Yes, the Korean T/FA-50 is too. Flying a single F404 is basically a trainer for Korea with a secondary light/COIN attack role (reserved for trainers marketed as "fighters.")
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Yes, the Korean T/FA-50 is too. Flying a single F404 is basically a trainer for Korea with a secondary light/COIN attack role (reserved for trainers marketed as "fighters.")
Tejas Mk1A is supposed to be employed for various roles (BVR, short-range dogfighting, and precision ground-attack etc etc).
Was Mig-21 ever conceptually defined for such diverse roles? No
China, Russia, US have a different operational geography and different doctrine.
India shares its borders with adversaries and has perhaps a different requirement for combat readiness. Maintaining a lightweight Mk1A workhorse goes in their favour.
"Still continue to be born". Stillborn was also true, but doctors with expensive western medicine, after years of efforts, saved the baby.
Gripen E/F - which is also a new aircraft, distinctive from JAS-39C/D in role and development path. (basically what Tejas mk.2 wants to be)
F-50(single seater) - should fly next year. And overall this entire block 20 effort.
Plus deep upgrades of all heavier 4/4.5 gen platforms, which appear again and again in pipeline till 2030.
All new "trainers" on F404.
Only original T-50s were, and they were just a half-step to FA-50. Which in KAF(and many other air forces) replaces F-5, and effectively forms one of strike legs of entire air force. In Polish airforce it even /partially/ replaced Su-22M4(it's technically split between in and f-35)!
Overall, FA-50 is so trainer there's literally a dedicated cruise missile in development. Just for it specifically.
Mig-21 from day 1 carried bombs and rockets, and was always used in swing attack role once in a while.
Tejas was born 60 years later, of course it does things which weren't really on a light fighter list in the late 1950s.
But overall, strike capability of mk.1 in all variants was secondary from get go (unlike mk.2, which was built around it), and due to overweight it's worse than it appears.
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It is a point defense fighter as dictated by its size and the power of its engine that limits its load and range versus larger types. It is tied to its air base. It is an obsolete role in this day and age.
The Tejas played absolutely no part in the May 7th to 10th because there is no role for a point defense fighter unless the enemy is at your base's door step.
Now India can build air bases even closer to the Pakistani border if it insists in giving the Tejas something to do.
There was absolutely nothing size-related that prevented Tejas from being operational in Sindoor. Kashmir isn't a big theater, and bloody mig-21s(and F-7s) operated there just fine for over 60 years. So do absolutely similar FC-17s, and rather range constrained J-10Cs.
They have sufficient range in intercept profile, they have it in huge excess in strike configurations with FTs.
Tejas didn't play part because it wasn't there. They're deployed on the opposite part of the country. Why is another thing, which can be broadly summarized as "why do that". FOC mk.1s aren't exactly reliable warhorses, nor they bring in any desirable capability aircraft already in western theater don't have.
If anything, they lack them.
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I resent this post as Tejas will clearly be the first 7th Gen fighter and have 4 heavy engines. It will carry 10 hypersonic missiles that can each circumnavigate the world ten times as a flex before independently detecting, targeting, and chasing down even the J-50 with no AWAC, ground based radar, or satellite involved. China's rise will be over, Pakistan will be conquered, and the US will kneel to beg for India to take more H-1Bs.
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Lethe
Captain
I actually think there is a lot of room to question just how India* arrives at its "requirements". One gets the distinct impression that examining shiny brochures from Lockheed Martin plays a rather larger role in this process than it should, not least of all because many of these "requirements" serve to effectively block indigenous solutions -- indeed, one suspects that this may be at least partly intentional. The fantastical target characteristics associated with a future Indian "Stealth UCAV" that @ACuriousPLAFan noted a few weeks back are a recent case in point, but there are more mundane examples. As Prodyut Das has , why is supercruise a sine qua non for AMCA?
* And everyone else. Like "interests", "requirements" are far more elastic than they purport to be. Douglas Adams once wrote that time is an illusion, and lunchtime doubly so. I would borrow this to say that requirements are an illusion, Indian requirements doubly so.
The idea that IAF would have been operating squadrons of LCA Mk. 1As by now if not for the incompetent and/or duplicitous Americans is a fantasy. The engine delivery delays are obviously real, but they are also a convenient cover to obscure delays elsewhere in the development, certification, and production chains. ACM A.P. Singh called HAL out on this at Aero India 2025 (switch to original audio track). Even with engines now beginning to trickle in, a new problem has been discovered regarding integration of Astra missile with Elta radar. Quelle surprise.
Would it have been better for India to have conceived, in the 1980s, an aircraft to be powered with the engine technology either on hand or sufficiently behind that times that vendors would be more willing to part with underlying technologies? Of course. Other then-exotic technologies such as fly-by-wire and composites should also never have been part of the initial LCA. The mistakes of the past are legion. But that is not to say that there was no thought given to failure: As the engine selected to power the LCA development program from the very beginning, F404 was always the obvious backup against the failure of Kaveri and, leaving the astonishing fact that it survived the post-Pokhran II sanctions regime aside, it has performed its role as such.
F414 for Mk. 2 and AMCA is a little trickier, in that it is the highest thrust engine in its general class, which reduces the scope for substitution. In that case, redundancy must come more at the broader inventory level: that indigenous programs are so heavily exposed to the United States implies that India should be wary of further deepening that dependency via direct acquisition of American combat aircraft, and indeed India has to date steered clear of proposals for F-16IN, Super Hornet, F-15EX and, most recently, F-35. It also suggests the wisdom of exploring alternate engine technology paths with other players such as Rolls Royce or Safran, and we have seen that too. Nonetheless, it is worth noting that EJ200 was deemed suitable as an alternate engine for LCA Mk. 2, and that the M88 development roadmap now encompasses a variant that may also be suitable for LCA Mk. 2. Given that switching engines would be far from a trivial exercise, India will almost certainly stick with the incumbent F414 unless Washington actually embargoes the engine, but that is not to say that India has no other options.
Note that the case against over-dependency on any single vendor nation also applies to Russia, particularly in the 2000s and 2010s in the wake of the mega Su-30MKI deal, and I suspect that is one of the ingredients behind Russia's apparent exclusion from the engine discussion to date, as it certainly was for MMRCA.
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Yep, with current discussions it's visible how India wants to hedge between 3 vendords.
I can totally agree the requirements that the Indians laid out are basically far over their indigenous capabilities. But that actually highlights my point, that the Indians are all talk and no substance, for the most part they just want all the new and shiny things, without regards for their capabilities or position in negotiations. Their demands for ToT further complicates any negotiations they enter and basically compromising the needs of their situation.
They just focus on the wants, without paying the price (be it research or financial). They don’t pay attention or prioritise their needs (ie the modernisation of their airforce). They don’t understand or overestimate their hand.
In this regard, I think you have missed my point concerning the American engines. I am not suggesting that, if not for the failures or possible malicious intent of the Americans, the Indians would somehow have a fleets of LCA or some other aircraft. This is just an indication of the deeper problems with the Indians themselves.
The entire effort behind the LCA and Kaveri was to indigenise the combat aviation sector of India as well as to prevent India from being too reliant on foreign providers. So having laid out the objective of the programs, the fact that they went into business of designing an aircraft where the backup plan is to buy engines from a foreign supplier kind of defeats the whole exercise and shows that even the goals of the programs were problematic to begin with. They shouldn’t really have begun the program given the level of uncertainty with the main power plant of the fighter and actually just focus on the power plant itself.
However, given that they went ahead anyway got the programs started, they should have either cancelled or placed the program on hold when it was clear that the intended power plant was not going to be ready or got the Kaveri into a usable state regardless of the standard or requirement and begun some level of production while continuing the developments of both, this would have helped far more towards the goal of indigenisation and development. As for the MK2, it simply shouldn’t even exist until the original LCA was completed to an acceptable standard.
Finally, you will get no argument from me regarding the over-dependency issue, it is not a good thing period. But you misunderstand my point again, working with the Russians or using the Russian base in developing the engines is all about learning the core technologies while have a base line to work from. You have to start somewhere, deliberately choosing to completely reinvent the wheel from scratch based on some arbitrary requirements because other people have been able to achieve it, is ridiculous logic when you are not forced into the situation.
If they had some working knowledge base, then using other procurement programs such as MMRCA to diversify while gaining other perspective would have arguably propelled their program to advance far more than what it is now. Instead, they are still at the stage of demanding complete ToT, while their position in the negotiations is getting worst by the year. The vendors aiming for contracts are not idiots that would sell you the holy grail knowing full well you don’t have the ability to develop it.
Conversely, if the vendors know or get even the inkling that the Indians were close to developing their own stuff, then a ToT might actually be on the table, since, if they don’t milk this cow now, there might be no more milk in the future.
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What opposite? It's deployed right on the Pak border. Naliya AFS is 90km away from the border, housing the Tejas No. 18 Squadron. This is where India was lobbing Brahmos into Sindh sector.
