When there is a will, there is a way.
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- Thread starter bd popeye
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When there is a will, there is a way.
Cautionary tale for any country with large economy but no competitive domestic industry. If LCA was more competent, IAF would be able to fill numbers with it instead of more MKIs. India's defense procurement process is really broken. Even much worse than the generally wasteful US Navy procurement process.
It does make me wonder how even this order can go through given Russia's defense industry crunch for the foreseeable future. Although with India taking a pro-Russia stance, they will probably try to accommodate India as much as possible.
Russian military industry has huge capacity. Just look at T-90 tank production not just for sales to Russian armed forces but also export sales including whole units and knock-down part kits. Russia sold more T-90 tanks to Algeria than the ones they operate. There is similar huge capacity for fighters. And this conflict thus far has led to limited Russian fighter aircraft losses. Most Russian aircraft losses were helicopters and even then these were usually older models.
Why not?
Irkut isn't exactly overloaded, Russian and Indian parts of the plane are essentially invulnerable to sanctions, and whatever is sanctionable in MKI can be simply sourced directly to India.
Also, LCA is like 1/3 the size of Su-30MKI.
What did they do with 6% GDP defense budget?
Tanks aren't the expensive items on the Russian defense budget. Those are things like nuclear submarines and strategic weapons.
You could probably buy 2000 tanks with the price of one of their attack submarines.
Or two or three times that amount if you upgrade T-72 tanks to T-72B3M standard instead.
Fighter bombers are way more expensive than tanks of course. But still nowhere near the price of a nuclear submarine.
And Russia hasn't even lost half a dozen fighter bombers in this conflict yet.
Most expensive losses thus far were helicopter losses I think.
You could probably buy 2000 tanks with the price of one of their attack submarines.
Or two or three times that amount if you upgrade T-72 tanks to T-72B3M standard instead.
Fighter bombers are way more expensive than tanks of course. But still nowhere near the price of a nuclear submarine.
And Russia hasn't even lost half a dozen fighter bombers in this conflict yet.
Most expensive losses thus far were helicopter losses I think.
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What does lca size have anything to do with it? J10c routinely kicks flanker butt despite being half the size. I am actually not thinking about irkut but rather the engine suppliers. I am not sure how much India has been able to localize al31fp production. Russia probably will have to really increase production of al31 for its own air force to defend against NATO presence.
Well, size means that Su-30mki comfortably carries inside as much fuel as the whole LCA combat weight.
At the same time, it can carry yet another full LCA under its wings in weaponry. Or, more importantly, it can carry something like the maximum weapon load of a light fighter w/o any significant effect on its performance. Or carry singular heavy payloads which light aircraft can't even hope to meaningfully employ (or, dunno, some medium-weight fighter, which is too dependant on large fuel tanks).
All the same reasons which make J-16 so popular in PLAAF, even if MKI is an older aircraft.
There is nothing wrong with light fighters being capable to fight heavy fighters - it always was this way, or else there is no point in such a light fighter (say, fulcrums always could take on flankers ... if fight happened close enough to their airfield). The problem is the margins.