India Turns Down American Fighter Jets, Buys From France 600
An anonymous reader writes "While America had offered the F-16, F-18 and now the stealth F-35 fighter, India picked for its new multi-role attack jet a low cost, older French plane. Why? For one, it's cheaper, and two, if American/Indian relations go bad, can they get the parts and equipment to keep the planes in the air? It seems prudence beat out the latest in technology."
Why wouldn't India develop it's own fighter? (Score:3, Interesting)
There is a lot more to it than this article (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Giving too much credit to Indian politicians (Score:3, Interesting)
Considering the scandal in Indian telecom, which their supreme court has just now finally made its ruling on, I'm not sure how often the Indian government keeps to that premise. It is a damned corrupt country. I expect the result probably had as much to do with French envoys with brown paper bags filled with hard currency as anything else.
Re:Relying on french weapon systems? (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps so, but it's not like Boeing will give India the cream of the crop or at a competitive price. Australia's purchase of Hornets put us behind Indonesia's air attack capability, 18m a plane vs the 250k per mig, Hornets are nice planes but put us way out numbered against our nextdoor neighbors.
Boeing is over priced, French, russian, sweden all make pretty good fighters even so Boeing struggles to pull off cobra maneuvers. Russians can perform landing cobras and the, swedish planes can do variants of these maneuvers not quite as good as the US equivalent, actually the US equivalent matches up pretty poorly.
Stealth fighters would be the only reason to buy US and china is quickly filling that gap.
cost (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in the 1950's, Canada tried to develop its own plane called "The Arrow". Apparently, the program was squashed in parliament by the CIA paying off key representatives. This sort of technology costs billions and takes years to develop as well as keeping an industrial infrastructure in place to keep it going.
Isreal developed its "Lion" prototype, but the US offered to give Isreal US's top of the line state of the art planes to keep them from pursuing that line.
Maybe over the course of several decades, other countries would develop sufficiently advanced air breathing technology and then where would the US be.
Well... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Many versus Awesome (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed! There are (admittedly very simplified) models of combat that indicate that the power of a fighting force is proportional to the square of its number of members.
This is something that I stumbled across when developing simple ODE models of Starcraft combat, and later discovered is known as Lanchester's Square Law [wikipedia.org]. The idea is simple: Suppose you have two opposing groups of identical combat units, with x and y members, respectively. If you assume that all units concentrate fire on the weakest enemy, then the rate at which enemy units is depleted is proportional to the number of units you have, and vice versa. In symbols,
dx/dt = -y
dy/dt = -x
It turns out that the quantity D = x^2 - y^2 is conserved by this system (to verify this, just differentiate D with respect to time, use the product rule, and substitute in from the ODEs). What this means is that the fighting power of a fighting force is proportional to its square, and when the smaller force is eliminated, the larger force will have lost as much fighting power as the smaller force had, in order to defeat it.
You can modify the equations to include constants that reflect unequal kill rates, but you will find that the equivalent conserved quantities still depend quadratically on the number of units, but only linearly on the kill rate coefficients. The conclusion to be drawn is that, given a choice between a unit that's twice as effective, and twice as many units, you should choose to have twice as many units.
All this is predicated on the accuracy of the mathematical model, of course, and that model, I freely admit, is a rather drastic simplification. However, its aesthetics are appealing, and I think it may have a grain of truth. If it does, than Rafales or Super Hornets may indeed be the better choice than F-35s.
where are my mod points today? (Score:2, Interesting)
A week ago, piles of them. Today nothing.
It's unclear why /. is trying to make this into some kind of referendum on American weapons or Indian-American relations.
Re:Good move (Score:5, Interesting)
Cheap and good enough beats state of the art. (Score:4, Interesting)
The dassault rafale has the advantages of being more flexible in its roles, easier and less costly to maintain and has more
modular parts.
Re:Many versus Awesome (Score:5, Interesting)
American tanks were designed to be superior to the German tanks that began the war, but by the time they actually saw combat Germany was fielding tanks that were far superior in terms of armor and armament. This was a surprise to the tankers, but not to the production planners, who were well aware that the Germans were fielding heavier tanks, but they made a conscious decision to go with quantity over quality, as switching to heavier tank production would have led to manufacturing delays as factories were re-tooled. That in turn could have delayed the invasion of Europe, something that the US wanted to achieve at the earliest possible date.
India's defense dilemmas (Score:5, Interesting)
But India's relationship w/ the US has been pretty good. The only strains were when Bush, after 9/11, decided that Pakistan was an ally, rather than an enemy, and this understandably teed India off. Also, since 1991, one of India's closest defense allies has been Israel - India happens to be Israel's biggest customer for defense equipment.
I think India is buying from France, aside from cost reasons, to make US understand that there is a price tag involved if it continues to support & supply Pakistan. If the US were to cut all the billions of aid it gives Pakistan, there could be an improvement. Also note that if India were to buy more expensive equipment over something less expensive, politicians would scream 'corruption'. In the 80s, that's precisely what happened w/ the Swedish company Bofors, and even though there was no wrongdoing on the government's part, the perception of wrongdoing was what led to the defeat of the government in the 1989 elections. Yeah, there have been many corruption scandals since, but no government in its right mind would want to jeopardize its very existence over the country's security.
Re:french military victories (Score:5, Interesting)
Thanks for the recommendation. I found this, which was interesting:
http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=7061&IBLOCK_ID=35 [exile.ru]
Re:french military victories (Score:5, Interesting)
There was also this whole newfangled thing called "blitzkrieg". What the US today would call Shock and Awe.
The Germans didn't stop to secure the areas their tank divisions had overrun - they kept pressing forward, completely counter to essentially all military strategies that were thought to be viable.
This meant that by the time the French had a chance to regroup and do anything, they were, in effect, already defeated.
India Will Produce the Fighte (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Rafale F16 (Score:5, Interesting)
Canada is currently in the process of adding new [www.ctv.ca] ships to its navy via the 'Single Class Surface Combatant Project' [wikipedia.org], and is modernizing its fleet of Halifax class frigates [wikipedia.org]. Because America's International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) is a pain in the ass [defenseindustrydaily.com] and frequently abused for political purposes, one of the big mandates at least for the Halifax frigate modernization is to try to reduce the dependence on U.S. (weapons) systems as much as possible; opting for systems from Canada, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands and Israel. IIRC I believe this started with issues around exporting and/or updating torpedoes (or at least that is what I remember being the straw that broke the camel's back in terms of naval weapons systems). It is unclear if this will continue with the new combat ships; there has been no clear indication published (pdf) [drdc.gc.ca] in the news one way or another. Now if a close ally of the United States is forced to look elsewhere [dmag.info] to avoid a lot of issues raised by the abuse of ITAR rules by American politicians and companies, then it is likely a very smart decision of India to avoid buying from the U.S.
But I don't know why they didn't go with the Typhoon. It looks marginally better. The wing load is higher, the thrust, speed, and climb is better, and it super cruises faster. These kinds of things are what allows a plane to return home at the end of the day when the shit hits the fan. Mind you, the Americans did do a bit of a study in the 80s I believe, where they had a bunch of top guns in F-5s go after standard operational F-14s and F-15s and pretty much proved that a bunch of small manoeuvrable fighters were a credible and significant threat to the bigger less manoeuvrable modern planes. Not sure where they went with that after. Maybe the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned about [youtube.com] took issue with the results of that study.
Re:Many versus Awesome (Score:5, Interesting)
The Rafales has a radar cross section of 0.72m2, its not designed to be a stealth fighter.
The F22 is around the size of a marble, the F35 the size of a golf ball
Try beach ball. To quote The Sydney Morning Herald [smh.com.au] after the stealth capabilities of the F-35 were downgraded from the original plan:
A crucial aspect of the fighter's "stealth capability" - radio frequency signatures - has been downgraded from "very low observable" to "low observable", according to the US Defence Department website.
Peter Goon, a former RAAF flight test engineer, said that would mean the difference between it appearing as a "marble and a beach ball" on enemy radar. The problem with the fighter, Dr Jensen says, is that it can be relatively easily detected from the rear.
(and can carry 3000lb of bombs in internal bays)
Which makes it a light bomber. It's really more of a ground strike aircraft than a fighter, multi-purpose or not. And that is basically what the US wants its allies to have to help fight its wars - you can't subdue Iran with Flankers; they are far more useful for actual defense than offense, and the US is all about attacking others.
Re:Rafale F16 (Score:3, Interesting)
The US is willing to invest heavily in upgrading old avionics while keeping the source for all the software. Would you buy a piece of military hardware knowing that the aging paranoid warcrazy manufacturer may have retained the ability to disable all those planes with the flip of a switch?
as a humble citizen in a western european country, the answer is "Yes", because the odds of some effing pseudo goverment taking over here and eliminating my civil rights is much higher than having the same happen in the US. call it life insurance.
Re:Slashdot flamebait headline misses the point (Score:4, Interesting)
I am sorry to have no moderator points at the moment. I completly agree with you about /. being now mostly a place were people push their agenda, I can bear corporate or even Web site's submissions (discovery, universetoday) in need of click flow but political agenda against other countries is very ugly. LIke you I came here for science discussion not for stupid submissions that have nothing to do with the /. motto "stuff that matters".
Re:Many versus Awesome (Score:5, Interesting)
In keeping with the aircraft theme...
What about the Il-2/10 Stormovik ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormovik )? That damn thing helped to decide the battle of Kursk (claims of a squadron of Il-2s to have blown away about 70 tanks in 20 minutes). The idea and performance of the Stormoviks and the adaptations of the P-47, A-1 Skyraiders, and the venerated "Spooky" gunship during Viet Nam led to our modern equivalent, the A-10 Warthog.
The thing is, the Air Force didn't like a "low and slow" ugly POS in their arsenal - they wanted big, fast, and expensive Eagles and Falcons. The Gulf War would show everyone what that big ugly bastard could do. Anyone remember the footage of an A-10 landing with one wing blown off?
Now, when you take a military that doesn't bat an eyelash over dropping $40-60 million on a fighter, and have that industry try to convince other countries to pony up the dough, you get this.
How do we compete? Back when the F-22/23/35s were being developed, Northrup had already put together an updated version of the F-5E "Freedom Fighter", they called the F-20 Tigershark. They updated the avionics, threw in the same engine as the Falcon, lightened things up with carbon fiber, and streamlined a few things. The result? Well, when some guy named Chuck "Fsck the sound barrier" Yeager climbed out of his test flight, he had an ear-to-ear grin. It was cheap (~$12M), fast (2 minutes to operational altitude), and used standard parts that allowed for front-line field-swaps. The kind of thing some country like India might want, wouldn't you say?
I'm seeing the same mentality in cars. I don't need GPS, ABS, WiFi, Bluetooth, heated seats, backup camera, or even a cigarette lighter. I just want a car that gets me there, for little cost. Like India, I can't seem to find any...
Re:Many versus Awesome (Score:4, Interesting)
They call it a World War. Not an American-German war. According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]: Allied military deaths - 16 million, Axis military deaths: 8 million
Re:Many versus Awesome (Score:5, Interesting)
That is not proof that the US is better than the USSR at innovation or producing military equipment. It is proof that the US was not invaded by the Germans.
.
For the record: I'm not saying Stalin or communism were a good things, I'm just trying to point out facts that are sometimes overshadowed by myths. The T-34 is in my opinion the best tank of WW II, the Sherman isn't even close.
Besides that, I still visit memorials and graveyards to pay my respects to US and Commonwealth soldiers that liberated Europe. Do you?
Re:Many versus Awesome (Score:5, Interesting)
India got the deal of the century - if you read the fine print, France is only selling India 18 fighters - India gets the CAD files and source code and will build the remaining 108 themselves - presumably for the cost of labor and materials. That means instead of paying $90 million for each jet, they're looking at final production costs of $5-20 million each. Who knows how the Rafale's technology will fuel their own defense industry over the next 20-30 years? It's a win-win-win for India, and France gets to stop propping up a failing industry for a few more years.
This sort of "buy some, build the rest" deal is rapidly becoming the standard for large BRIC contracts with the west.
Re:Many versus Awesome (Score:2, Interesting)
"officers like General Sherman or General Erwin Rommel can hand you victory after victory...."
Regardless of my disgust for the Confederacy and what it fought for, I have to judge that Sherman was a war criminal, the memory of whom inspired a higher degree of hatred after the war. The resistance after the "Mission Accomplished" period was eventually effective, leading to very little federal control for almost a hundred years. The U.S. never learns.
Re:Good move (Score:5, Interesting)
Never mind that USA can get up to all kinds of tricks to get their contracts.
When Norway was evaluating Eurofighter, F-35 and Saab JAS 39 Gripen, the Gripen was held back by radar performance issues. Later on it is found that Saab was in talks with Lockheed or some other US company about buying radars, but the final contract was held back by Washington until after said evaluation.
At times i wonder if the F-35 is an attempt at rescuing the US economy...
Re:Rafale F16 (Score:4, Interesting)
much higher than having the same happen in the US
I don't know where you are but, here in the UK, we seem to have a lot less police violence than the USA. If any government comes in here, it will be, like now, because some people voted for it. The US supposedly has "checks and balances" and a written constitution. I understand from comments here that the Constitution isn't doing too well at present, what with "Homeland Security" and various criminal organisations like the RIAA etc. (I know they are legal but they are still a bunch of crooks).
"I see your constitution and raise you a Queen."
Re:Many versus Awesome (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually Japan had a standing order to kill all Allied POWs in the event of an invasion of the mainland. About 400,000 people, many of them civilians. The U.S. new about it through the broken Japanese codes. Given this information, the a-bombs made even more sense.
Really Wrong Summary!!! (Score:2, Interesting)
Summary is infuriatingly inaccurate. The competition originally had 6 competitors- the F-16, F-18E/F, Eurofighter, Gripen NG, Rafale, and MiG-35. The F-35 was not included.
The Eurofighter and Rafale were downselected on technical/performance grounds- that is they were found to offer superior performance than the American, Russian, and Swedish offerings. They are newer than the Russian and American aircraft too. And they are also the most expensive 2 aircraft of the bunch!
The US offered the F-35 at this point, but it is not in service, doesn't meet India's schedule, and was not evaluated technically along with the original 6.
This left the Eurofighter and Rafale to fight it out based on the lowest bidder. This was the Rafale. They got an aircraft with excellent performance and technology at a price that was likely the second highest of the bunch.