Indian Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

ZeEa5KPul said:

Not that this idiocy should be entertained, but China has 200+ fifth generation fighters. India has how many?

Click to expand...

It would be a waste of energy to review why the Indian military would get crushed. The point I want to make is understanding the Indian mind. Indians are very prone to making grand self-assessments. They genuinely believe India will become a superpower in 20 years. So, if India and China are equal great powers, border each other, and have a dispute then confrontation is inevitable. India sees itself as preparing for the future of dual superpower confrontation by since 2009 massively upgrading its force levels and infrastructure along the boundary leading to the current Ladakh confrontation.

There is one strategy insight that can be gathered from my observation about Indian grand self assessments. The pathway to peace with India is to persuade them their future is bleak. Remind them they are still growing only modestly fast and are 50 years behind China. It will take them until the 2070s to get to the GDP per capita of China in 2021 (inflation adjusted).

beijing_bandar said:

Ashley Tellis, an Indian-born American strategist specialing in China and India writes:

Link:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

The footnote supporting his claim of significant Indian conventional military advantages is from Frank O’Donnell and Alex Bollfrass, The Strategic Postures of China and India: A Visual Guide (Cambridge: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, 2020).

Click to expand...

That piece from Frank O'Donnel and Alex Bollfrass is some pure garbage lmao.

At the end of the day though, one does wonder how much those pieces and the likes actually influence decision making in India.

Michaelsinodef said:

That piece from Frank O'Donnel and Alex Bollfrass is some pure garbage lmao.

At the end of the day though, one does wonder how much those pieces and the likes actually influence decision making in India.

Click to expand...

Putin's decision to invade Ukraine certainly illustrates that the "garbage in, garbage out" problem is not limited to India. Indeed, structuring intelligence, analysis and decision-making structures so as to avoid confirmation bias and groupthink and to welcome "red team" and skeptical input strikes me as one of the most urgent priorities for any nation having to make serious decisions on strategic or foreign policy matters.

Really? ... they are not really planning to develop a Mirage F1 or Marut-like aircraft in the 21st century??

It will again end in long delays, less performance and higher cost than competitors like the T-50, T-7, Hürjet, which are in a similar class I suspect even more when the Tejas is more or less in the same class too!

Why again such a waste of resources?

Deino said:

Really? ... they are not really planning to develop a Mirage F1 or Marut-like aircraft in the 21st century??

It will again end in long delays, less performance and higher cost than competitors like the T-50, T-7, Hürjet, which are in a similar class I suspect even more when the Tejas is more or less in the same class too!

Why again such a waste of resources?

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1554106800059715584

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1600049288419356672

Click to expand...

There is no suggestion of IAF interest in the attached or other results I can find. Seems like HAL just spinning its wheels. The references to the Marut reminded me of the writings of Professor Prodyut Das, who suggested the aircraft as an alternative to the failed Tejas.

I think most of the highest profile defence development programs in India are carry overs from the pre-Modi administrations. Programs like the Tejas, Arjun, Brahmos, Arihant, Kolkata, and Vikrant have all started development long before Modi came into power.

Since Modi came into power, we have been hearing about the development of the Bukhari space heater, electric Trishula, new hand grenade, DRDO camels, etc. Apart from that, there is a surge of imports branded as "Indian origin".

This latest HLFT-42 program appears to be a recycle of the HAL Marut. So in my opinion, Indian defence R&D has actually regressed since Modi took power. The Modi government has encouraged a "religion over science" mentality, and the effects are slowly coming to the surface.

Actually I think there is another reason. They are trying to make a indigenous jet which uses a domestic engine.
This is no T-50, T-7 or Hürjet trainer. This is a Q-5 equivalent.
They want to soft-restart by building their own jet from the ground up.
They have finally realised the depth of the errors in their original plans for development and have decided to straight up copy what China has done since the 1960s every step of the way. It makes sense, India's aviation industry right now is really hopeless. Being where China's aviation industry was in 1970 would be an improvement for India currently. China's aviation industry in 2020 is better than any realistic projection for India's for the next half century. They've finally realised have no actual useful experience actually designing and building a plane from the ground up and that the cooperation they received from foreign countries is actually a slow acting poison.

The designation for trainer aircraft is a fig leaf. It's to hide India's attempt to shake off dependencies on foreign countries from the countries currently in control of crucial technology. Otherwise the United States, Europe and Russia will all work together to snuff the project in it's crib along with it's critical team members.

Here we have some "wild" dreams again...

Deino said:

Here we have some "wild" dreams again...

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1601433915922997249

Click to expand...

So what is your realistic prediction for launch time? 10-15 years?