Closer than Hawaii! This is off-topic for the India thread, but even if Australia isn't useful to the US militarily, denying China an ally (and major supplier of iron/coal) and gaining a vassal that you can milk money from is to the US advantage.
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- Thread starter bd popeye
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Closer than Hawaii! This is off-topic for the India thread, but even if Australia isn't useful to the US militarily, denying China an ally (and major supplier of iron/coal) and gaining a vassal that you can milk money from is to the US advantage.
HELL YEAH!!
By Indian Jets do you mean domestic or are foreign imports also okay?
Hmmm. Good question. I guess they’ll always purchase atleast a generation under us so domestic production.
Give it another two decades and PLAAF could lead by three generations if that's the criteria.
Any idea when the AMCA is gonna be in service or atleast have a fully built prototype?
The prototype is probably some time in 203X. The Tejas took 14 years between first flight to getting into service though. But India is going to get a bit more urgent when the PAF gets their J35s.
In the case of the Indians, urgency has rarely ever translated to results. I wouldn't hold my breath on AMCA development being much faster than Tejas. It may in fact be even slower.
One reason for the constant Tejas delays was attempts to incorporate new technologies during the development process. I believe that there will be substantial advances in technology in the time that AMCA is being developed--moreso than with Tejas--and so AMCA will be developed even slower.
Just you watch: they'll start with a fairly modest proposal of a simple LO fighter with a decent IWB capable of going toe-to-toe with early 5th gens like J-20, F-22, and then by the time the plane enters true serial production twenty to thirty years later, it'll have turned into some sort of CCA-networking hub with an extra seat jammed in, two LF radar antenna embedded in the leading edges of the wing, four different engine iterations (two American, one Russian, and finally one domestic), and asymmetric landing gear because they tried to jam in some EW stuff that would be better suited for a dedicated EW platform.
Oh yeah, that's definitely the most likely outcome. The problem with Indian design feels a lot like the way the USN designs new ships. They come up with a concept, and keep biting off more than they can chew. Making major changes to a design while building it feels like the kind of thing that you'd want to avoid, but not for these guys!
According to this news (link below), the first prototype will be in 2029 and production by 2035. Let's wait and see then.