HAL Tejas point defence fighter

After the Tejas Mk2 comes out, it'll have better overall performance & 11 hardpoints with a capacity of around 6.5 tons, leaving the JF-17 Block 2 in the dust.

Not meaning any disrespect but the number of weapon pylons and payload weight is what children look for to say which is coolest.

The idea of a numbers aircraft is to have more aircraft so having lots of pylons a bit redundant.

Any aircraft is going to fly like a dog with weapons and equipment and fuel on 11 pylons weighing almost 7 tons... real life is not like video games where you take on ground targets with 4 weapons and then 6 enemy aircraft and you still have one missile left... odds are if you are at max weight with drag from 11 pylons and the weapons on them if you meet an enemy fighter your first action will be to dump most of those weapons so you can fight.

Don't get me wrong... lots of pylons and heavy weight weapon loads can be useful after the enemy air power has been dealt with when you are supporting your ground troops, but let me just say that the MiG-21 that these aircraft types are replacing was very successful and they only had 5 weapon pylons and about a 2 ton payload capacity.

Only reason for SSJ was piss poor PR attempt to make westerners happy

The SSJ was filled with western avionics and components because it was supposed to appeal to countries in the western market that were used to such avionics already and wanted commonality.

It has since become clear that in commerce the west wont fight fair so all Russian components are developed and will now compete with those western components that the users of the aircraft are unlikely to use now...

A bit like Mistral... the Russians will be happy to sell Ka-52K helicopters to Egypt and any other country considering a similar ship to the Mistral might consider the new 40K ton Russian helicopter carriers as a better solution to their problems... will almost certainly be cheaper to start with...

Just another case of western sanctions creating competition for themselves.

Most to of them will be armed with long, short, &/ medium range AAMs + ECM/recon pods;

Exactly... on a normal mission most pylons will be empty and the ones being used will be no where near max capacity... normal load for an F-16 might be two external fuel tanks two laser guided bomb and perhaps four AMRAAMs and two Sidewinders, despite the fact that they could carry a lot more.

If you find you are carrying external fuel tanks for every mission then you probably really wanted a bigger aircraft with more internal fuel.

In other news, riding on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Make in India” wave, France’s Dassault Aviation has shown its eagerness to make Rafale fighter jets in India , provided the volume is high enough.
The Diplomatic Advisor to the French President, Emmanuel Bonne, who is in India, has come with an offer from the French government to make at least 100 Rafale fighters in India, ThePrint reported.

Hahahahahahaha.... fucken hilarious considering the Rafale won an Indian competition for a fighter they were going to make 126 of, with 16 made in the source country and the rest assembled in India.

You can bet your arse it wont be a 10 billion dollar programme though...

What capabilities are those? JF-17 is in no way more advanced than the Tejas MK 1A except for slightly better service ceiling and range. Tejas is intentionally made to have aerodynamically unstable design (tailless cropped compound delta wing design) for achieving better maneuverability. While JF-17 isn't that much aerodynamically unstable (tailed cropped delta wing design). Tejas has 3 axis Digital Fly-By-Wire (roll, yaw & pitch) while JF-17 only have pitch axis digital FBW and not digital in other two axes. Tejas’ control law is one of the bests in the world in general. Tejas has On-board Oxygen Generator System, which means unlimited oxygen supply, while JF-17 have an oxygen tank with 3 hours of oxygen supply. Tejas has HMD/S, a crucial technology for utilizing High Off-boresight (means ability to target another aircraft by just looking at it as the flight parameters are present on the helmet visor), which greatly helps during dogfight. JF-17 still doesn't have it. Even JF-17 Block II doesn't have an AESA radar.

See... this is the problem... all these features you list sound important, but unless the aircraft is in production and service it means nothing... and just makes them more expensive.

Why does it need to be super manouverable AND have high off boresight weapons capability for instance?

It makes more sense to keep it simple... add features that add useful performance without increasing costs.... a small light cheap fighter does not need a super expensive radar... most of the time it wont use its own radar anyway.

Tejas has FADEC based engine which is an advanced feature where engine is controlled and monitored by computer. JF-17′s engine don't have FADEC and it also increases the chance of crash because the pilot won't know engine’s health.

Who told you that? This is just silly. Engine management systems have been around for quite some time and given the choice having one is a good thing, but having one on a plane you can't fly yet is useless and makes it more expensive.

How much progress JF-17 Block III will make depends upon how much technology China can siphon off from Russia. Last heard they were stealing military secrets from Russian scientist Valery Mitko, President of Arctic Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg

Everybody learns new technology from anywhere they can get it... that is just normal.

Once an aircraft is in production then at the factory floor they upgrade production and design and it creates a feedback loop that helps design and development so developers can hear from operators what they want and what works well and what is not worth the effort...

Indian were stupid and overwhelmed at that time so they lost.

It is important they realise this and make some fundamental changes to prevent the same mistakes from happening again.

Investigations should not be witch hunts, they should be about working out what actually happened and why and what can you do so it does not happen again.

Tejas has enormous potential, but many a light cheap plane design has been ruined by mission creep where it ends up not being cheap and not being simple...

You could go super light and have say a Yak-130 or even F-5 with their light cheap twin engines replaced with a single engine like an RD-33 or something, but they would probably be too light to be useful on a modern battlefield.

I have said several times that a simple but well equipped aircraft like a MIG-29M/2 would be a good basis standard multirole fighter... you can use it for air to air and air to ground and buy them in enormous numbers... if you find you need better equipment on it there is plenty of room for upgrades right up the MiG-35 level for now and in the future LMFS level too.

But obviously I am biased.

Now single engines are multirole so everything a su-35 can do can also be done by a jf-17. They have the same systems which cost just as much to develop and produce and can do the same missions. The small single engine will just carry less weapons and fuel.

I agree with what you are basically saying but the much bigger aircraft can carry bigger more powerful engines and bigger more powerful radar and there is more internal space for all sorts of things that might need to be carried externally by the smaller aircraft.

The point is that that small aircraft is going to spend most of its operational life carrying external fuel tanks to give it decent range... I personally think instead of making the plane quite so small you could make it bigger... like a MiG-29M2 so the fuel can be internal most of the time... obviously some times you will need external fuel tanks and even inflight refuelling, but a MiG will spend more time carrying weapons rather than the extra fuel it should have carried internally if it was better designed.

Different targeting and navigation pods can be carried too but they can be carried by big and small aircraft...

The single engine aircraft has one engine less but that's not even 10% of total price.

Exactly... I think a lot of people think having to service two engines on a plane means a twin engined fighter has double the maintenance of a single engined fighter, but it really depends on the engine itself.

The F-5 is an excellent little light fighter and it has two engines. A bit obsolete now, but two small cheap engines can save more money than one bigger much more powerful engine that would be needed to replace it.

An su-27 can be made half as cheap as a normal su-35. Nowadays the size doesn't really impact the price. It's the technologies used inside that really make its price.

The theory of High/Low would be Russia having one quarter their air fleet being Su-35s and Su-30s, and three quarters of their fleet MiG-29M2s being modern and capable and fully multirole where the Su-35s operate on their own or with Su-57s for long range stuff and for closer range stuff an Su-30 with Su-35 systems and avionics being the mini AWACS radar leader of a flight of MiG-29M2s who operate with their radars off most of the time.

What seems to be happening is that they are buying MiG-35s instead of MiG-29M2s so saving money on cheap planes does not seem to be what they are planning.

If you plan to make a small single engine with multirole capabilities that will be just as expensive as a su-35 then just scale it up to really have a plateform that will allow you to efficiently use your systems.

I think going small is a mistake too... it is not going to be a lot cheaper because the radar and avionics and the really powerful engine you are going to have to fit will make it expensive anyway... you just wont have any room for enough internal fuel for it to fly anywhere so it will always be carrying several external fuel tanks.

That is why I think taking a medium sized fighter and dumbing it down... a good multifunction radar can be a cheaper PESA with all the advantages of an AESA in terms of electronic scanning but without the cost... a medium sized plane can have more internal fuel so external pylons carry weapons and pods which reduces drag because external fuel tanks are big and heavy when full and counter half the fuel they contain by reducing flight performance.

I would leave the light fighter to drones to be honest... but I think the Tejas could be a useful fighter but they need to focus on making it cheaper and simpler rather than a super high tech super fighter to match anything made anywhere else.

It should be a capable light bomb truck that can defend itself... its best feature is its low operating costs which result in India building 700 of them...

It could, bun it will hardly happened. PAF proved in Balakot clash, that their air force works smoothly. PAF will not send single JF-17, but they will work in group and JF-17 is well data link networked to share picture between them and they work together with ZDK-03 AWACS. They will be well aware of Tejas jets in the air and AWACS will bring them in proper position to engage them and not to fall in trap. IAF have few AWACS planes, but their jets don't have data links and their ultra modern AFNET show to be a total mess. Indian problem is not in planes, but in their structure and ilogical decisions.

They certainly need to work on communication... made a problem by having so many different aircraft for the same role from different countries.

The new Brahmos long range AAM for anti AWACS use is a good positive step in the right direction, but undermining their communication is no substitute for not having your own working communications system in place.

That image with the fixed inflight refuelling probe honestly makes the Tejas look like a single engined attempt to copy the Rafale...