Only answering to remove some wild misconceptions.
First of all, unlike what some people on Quora want to believe, Tejas is not designed for dogfight, nor for pure Air Combat. The F-16 has an excellent Air combat record of 76 kills – 1 loss, while Tejas is not yet ‘fully operational’, let alone being battle tested.
It’s one thing to ‘look good on paper’, but another to be ‘good in the Air’.
A dogfight is a very rare event with uncertain results. The one who gets the First-shot is likely to be the winner.
In a WVR combat:
Tejas ‘may’ have better instantaneous turn rates due to Delta wing config. However, it’ll significantly bleed energy (speed), and have poor sustained turn rates. Further, it is currently having a weaker engine & lower Thrust/Weight ratio (<1 or barely ~1 with combat load) – resulting in poor performance in close Air combat.
On the other hand, F-16 is a “pure energy” dogfighter. It’ll bleed less energy & have better sustained Turn rates. Further, it’s having much higher Thrust/Weight ratio & greater range on internal fuel – resulting in greater endurance. So not only will it be retaining energy but can also sustain the fight much longer – something Tejas can’t do. (Also F-16 has a +9g airframe compared to +7–8 g limits for Tejas.)
Although modern WVR combat is fought by the HOBS (off-boresight) missiles. Both Tejas & F-16 Block 50/52+ have HMD & HOBS armament. The F-16 has a slight advantage of having better HOBS missile: AIM-9 with 90° off-boresight capability compared to 60° in R-73 (& lack of active development) in Tejas.
However, as said before, the outcome of a close-WVR combat is unpredictable and for this reason, it’s almost non-existing from decades. Today most of the combat takes place BVR.
BVR Combat
Let’s remove some miss-conceptions first.
“Tejas will have first-look on F-16 because it has smaller RCS”
First of all, we don’t have any valid data on Tejas’s RCS and the RCS doesn’t depend purely on the size or composites, there are a lot of factors – neither is designed as a LO aircraft. Secondly the RCS-difference between the two is in-significant and with a combat (external) load, the RCS difference will be negligible.
Interesting to note that the F-16 is usually more ‘clean’ with combat load than Tejas due to tactical importance of carrying external fuel tanks for Tejas. (F-16 has sufficient range with internal fuel + Conformal Fuel Tanks if needed)
“ELTA 2052 AESA radar on board Tejas will pick up F 16 before it can detect Tejas”
This is another assumption without any source to back it up. It’s important to remember that Teja’s radome is smaller than that of F-16’s – a significant design limitation. And the EL/M-2052 radar is mostly designed for F-15 like aircraft (with bigger radome) – so the marketed capabilities are based on radars for those aircraft, not the one for smaller aircraft like Tejas. The EL/M-2052 for Tejas is likely having ~300–500 T/R modules (based on export data of the radar & the fact that Teja’s small radome can’t accommodate larger T/R modules).
Thus, despite being AESA, such low T/R module count is unlikely to give any “significant” superior detection over a larger MSA radar (although it may have certain performance advantage but nothing ‘too big’). The upgraded APG-68v(9) radar in F-16 Block 50/52+ is quite powerful and is likely to have greater (or at worst similar) range than Teja’s radar.
F-16 Block 52+ is also having better RWR, ECMs/EW capabilities and a distinct advantage of F-16 in BVR combat is again it’s armament – AIM-120D it has a substantially bigger engagement envelop: 160 km+ effective range compared to R-77’s max. range of <110 km for Tejas, combined with better avionics (seeker, ECCMs), datalinks & navigation.
Irrespective of who detects the other first, F-16 has the advantage of “First-shot” – and sometimes, that’s all you need.
The LCA Tejas was never designed nor intended to compete with an Air Superiority fighter like F-16, nor is it capable of. It has a different role & no one except some people on the internet, expect it to fight F-16.
Someone Answered this in Quora , This is exactly what I want to tell,9 0 percentage I m agreeing with him .
F16 AN/APG-68 V9 radar has a range up to 296 km. Range for 5m2 aerial targets is 105 km, some sources says 130-150km vs 5m/s
F16 primary AAMs
AIM-9 L Range: 1.0 to 35.4 km, AIM-120C-7- range 105 Km.
EW Systems.
ALQ-131 Block II Electronic Countermeasures Pods.
ALQ-213 Electronic Warfare Management Systems.
Both EW systems are capable
TEJAS.
Air-to-air missiles:
Astra
I Derby Not Yet
R-73
ASRAAM expected
EL/M-2052 AESA for Mk1A only Range 290 Km. 150 Km for 1or 2 M2 RCS (not Sure )
Mk1 uses ELM 2032 Range - 150KM???Nit sure
UTTAM : 2m2 150 kilometers
EW :- Elta 8200 External Jamming pod
RCS.
Tejas 0.5 without Weapons , with Weapons 2.5 to 3.5 , AAM has typically 0.1 M2 RCS , Carrying 8 Missiles Increases RCS, but how much ???
RCS of F16 C 50/52 - 1.2 M2 With external Weapons ?? Possibly 4-4.5
Note:- most of the Figures are recollected from my memory so need to check
