The F-35 as a platform exists. And that's what we'd essentially buy it for - just as a stop-gap VLO platform till AMCA is ready. We don't need a gold-plated version for that. And if it turns out we do need the upgrades (cuz of AMCA delay or otherwise), we can do them post-induction. Just like how ISEs were being implemented on our Rafales years after induction.
The relative differences between the platforms will still remain. Even the F-35 as it exists will be capable of getting much closer to any given target than a Rafale.
Rafale without ISEs wouldn't have been considered fully mission-capable by IAF. That doesn't mean we wouldn't induct them till after all ISEs were implemented.
The thing is, like I said before, we're in an extraordinary place with regard to procurement paralysis right now - we've never been in such a place before.
If staying 100s of kms behind the penetrator is the way Rafale wants to play the game, then we frankly don't need something that expensive for this role. A Tejas Mk2 with drop tanks would do the job just as well, if not better considering it will be stealthier than the Rafale.
It's the terminology we use to describe the aircraft that controls the CATS system. It's the M in MAX.
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But frankly, it doesn't matter what you call it - MUMT involves a man in the loop. I'm talking about the plane where the man sits.
Well, I think I have a fairly solid idea that drilling holes in Chinese IADS isn't exactly a pressing requirement for France.
Information can't change physical properties. Information is to be used in conjunction with a stealthy platform, not instead of.
Why do you think there's a VLO/ULO plane at the heart of every system-of-systems program in the works (FCAS, GCAP, NGAD) right now?
By the time we assessed the J-20, the J-20B was already flying. Now that we finally sanctioned development of AMCA & working on NG engine program as an answer to J-20B, now 2-3 different J-XX are flying.
Whether we actually buy a stop-gap 5G or not is anyone's guess, and a lot of it will come down to politics. I'm just saying that if we've determined that a VLO platform is necessary to deal with future threats (which we did when we sanctioned AMCA), it might be worthwhile to get one via G2G sooner as a stop-gap because the enemy is rapidly building numbers in this department AND because very soon this will become a two-front problem.
If the stop-gap G2G isn't available, I already told you what we'll do.
Yep, cratering a whole 5km x 5km island is more difficult than searching the whole Indo-Gangetic Plain for where that BrahMos MAL moved after it launched.
BEL makes datalinks for everybody. The IN uses it's Link-II in conjunction with indigenous SDRs, while IAF uses its DL in conjunction with Israeli SDR (BNET).
The BNET was purchased instead of the indigenous alternative called SDR-2010, which was developed by HAL. Mostly due to size & weight constraints. Even if we had bought the HAL SDR, the datalink would've still been from BEL.
The reason cross-service integration is siloed is because the different SDRs use different encryptions. We need to fix that, either by modifying them all to use the same encryption, or replacing them all with our own SDRs.
Yeah, sure buddy.
You just repeated what I said regarding the process of what's supposed to happen, but without addressing the question I asked therein:
"What that means is that the Meteor's engagement envelope could currently be limited to what the Rafale's own FCR is able to see & guide the missile onto, because the Rafale might not yet be able to take inputs from Netra & feed them to Meteor via the datalink that connects the missile to the Rafale."
This is where you err, combined with that other assumption of Rafale (or MKI) radar outranging Netra. Wake me up when either of those can generate tracks of fighter-sized targets at +475 km like Netra can.
An additional problem is you're gonna be operating under a heavy EW environment, meaning significant sensor degradation. Which I already talked about, but you conveniently ignored. Fighter FCRs are considerably easier to degrade than AEWs, cuz the latter are much more powerful - and would operate out at farther ranges meaning the same jammer is less effective against them.
A Netra could be operating 200 km behind the fighters, and still outrange their radars by a 100 kms when it comes to tracking fighter-sized targets. The BARS can track fighters at 140 km in the best-case scenario. And no, the instrumented detection range (what fanboys love to call mini-AWACS) doesn't matter. You need to be able to generate tracks & vector data, otherwise the fighters you're guiding won't know whether they're firing their missiles ahead of or behind the target. One of those would significantly reduce the Ph/Pk.
Missiles like Meteor or Gandiva cannot be leveraged to their full extent unless you can rely on offboard target data.
And that is the crux of my doubt - whether the Rafale is yet able to take information from Netra via datalink, translate it & feed it to Meteor via fighter-to-missile datalink (which is a different system) or not. This would require our Rafales to have:
1) BNET SDR hardware installed - status: DONE.
2) Rafale's software patched to recognize the Indian datalink fed via the BNET - status: UNKNOWN, but likely DONE.
3) Translation layer installed to allow this data to be converted & fed to Meteor's datalink (which is proprietary MBDA software) - status: UNKNOWN.
I wouldn't be surprised if some of this is still work in progress.
