That's part of SPECTRA, it wasn't uniquely developed for India. The French are operating the mid-range model, we chose the luxury model with all bells and whistles, including extras they did not develop like the towed decoy and Litening pod.
Show me a single non-Indian Rafale with that jammer. If you have a new transmitter in the rear sector that's operating in a different frequency compared to the one above it (tail cone MBJ that all Rafales have), that requires new integration in order to avoid interference. If you have information that the French had already made that rear HBJ but chose not to install it, do quote the source.
The ISEs alone costed us $2 billion. That's about the same amount that France spent to develop the whole F4 standard.
So either they had a lot of work to do, or they ripped us off.
Sure, depends on requirements. But AMCA requirement is 250. A stopgap could be 2 or 3 squadrons. For F-35 to be bought, AMCA should fail in the next 4 years. If AMCA fails at the LSP stage, we will end up with more options to choose from. So my point remains unchanged. When AMCA fails, we will most likely be in the 2030s by default anyway, whether it fails in the prototype stage or the LSP stage.
A hope & a prayer that the PLAAF+PAF will choose not to press their look-first/shoot-first advantage in the intervening years is what you are offering, essentially.
I just want to decrease the number of years we will go without a real VLO option that can level the playing field by negating the excessive LF/SF advantage they're going to have. You're just arguing that it doesn't matter...until AMCA shows up, then suddenly it does matter (cuz otherwise AMCA is pointless).
It doesn't work that way. If you need VLO, you need VLO as soon as possible, not as late as possible. Plus it comes with the benefit of diversifying our options sooner so that scaling up the number of airframes (or effecting an upgrade) can be done smoothly afterwards, if required.
AWACS can do that by default with the Rafale anyway. You wanted AWACS to cue Meteor, not happening. You want AWACS to cue Rafale towards target, already possible.
Again, that requires that Rafale be able to talk with AEW + be able to translate the AEW's inputs into something Meteor can make use of.
Because in an EW environment, Rafale is unlikely to be seeing fighter-sized targets at the kind of ranges an L-band AEW can. It's just not possible.
If your ability to launch Meteor is limited to distances where your own FCR can generate tracks under heavy EW, you're wasting the Meteor.
When we have AESA, we can too. And when we get later gen AESAs, then we move into a whole new level.
AEWs have AESAs now too, in case you forgot. And much more powerful ones.
So Rafale is not integrated with BNET. Rafale is not intergrated with Meteor. Meteor is not integrated with Netra. And now Rafale is not integrated with Netra.
My argument didn't change, what was changing was your understanding of it.
Yep, but too bad for them they can't travel to Reunion like that.
They have tankers.
Anyway, this is a ridiculous argument. Nobody is throwing away AEWs anywhere except in your mind. I've had this argument before with you.
Here's the French Navy* confirming that E-2D (UHF-band btw, even less useful for fire control than our L-band) will remain part of the PANG airwing alongside even the NGF/SCAF (let alone Rafale F5):
France is interested in first procuring a stealthy flying-wing UCAV to fight alongside its Rafales, then getting fighter-like collaborative drones.
www.twz.com
AEWs are here to stay till ~2050 at least. After that we might fully move toward unmanned AEW, but a large long(er)-wavelength radar painting the battlespace as a requirement isn't going anywhere. Fighter radars are comparatively tiny, and development of 5G/6G doctrines will mean usage of radar will continue to move further toward LPI techniques. That means you need to have pre-existing knowledge of the general location of a target (either through passive sensors for closer ranges or offboard assets for longer range) before pinging the target for FC.
A bunch of 4.5Gs with radars on full blast trying to act like AWACS is insanity. Nobody is foolish enough to practice that as a doctrine.
*Oh and it also seems they want a fighter-like CCA (Airbus Wingman, or something similar to the American CCAs) in the long term. Whatever Neuron-derived drone they're going for now seems to just be a stop-gap. So there's no difference in CCA philosophy between the French & Americans like you thought...just that the French are gonna get there about 10-15 years later.
See how you misread things?
Changing your argument once again? You said TRM requires power. I pointed out there's far more in play here 'cause you are not supposed to get more range if you have more power, if we go by your logic. But at least you're getting there.
What did I change? The amount of power on tap is the same - but the amount of usable power has increased cuz you reduced your efficiency losses.
But that kind of improvement is something you can only see when you go from GaAs of 2005 to GaN of 2025. But between GaAs of 2012 compared to GaAs of 2015, you aren't gonna see much improvement.
What's this comparison with RBE2-AA?
It's cuz you were saying RBE-2AA outranges the APG-81.
"And Rafale's radar outranges the F-35's due to its cooling issues."
So bro, my prediction about S-400's effect on Pak is coming true(as usual);) Do you still believe that S-400 is waste of money or has your opinion changed?
www.strategicfront.org
Nope. We are comparing APG-81 with MRFA's offerings, those are RBE2-XG and ECRS Mk2.
Yeah, compare yesterday's F-35 radar with tomorrow's Rafale radar. That'll win the argument.
But more importantly, we are comparing APG-81 to APG-85, because you want the IAF to enter the 2030s to fight the Chinese with a crappy old radar that doesn't work against the Chinese.
I want the IAF to buy the F-35 with whichever radar is available at the time of purchase. If production of birds with APG-85 is going to start this year as they said, then in all likelihood it's probably what we'd get.
Even if not and it turns out to be APG-81, so be it. We'd buy the F-35 platform now and upgrade to APG-85 later, cuz it's just a drop-fit anyway. It's not like Rafale F4 to F5 which has to come with airframe changes and is not necessarily upgradable. So if you want F5 you have no choice but wait, cuz you can't buy an F4 airframe now and upgrade to F5 when it's ready.
This is not the case with F-35 B4.
Let me remind you what the topic is. We need all the B4 capabilities of the F-35 tested before we decide to induct it. And we need the B4 to be ready before that happens. So any F-35 decision we make will be post-2030, not in 2025, as you are hoping, and for the sake of a stopgap capability that doesn't work. Which means, we need this new APG-85 radar, and we will need the new computer and engine to power it. Nothing's happening before they are achieved.
This kind of procurement makes sense when & if AMCA has failed and you're looking at procuring a foreign 5G in large numbers as a long-term solution.
But it's obvious that you misunderstand what a stop-gap is. Or what we'd buy it for. Ask yourselves what the Americans (or other F35 customers) would do if they had another aircraft in the same class that's supposed to become fully operational by 2040. The B4 program probably wouldn't even exist if that were the case.
Americans and French, even the UK, are pretty much on par, as I said, the Americans are just pushing ahead early, before the jet is ready to handle it. This allows time to improve the radar by fielding it earlier as the jet becomes operational.
Yeah, that's called being ahead.
What you need to push new AESA into production is money and programs that can handle such technology. The Chinese are ahead in both aspects. PLAAF introduced GaN with the later batches of J-16. And both J-16 and J-20 have gone up by a level with new GaN TRM designs, especially helped by the fact that they are producing 100+ of each every year.
Just cuz they decided to put a monkey model GaN on a plane doesn't mean they're ahead of everyone else. Even we have had GaN MMICs on hand for a long time, it's not difficult to put them on an airborne model if you want to. But we, like in the West, believe in developing systems before parading them.
Chinese radar tech might be ahead of the Russians, but it still largely sucks. There's a reason we don't see the ZDK-03 too much anymore.
Anyway, we can't buy things the Chinese have definite counters for, that's why F-35 and Su-57 are out. That's why our reliance on unorthodox designs like the Rafale's that the Chinese are not prepared to deal with or the need to buy on-par/superior 6th gen designs like NGAD, B-21, and Mig-41.
So you're saying we should abandon the AMCA & buy more Rafale.
No thank you.
No one is. You brought it up because you are trying to hold on to any pointless argument you can.
RBE2-AA and APG-81 are now 20+ year technologies. They are pointless beyond 2030. Recall that AESA generation thing I talked about? Even the Rafale F4's radar has moved to the middle of that list.
If you want analogies. If APG-81 is like 64 nm, the new Rafale radar is like 16 nm, the old PLAAF GaN radars are like 7 nm and the latest radars for MRFA, J-20, and F-35 are like 3/2nm.
To sum things up: AMCA will not end up like LCA outside of short delays. We are not gonna make kneejerk purchases for a 5-year stopgap just 'cause you personally are scared of the J-35 which the IAF is not. The F-35 and Su-57 are not the answers to the obviously superior PLAAF. IAF is gonna stick to their LCA, MRFA, and AMCA plan, alongside Ghatak and improving their IADS. And if any stopgap is chosen, it will be done in the mid-2030s for a 6th gen jet to make up for the gap between 2040 and 2060, if they think AMCA/AMCA-NG are not up to the job.
Anyway, this is the last on this pointless topic.
You can't say on one hand that IAF will refuse to buy unproven tech, and still expect to get to the cutting edge.
The way things are, F5 & F-35 B4 will reach maturity at around the same time. But only one of them is VLO & it's also the only one that can upgrade existing airframes to B4 standard.
If you want to get at least some of the capabilities that AMCA delivers sooner, F-35 is the only option. End of story.
If the terms for obtaining it are geopolitically unacceptable for us, we'd have to make some serious changes to our doctrine & way of fighting cuz throwing 4.5Gs at enemy LO/VLO/ULO jets would inflict the kind of attrition on us that we can't afford. And we already know this to be true - otherwise we wouldn't be pursuing AMCA.
It's a simple argument being made unnecessarily complicated cuz you don't want to admit that a 5G platform has inherent advantages over & above what a 4.5G can offer.
www.rusi.org
www.indiatoday.in
