Derisking the critical shortfall of our squadrons.
Anyhow, you can not test the airframes unless mated with engine. Delivery will be delayed due to availability of engines.
They're testing airframes with category B engines..
@Saaho
That is a factor. Actually operating, handling the maintenance is totally different from exercising with some gulf partners.
Indeed! And Meteor is one of the best one out there.
UAE allows Pakistani airforce pilots to regularly operate the fighter and PAF personnel even provide tactics and maintenance inputs to UAE. UAE herself sucks in operating its own fleet so PAF folks fill in. And yes, that still keeps Rafale extremely potent for us.
I never take HAL's word on anything related to schedule. If HAL was to be believed, we would be done with Tejas in 2000s. But we know how that works out. There is NO chance in the hell that HAL will deliver MK1As by 2028. We will be seeing HAL still delivering MK1As in 2041 or 42.
I do not see this being mentioned anywhere.
Agree but if you cannot have it then you have to make do with it.
What is funnier is we signed up with ge to produce the 414 but did not even think to set up a factory for license producing 404's considering it will be the backbone of our air fleet for the foreseeable future. The requirement of tejas mk1 actually is somewhere from 300-500. It effectively replaces our entire line of soviet legacy fighters like mig 21,mig 23 and mig 27 and can perform all of those roles better. We had around 800 mig 21's on top of the 200-300 mig23/27's in the 70's-80's.
We need a pl-15 counter and a pl-17 counter. Meteor is good but too expensive. We need a new bvr missile design in the class of pl-15 and r-37m
That was the same issue with the Arjun. The German engine was imported. On top of that the engine used on Arjun was of leopard 1 series not even leopard 2. Heck the Chinese got access for the leopard 2 engine but we couldn't.
Astra MK2 is in the same class as PL-15. PL-17 is a VLRAAM and so far we don't have an analogue for that.
Astra mk2 is closer to amraam 120d not pl-15. Pl-15 is a bigger missile. Although pl-15e range is 145km. Provided Chinese claims are true the non-export version would have a range of 200-300km. How true are the numbers?? No idea.
Minimum 30-40 years away. Look at Astra-Mk1 development time and now Astra-Mk2. Highly doubt it is getting inducted before 2060.
R-37M can and should be imported immediately. It should be integrated into Su-30MKIs.
I do not think Meteor is really expensive. If Meteor takes out a single aircraft it pays several times its worth. Meteor has really high chance of hitting fighters compared to other missiles.
Meteor is the most expensive BVR available today. All BVRs hit on an aircraft pays several times its worth.
But not all BVRs have no escape zone like meteor and chances to hit the target. For that reason, I do not believe Meteor is expensive.
It is objectively expensive when it costs three times as much as a normal BVR missile. In medium to long-range fire-and-forget mode, all BVR missiles perform abysmally. The slight advantage in No-Escape Zone (NEZ) for the Meteor doesn't necessarily make it worth it every time. Otherwise, air forces like the USAF would have abandoned the AMRAAM for the Meteor.
