Indian Air Force (IAF): News

DRDO chief Dr. Samir V Kamat confirms the trials and testing of Rudram-2 series of hypersonic air to surface missiles. The max range of Rudram -2 is 300km and top speed is Mach 5.5

The Indian Air Force received the first Airbus C295MW military transport aircraft




https://bmpd.livejournal.com/4750767.html

Mi-26 helicopters of the IAF will undergo a major overhaul with Russian assistance

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/india/grounded-for-years-iaf-set-to-overhaul-mi-26-copters-at-chandigarh-airbase-with-russian-assistance-567798

This is a very sophisticated prototype with serpentine air intake, fluidic thrust vector control, tailless design and full ATOL capability.

If such a UCAV is fielded by India on the India-China border a larger portion of the advantage that China currently enjoys by virtue of deploying the J-20 stealth fighter will be eroded.

After checking some info related to the MiG -UTS intermediate trainer and to the Indian HAL HJT-36 Sitara, a single engine intermediate jet  trainer powered by the Saturn AL-55 and similar in size to the L39, to the Mig-UTS and to the M345, I read that they are also working on the HAL HLFT-42 (Hindustan Lead-in Fighter Trainer – 42).

Apparently this is a single engine supersonic  fighter trainer currently under development by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited. 

Designed as a next-generation supersonic trainer jet, serving as an advanced trainer for upcoming HAL Tejas Mk2 and HAL AMCA, to replace the british hawk, now in service in india as advanced trainer.

What I can't understand is why India is making a single engine trainer so big and heavy.
I understand  that they want to have it be available also as a fully fledged fighter jet, but would probably only complicate the requirements and make it too expensive as a trainer. Furthermore they have no duel engine trainer.

This proposed trainer is much larger and heavier than the chino-pakistani JF-17 fighter jet and almost as big as an F-16. Does it make sense?

Note: the Su-75 Checkmate is also planned to have a max takeoff weight of about 18 tons...

Crew: 2
Length: 52 ft 6 in (16 m)
Wingspan: 29 ft 6 in (9 m)
Height: 15 ft 1 in (4.6 m)
Max takeoff weight: 36,376 lb
 (16,500 kg)

If it continues like that India later will possibly sober up and either ask licence production of Yak-130 or buy the M346 from Italy (provided that they at least manage to get the Hal Sitara intermediate trainer in serial production).

They are mixing up requirements for different types of aircrafts. 

At the end it will end up being too expensive as a trainer and the intermediate trainers like the Sitara, the M345 or the MiG-UTS are not made to be ideal for Lead-in fighter training, which requires to be able emulate operational fighter planes, in order to provide efficient training in combat scenarios.

So using advanced trainers like Yak-130 or M-346 allow to reduce training costs compared to moving straight to operational conversion.

But if the advanced trainer is already an aircraft with size and capabilities (and production and operating costs) similar to an F-16, this defeats the purpose.

Furthermore India has also a large fleet of twin engine fighters.

Have to agree with you, though in a sense this aircraft would become a non stealthy aircraft below the Tegas so it would be an expensive LIFT, it might be a cheap light fighter in comparison.

I agree with your view that twin engined makes more sense even if most of their fighters were not twin engined aircraft an important part of training is managing a multi engined aircraft... things like emergency engine shutdowns and restarts etc.

Maybe they should be looking at the SR-10... but cheap light and simple should be the focus when looking at training aircraft, because you want them to be cheap and simple enough to use in flying clubs where possible, which is why the Yak-52 was so popular, and as the population become more affluent over time the L39 was used as a civilian private jet too.

It is good to learn from experience but the genius learns from the experience of others and avoids mistakes rather than trying to learn from them after making them.

Indian Air Force to purchase $650 million worth of new engines for Mig 29.

They didn't mention which new engines are these.

Indian Air Force approves the production of 200 Astra Mark 1 missiles.

https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/indian-air-force-navy-drdo-bdl-astra-missile-tejas-2576878-2024-08-05

RAM developed by DRDO

Indian Mig-29 tracking a Pakistani vector. Real image.

Awesome find.

Datalink shows what looks like a friendly in blue number 12 while the mig 29 is 13.

TMA1 wrote:Awesome find.

Thanks! But not mine. HAL uploaded this image.

Isos wrote:Datalink shows what looks like a friendly in blue number 12 while the mig 29 is 13.

The Pakistani  fighter is designated FTR

Is the mig29upg capable of using the aster missile? The zhuk radar is russian but I know that the sukhoi's radar was set up to work with the aster missile.

With that air to air missile the upgraded mig29 fighters are pretty much on par with block 50 f16 fighters. Thd rafales and sukhois can deal with the j10c fighfers.

It uses r-77 radar just like first versions of pl-12.

TMA1 wrote:Is the mig29upg capable of using the aster missile?

They are capable of firing the Astra-MK1.

Trials with Astra-MK2 are ongoing.

The Indians have taken care to make sure weapons are compatible to suitable aircraft, so a western fighter can use Russian or Soviet weapons and vice versa.

Fundamentally it should not be that hard as modern ARH missiles just require a datalink and some basic information before launch and said datalink to communicate any important information later on.

So for instance an R-77 needs the coordinates of where it is now and where the calculated intercept point will be (ie where it will turn on its own radar and scan for the target itself to get a lock). You launch the missile and it flys to the interception location and you periodically check the position of the target to make sure it hasn't drastically changed its speed or altitude or direction... if it has a new interception point is transmitted to the missile in flight so it might change its trajectory a little and continues to the new intercept point. When it gets close enough it will turn on its own radar and finish the job itself.

Compatibility basically comes down to what information does it require before flight and in what format, and what information does it need in flight to deal with a manouvering target. An aircraft target that is manouvering hard might just lead to the launch aircraft directing the missile to a guessed location where the width and range of the missiles seeker will allow it to at least find the target when it starts looking. Most of the time you want the target to be directly in front of your missile so it doesn't have to perform extreme manouvers to chase the target as that uses up energy.

Think of it in terms of adding hardware to a PC computer, you might use physical adapters... like a plug that allows a USB cable to attach to a Lightning connector of an Apple product, so you can use PC hard drives and USB memory sticks instead of renting cloud space from Apple for your photos and videos. You still need an app to use the hardware, but that makes things easier because the App can be a backup system based programme for storing things one whatever you plug in.

Adapters and drivers for computers are not a lot different for aircraft... where you have pylons and data connectors, and of course the software to communicate with the aircrafts systems.