, to range of say 700 kms of border, there it does not threaten any chinese cities just maybe some military targets. Now the weapons or missiles that we use will also be expensive (as they are separate weapons package deal) Thus to fly and use Rafale effectively (weapons) we have to depend on France and they would control the price, French missiles are good, but they are controlled by French. so if they are priced high, we shall be pushed to buy them else we keep few hundre million dollar plane it its pen because the weapons package is too expensive. Thus damned if we purchase them, damned if we dont purchase them. So to give an example you get married, and next you realise that all your in-laws tag along. Good luck with honeymoon then.
Weapons are always purchased keeping in mind the next war, Rafale does not bring any advantage against the Chinese, and it does not bring in an edge agaisnt Pakistan whatever capability we have those are good against Pakistan, I believe that if you want to ever go to war, you should do only if you have an unfair advantage, a long war is brutal war and it will take everything down, the disadvantages will be more than benefits. So only plane that can bring such an unfair advantage is PAKFA/FGFA. It is designed for the next war (and not past war). Having that plane will give us confidence and deter PLAAF to try any mischief with India.
With Su-30 MKI we have certified most weapons that we use or plan to use that that offers greater flexibility of weapons, and it brings in lot of options. Further with its better range than Rafale, it gives bigger area of operation and that will also thin out the enemy defence per Sq km. They will need more bigger force to protect a bigger area based on bigger range.
Rafale does not bring in commonality with weapons that we use, the only commonality it brings is with MICAs that we use with 48 Mirage 2000, does it make sense to buy an MMRCA like Rafale only because we have 200 MICAs and we might also use these MICA for Rafale? IAF does not plan to use Rafale just for A2A role, so would it make senee to buy 36 Rafale at 4-5 times the price of Su-30 MKI? If Rafale could use the missiles that IAF has (Russian, Israeli etc) but then the cost of Rafale far outweighs the advantages, Rather the only advantage is that its not Russian but when comapred to Su-30MKI and Su-35, Rafale is found wanting on the points given above.
Please like F-16, Gripen, Mirage 2000 are single engine planes, out of which perhaps the Gripen being the most advance and Mirage 2000 being the least advanced. Actually Tejas, Gripen and F-16 might be at one level together, and Mirage 2000 at much lower level. I would not call them M-MRCA but rather SE-MRCA, rather if you make two categories - Twin Engine and Single engine MRCA it makes more sense firstly because of safety, Since if one engine is lost, the chances of single engine completeing its mission or returning to base is going to be very low probablity, but in case of Twin engine, its good possibility and secondly the the roles. F-5 Tiger was light twin engine plane which was designed primarily as super sonic light fighter and later was able to carry even A2G weapons.
If I had a say in Tejas development, then I would personally prefer Tejas II to be twin engined, perhaps with two small engines whose combined thrust is higher than the GE F-414 engine we plan to use, this is purely due to reliability reasons. Putting two engines does make the plane bigger, but the advantage is the plane becomes more reliable, French consider Mirage 2000 and Rafale both reliable, but still Rafale will be more reliable simply as there are two engines so having two engines is like an insurance policy of safety.
Rather my points for Tejas II might be
a) Twin engine plane (two smaller engines but with good thrust)(
b) Internal targeting pod and EW suite, with Photonic radar possibly or even AESA.
c) Two IRST, so that it has 360 deg coverage.
d) 10 pylons, with the two central pylons good enough to carry 5-6 tons of load itself (possibly Brahmos missiles or can be an enclosed pods to carry different options like F/A-18)
e) Combat Range on hi-Lo-Hi mission to about 600-700 kms
One thing that I might want is NO ACTUAL GLASS COCKPIT, Cockpit in my view is just to put pilot on a plane, most fighter planes you see the pilot has the most commanding position (the only higher being the tail) but rather I want the PILOT INSIDE THE PLANE, instead of the glass cockpit, I would prefer excellent quality LED screens that provide entire picture to the pilot, and the pilot can "see" outside using the cameras on sides and front of the plane and this also can be transmittted to the base via satcom. Due to camera + screen combination, the pilot can have the ability to magnify the view and making visual recognition more easiler. (Trust a pilot to accurately identify the insignia of a plane that is 10 miles away with his vision?) but with good camera and the camera system of internal camera pod of the targeting system at your beck and call, thats possible too. The pilot would get in via the door behind the front landing gear. This small empty space will also keep maybe a small PDW with few magazines in case of some situation.
Thus my path for HAL DRDO is
1. Tejas 1A with AESA and F-414 engine
2. Tejas 2 with AESA or photonic radar with more pylons but two engines but having more combined thrust than the powerful F-414 engine (20-30% higher)
3. AMCA with twin F-414 engine with Photonic radar.
Hey
@smestarz finally got the time to reply to your post. let's get on with it.
weight defines range, payload, endurance etc. so depending upon the budget and operational requirements the force has to decide what optimum mixture to field isn't it? of course it's not the Olympics. it's always a hi-lo mix not only due to budget constraints but also to maintain an element of surprise. what if we fielded an entire fleet of Su-30MKIs; only to discover too late that the enemy has discovered a fatal flaw in the jet or our tactics and it's too late to change? and that's why we have dissimilar air combat training, duh?
conventionally medium weight should refer to single engine fighters such as F-16/ Mirage 2000/ Gripen/ Chengdu J-10/ JF-17 in the purest sense but with twin engine jets like F-18/ MiG-29/ Rafale/ Eurofighter the definition gets blurred. twin engine jets regardless of their weight class are inherently more expensive & comparatively difficult to operate and maintain. hence the need for a lightweight fighter vis-a-vis Tejas that fulfills the specified roles without burning a hole in the pocket.
i have some thoughts favoring the Rafale though; mostly geo-political considerations which i would like to elaborate in a future post.
