Thats old news,after new maintainence facility its over 50% now.Performed well in recent exercises with french navy,navy guys were pleased for a change with the 29.
Mirage 2000H, MiG-29UPG, Jaguar DARIN III - Medium Multirole Aircraft of IAF
- Thread starter Ashwin
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Thats old news,after new maintainence facility its over 50% now.Performed well in recent exercises with french navy,navy guys were pleased for a change with the 29.
I already know all that he said and more.
Anyway, I doubt 50 Mig-29S are available for purchase and upgrades. There's 21 available only. So if we go for more Mig-29, it's going to have to be the Mig-29M. And it doesn't make sense to go for 50 new Mig-29Ms because the IAF wants better jets instead, like the Rafale. 50 new Mig-29Ms would mean creating new maintenance practices and maintaining infrastructure for the next 40+ years (we are talking 2060), which is pointless, especially when the main fleet of 63+21 Mig-29S/UPG will retire by 2035, with the first 63 going out by 2030-32.
Instead it's the IN which will stand to benefit if the MRCBF for 57 jets is cancelled in favour of 57 Mig-35Ks instead. They have the required capability and interest to operate the Mig-29 well past 2050 since their Mig-29Ks are very new. I have stated many times before that the navy's better off with upgraded Mig-29s rather than going for the unrealistic Rafale-M. It's unfortunate that the navy's desire to operate CATOBAR carriers trumps common sense.
Mig-29 in the IAF is like the Jaguar, it's at the end of its life cycle.
Strictly speaking, in the context of M-2000 vs Mig-29, what he's talking about is irrelevant today. But it was relevant back in the day, when the M-2000's BVR capability was superior to the Mig-29's even if the Mig-29 was the dogfighting champ. Different story if the M-2000's or Mig-29's BVR missiles were satisfactory enough to get the job done.
But the Russian version of the Mig-29 was much more lethal and wouldn't give the M-2000 the BVR advantage.
IAF does not have the habit of operating second-hand jets. They are only making an exception to replace some M-2000 trainers, just 2 jets, possibly 3.
The 21 Mig-29s we are interested in are excess articles made by the SU and put into storage without having operationally flown, not second-hand.
The biggest problem with Mig-29 is the fact that we haven't manufactured any. So maintaining a large fleet becomes a headache since indigenising spares is not easy.
The Mig-29 fleet has been moved to North India in order to compete with both Pakistan and China.
All option as long as IAF are willing to operate second-hand.
Propaganda-galore. The Mig-29K fleet is fine, with acceptable serviceability.
RFP is supposed to go out this year, IN hopes.
Taiwan is the number 1 option. They want to switch to an F-16-only fleet.
And that is what I have been saying, there isn't an advantage for buying Mig29M, Mig29K, Mig29OVT or the Mig35 in terms of strategic imprint for the IAF, we are much better off buying either Rafale F4's if we have the money, or add more LCA iterative tranches, if time and money both are the constraints, we are better off adding more MKI's.
The IAF has already nixed the last proposal in your statement. Hence, they seem to be back at square 1 .
What's the point? The Super Sukhoi proposal has been pending since long. Unless that package is finalized, I see little point in procuring more Sukhois with the current configuration.
The point being, larger fleet bringing down the cost of logistics, spares. training for operators as well as service technicians, the Larger fleet has the potential for a better upgrade package to be configured by a foreign partner, whether that is Russian or Israeli or french or a mix of all three. Same for the engine upgrades etc.
My limited point being, rather than used Mig29's, stored Mig29's or even new Mig29ovt as stop gaps, a brand LCA is a better choice, if the configuration is not available, SU30MKI makes a great option, with ready manufacturing lines, and more than 80% indigenization in the system including the powerplant.
Problem is su30mki is twice as costly to maintain than mig29.Also the aesa EW suite of mig29upg is the best in iaf until rafale comes.
We need to begin mki upgrades asap rather than buying more.I wonder if the k77m is operational,it would be excellent long arm for the sukhois.Main problem is iaf is not happy with aesa radars on offer for super sukhoi, russians want us to use irbis for now.It actually would make sense to do a small immediate upgrade of 50-60 odd oldest sukhois with irbis,maws and other avionics ,al41 engine and new air to air mi ssiles.This would give us a hard core of 3 excellent squadrons capable of outmatching both paf and chinese su35 and j11d qualitywise, while larger upgrade with aesa shapes up.
Would like the Su 30 upgrade done indigenous ly.. How small the increment is..
Need to integrate our own radar with source code.. And buy better missiles from any source. Preferably our own.
Idea is to spend less in upgrade just adequate enough for the threats.. And spend more on getting more platforms.
Do we need to upgrade to new engines?
Is the current engine underpowered or cannot be powered up by other means ?
We should have had 250 Mirage 2000
And 250 MiG 29s
And then DRDO could have made
LCA MK 2 directly without these Foolish experiments of Mk 1 and Mk 1A
And 250 MiG 29s
And then DRDO could have made
LCA MK 2 directly without these Foolish experiments of Mk 1 and Mk 1A
If you have one, the other is pretty much redundant.
A far better option would have been if we had procured ~200 Mirage-2Ks in the 80s and 90s (with HAL production), followed by ~200+ Su-30MKIs in the 00s and 10s. The upgrade process to bring the Mirages upto the 2K-5 standard should have begun in the early 2000s itself...and then Rafales should have started coming in 20s.
The MiG-29 was a totally unnecessary addition to the fleet which would never have been bought if it wasn't for political dealings between Indira Gandhi and USSR.
The MKI upgrade hinges on few very important things:
a) the radar - without an AESA upgrade, the Su-30 would not stay very relevant into the 2020s and 30s with the perceived enemies deploying LO/VLO aircraft equipped with AESA antennas of their own. The existing Bars PESA will not maintain its ability to look first & shoot first against these emerging threats.
Whether Russians allow us to install a potential upscaled variant of UTTAM is doubtful. If they don't, we effectively only have 2 choices - either waiting for Tikhomirov to come up with an AESA antenna for the Irbis-E radar, or just go with the PESA Irbis as it exists on the Su-35S.
b) the engines - the existing AL-31FPs, like most Russian engines of this generation are extremely maintenance intensive compared to the Western F404s, F414s and M88s. Too many man hours & money is wasted keeping them in top shape. An upgrade to an engine with better TBO & MTBF figures makes sense, not to mention the increased power needs of the new avionics plus the possibility that the jet could get heavier after all these additions like MAWS etc.
the AL-41F1-S i believe is the engine in consideration a.k.a NPO Saturn 117S. same engines as on the Su-35. These engines are ready and in production so there's nothing on that front slowing the program down, someone correct me if I'm wrong.
to ask your question "do we need to upgrade engines" I'd say if we're not going to upgrade them, the scope of upgrades we might do on the rest of the plane might get somewhat limited. And I always advocate doing all necessary upgrades at once instead of doing some things now and others a few years down the line, things are just more efficient that way (doing everything at once).
c) survivability - the MKI lacks both a set of Missile approach warning sensors (MAWS) as well as an internal Self-protection jammer (SPJ), latter of which necessitates the allocation of a wing hardpoint to carry the external ELL-8222 jammer. These are both must-have pieces of equipment for any modern air-to-air combat aircraft. And if you ask me these are THE most important upgrade MKI needs.
DARE has decided a pursue an indigenous MAWS solution although a far simpler approach (which wouldn't need much re-testing & airworthiness certification) would have been to adopt the SAAB IDAS suite which is already used on the Malaysian Su-30MKM (as well as various Indian platforms like Dhruv, Rudra, LCH etc.)
I have no idea what internal SPJ is being pursued - or if any is being pursued or not.
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@randomradio
The existing engine is made in India, if we don't upgrade that engine but fit in with new engine, I think it ll increase the cost of acquisition and maintenance.. And spares availability too.
Yess Aesa radar is a must.. Especially to maintain it's mini AWACS advantage.
Jaguars getting aesa, but not Su 30 yet is not palatable.
If the terrain follow mode is to be used, I guess powerful engines are also needed for low level flight..
We should have had both. But Mig-29 got replaced by MKI instead, so it went well there.
As for M2000, IAF has been asking for 126 since 1999.
But neither would have stopped LCA Mk1/1A.
You see, whatever's happening now wouldn't have stopped. We still need Mk1/1A, we still need those Mig-27s and Jaguars and so on. Those 126 M2000s would have simply meant we would have had 37 squadrons today instead of 31. And we still would need 114 MMRCA 2.0 also, in order to replace all those Mig-27s and Jaguars.
It's not up to the Russians, but we most definitely need Russian help to install it because of the significant weight difference between Bars and other radars.
Yeah, they should have gone for the SAAB MAWS option, but they got pushed towards the more advanced DARE suite. But I think the SAAB suite requires the purchase of other aspects of the suite as well, like the LWS and RWR. Different story that the DARE suite's gone nowhere.
But a better option compared to SAAB's MAW-300 is the MILDS-F from Hensoldt. The same thing's going on the Jaguars. So this may be an option again for MKI, even the Russians are fine with this design.
Not internal, but wingtip jammers coming up. They take up extra hardpoints, but it's fine, the ones used up are not necessary anyway. MKI can comfortably handle 8 AAMs for air defence and 6 AAMs for strike, with 4 HPs for bombs and missiles, along with the 2 pods.
The new engine can also be made in India. The new engine has twice the life and maintenance needs as the old engine, so switching to this engine saves money.
For example, with the old engine, our MKIs need 6 engines each for the full 6000 hours service life of the airframe. Or 10 engines if we wish to add another 4000 hours to the MKI's service life with a life extension program. But with the new engine, the MKI requires only 4 engines for 6000 hours, or 6 engines for the total life of the jet, with extension. So you are reducing your engine numbers from 10 to just 6.
And with the new engine being twice as maintenance friendly, you are saving half your money there as well. The IAF will also get to fly more.
And this is not counting the new engine being far superior in capability. Even if all the above didn't exist, the capability upgrade on its own is worth the investment, never mind the fact that the capability upgrade is actually cheaper than the old engine.
I'm actually hoping the IAF decides to upgrade the entire fleet with the new engine. We will need 600 engines, which can be indigenously produced as well.
Are you refering to the AL-41FP? Also, are the air intakes also being redesigned? If so, by how much would it reduce the RCS of the MKI?
Any other structural redesigns in yhe Super Sukhoi upgrade...
@randomradio
Mig29UPG does not have aesa radar.
As a matter of fact, N011M bars for MKI outranges the N010m Zhuk-M of the M29 UPG.
N011M Bars: N011M has a search range of 400 km and a tracking range of 200 km, with 60 km in the rear in the air-to-air mode. Detection range fighter type MIG-29 in area of review of over 300 sq. deg: - on towards course - up to 140 km; - in pursuit of - up to 60 km.[4] Up to 15 air targets can be tracked at once in track while scan mode with 4 of these engaged at once. The N011M can use a number of short range and speed search modes and is capable of identifying the type and number of multiple targets.
Zhuk M N010M: The radar features improved signal processing and has a detection range of up to 120 km vs a 5 m2 RCS target for the export variant, and up to 10 targets tracked and up to 4 attacked at once in air-to-air mode. In air-to-surface mode the radar can detect a tank from up to 25 km away and a bridge from 120 km away, a naval destroyer could be detected up to 300 km away and up to two surface targets can be tracked at once.
I haven't seen the exact irbis radar on offer, but I do remember Phazatron Zhuk AM Aesa radar being on offer for MKI upgrade which IAF categorically rejected and then the same was offered for the LCA radar. Irbis-E snow leopard is an excellent radar, but not an Aesa so there is no possibility that it will be used by IAF.
Most likely, Russians will part with their closely held NIIP's Byelka AESA radar as an MKI upgrade down the road.