Posted on 12/18/2017 8:00:34 PM PST by sukhoi-30mki
The Meteor missile, which is coming along with the Rafale combat deal signed by the Narendra Modi government, will help reestablish the aerial supremacy of the Indian Air Force against their rivals in Pakistan and China.
India has bought a package of the European Meteor missiles along with the Rafales and may prove to be game changers due to their beyond-visual-range striking capability of close to 150 km, security forces sources have told Mail Today.
The sources said that until the Kargil war and a few years after that, the Indian Air Force had complete superiority over the Pakistan Air Force as it did not have any beyond-visual range missile fitted on their F-16s or the Chinese supplied planes.
The Meteor missile was not part of the Rafale deal that was being done by the UPA government but when Modi decided to go in for an emergency procurement of the Rafale planes from France, the Air Force desired to include the Meteors as part of the weapons package.
During the Kargil war, the Indian side had two beyond-visual-range missiles which included the French S530D and the Russian RVV AE missile which deterred the Pakistanis from using its fighter plane fleet in the Kargil war with India, the sources said.
'The over-arching consideration was the BVR missile capability of IAF fighters which impinged unfavourably on the mission success probability,' former Pakistan Air Force officer Air Commodore Kaiser Taufel had written in his blog about the war.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-5192397/Meteor-missile-deal-win-Indias-aerial-supremacy.html#ixzz51fytHzTJ Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Missiles have a striking range of close to 150km and could be a 'game changer'
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-5192397/Meteor-missile-deal-win-Indias-aerial-supremacy.html#ixzz51fz0LbJ5 Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
Whatever happened to guns which can shoot at targets beyond line of vision?
They are called ‘artillery’ and generally cannot be used from aircraft.
Also worth noting: Meteor outranges *any* air to air missile the US currently fields. By a lot. This can be used as an AWACS killer.
Meteor has a ‘direct fire’ range of 140-150km, but a ballistic or ‘AIM-54 Phoenix-like flight path’ range of up to 300km.
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