I am very healthy but my natural lifespan is not long enough to see an actual full development cycle of an actual indian weapon system and their deluded preening about being 3rd strongest AF in the world is just nuclear-level-copium by indians/BJP after the globally known stinging defeat by PAF (look closer on who wrote the article-it'll be outed as a jaihind)
Indian Military News, Reports, Data, etc.
- Thread starter bd popeye
- Start date
Also, let's be fair - people have to chose what to bash Indians for. Either it's (lack of)persistence, or (lack of) capability.
If we bash India for still not having LCA capability, the obvious answer would've been buying, say, Gripen, which SAAB tried quite hard. Which is magnificent, and it's way more aircraft than Tejas will be anytime soon (kill both mk.1a and future mk.2 with better aircraft, right now); it's a very painful choice to maintain especially in retrospect - as, well, it'd have kept JF-17 suppresed, rather than balance breaker it is in actual life. But all of these niceties is an antithesis to developing independent industry. Indian one, Sweden of course would've been making happy noises, praising Indian democracy louder than Baltics criticize it.
Aka, from industrial perspective, it's Su-30mki all over again. LCA is best possible niche to let domestic industry just suffer it through. Especially since it already appears quite likely that neither medium nor heavy sets are to be covered domestically: impending Rafale decision doesn't spell anything good for AMCA or TEDBA. No matter what Indians themselves say.
If we bash India for still not having LCA capability, the obvious answer would've been buying, say, Gripen, which SAAB tried quite hard. Which is magnificent, and it's way more aircraft than Tejas will be anytime soon (kill both mk.1a and future mk.2 with better aircraft, right now); it's a very painful choice to maintain especially in retrospect - as, well, it'd have kept JF-17 suppresed, rather than balance breaker it is in actual life. But all of these niceties is an antithesis to developing independent industry. Indian one, Sweden of course would've been making happy noises, praising Indian democracy louder than Baltics criticize it.
Aka, from industrial perspective, it's Su-30mki all over again. LCA is best possible niche to let domestic industry just suffer it through. Especially since it already appears quite likely that neither medium nor heavy sets are to be covered domestically: impending Rafale decision doesn't spell anything good for AMCA or TEDBA. No matter what Indians themselves say.
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It would be enough if India could talk less and do more, but this is obviously impossible.
It's still a young nation (by age) with rapidly increasing literacy/internet penetration, and is probably well above western average in terms of how compromised politics are (i.e. how changing talking heads affect things, for better or worse). It's impossible indeed.
Better skip Indian commentary soup and look more at actual developments and substance.