Ever hear of aerial refueling and buddy stores. The HAL Tejas has air to air refueling capabilities.
Come on Jeff, you know I know of buddy refueling, let's not play games.
But having IFR capabilities does not change the fact the LCA has very short range. Even with IFR, its range cannot be extended that much, especially with buddy refuelling since the buddy LCA doing the fueling doesn't have all that much fuel to spare to start with.
As we have discussed before, many single engine aircraft have worked very well off of the decks of carriers. This is not an issue.
Did I say its an issue? I said a single engined aircraft is inherently more risky than a twin engined aircraft to operate off of carriers. Surely that's not a particularly controversial position to take?
Nice strawman Wolf, but the fact remains that the Indians currently have had the Harrier. The Tejas will be a better attack aircraft than the Harrier. Irrespective of your use of the Speical Olympics in such a way to make your point. Actually using the Speical Olympics in such a way, IMHO, is disrespectful to anyone who has either been disabled, or anyone who has kids or relatives who are, and uses that event to better themselves.
Just what strawman was I making? I am genuinely perplexed. My point is that using the harrier as a benchmark is setting the bar pretty low, considering the actual age of the harrier, and even then the harrier hardly represents the cutting edge of aerodynamic performance of its time since the harrier was designed for VTOL as its primary objective with all other major characteristics suffering in order to accommodate that primary requirement.
As for the Special Olympics bit, well, for one I cannot possibly claim credit for coining that term as it is pretty well known. I must confess to never have bothered to actually google the exact meaning, but I always understand it as intending to mock people who set ridiculously easy goals with little inherent meaning, like an able bodied person competing and winning in the Special Olympics. It was just a light hearted asside which I thought as being amusingly appropriate to the situation at hand. It was most certainly never meant to insulting or be disparaging towards disabled people. I am a little surprised you would interpret it such.
The Indians built the LCA themselves. It is not a waste. It gives the Indians a lot of flexibility.
Just when did I say the LCA was a waste? You even quoted the part of me saying the Indians should have put it into mass production ASAP.
The US used the A-4 Skyhawk effectively for many, many years...and the Brazilians still use it today off of their carrier. As a multi-role aircraft the Tejas is superior.
How old is the A4 again? And unless the Indians plan on invading Brazil, using the A4 as benchmark is again setting the bar pointlessly low when the world and all of India's real peers and rivals have moved on to far more modern and capable platforms. Is it not a little bit telling that you have never actually compared the LCA to any of them?
No, it is very practical. This is an aircraft that can perform the attack role and a CAP role for the Indian carriers that they have built themselves, while sacrificing little room for their Mig-29Ks. They could easily have 16-18 Mig-29Ks and 6-8 Tejas and still operate their AEW and SAR helos.
Well, with all due respect, but saying something can do this and that is rather meaningless. You can use a WWII Hellcat for attack and CAP, does not mean doing so is a great idea. Same thing applies to the LCA, sure you can use it for strike and CAP, but in light of India's other options, and indeed the aircraft it would actually have to give up having onboard their carriers to make room for those few LCAs, well, it does not really seem like all that great a trade off.
I think you would struggle even amongst the most hardcore of Indian military fanboys to find many who would trade 4-6 Mig29Ks for 6-8 LCAs never mind a similar trade between LCAs and Rafales.
Now, you and others have made a great point about the Rafale possibly not being able to fit the Vikra's elevators without folding wings. But I think that merely highlights another major design deficiency with the Vikra (and one one would hope they did not replicate on their indigenous carriers) and India's terrible procurement procedures rather than any real fault the Rafale or my argument that it would make a far superior carrier fighter than the LCA.
But even if worse comes to worse and the new indigenous Indian carriers also have the Vikra's decidedly odd and limiting elevator set up, surely it would be cheaper and faster by far to commission the French to retrofit folding wings on the Indian Rafale-Ms rather than redesign the LCA for carrier ops.
You of all people should know the kind of massive undertaking and challenges it would be to redesign a land based fighter for carrier ops. Are you really going to honestly say that you think it makes any sort of sense to go through all that extra work, and take on all that extra cost, delay and risk (on an airplane that has already been plagued by repeated delays and cost overruns) to redesign a land based fighter for carrier ops when you are also already buying one of the finest carrier capable fighters ever built, but you will use that exclusively from land bases?!
The Tejas will work fine as an attack aircraft off of the carrier...and it will be able to perform CAP missions with BVR missiles if needed. That will be a good thing, freeing up the Mig-29Ks for other, more demanding roles.
Well Jeff, the issue has never been whether the LCA can do whatever, but whether it is going to be any good at it compared to the other, readily available options the Indians will literally have at their fingertips.
The LCA as a land based short range fighter, at least has a niche that it can fill well. As a carrier fighter, it brings absolutely nothing to the table that other types the Indians will already be operating cannot do far far better.
If you looked at the situation with a sober, objective eye, you will see that far from being a good thing, the naval LCA is a potential death sentence for the type.
My reading of the situation is that the IAF simply does not want the LCA, preferring to save their cash for more MKIs, Rafales and PAK-FAs instead.
They seemed to have somehow managed to palm the LCA off to the navy. But with HAI's track record and the sheer technological challenges involved in adapting a land based fighter for carrier ops, one really cannot hold much hold that hope that the naval LCA will arrive on budget and on time.
It would not be hard for a cynical man to see the IN using those delays and cost overruns as an excuse to kill the project off in order to get more Mig29s and/or Rafales for the future carrier air group. Even the most optimistic man cannot credible rule that possibility out given the LCA's troubles thus far and how many past Indian defence deals when went.
So, instead of repeating the same mistakes that helped get the LCA so delayed in the first place and run the risk of further delays killing it off outright, is it not far more preferable to just start building the blasted thing en mass, right now, and get the type operationally fielded with the IAF already?
The Indians have learnt pretty much all they can from endlessly revising the specs for the LCA and making running redesigns and modifications. But there is plenty they could still learn from mass producing the type and getting real feedback on its performance from pilots and trying to address any shortcomings thus exposed.
