Posted on 11/27/2005 7:06:47 PM PST by ncountylee
Foreign fighter jets performed well against F-16s in recent exercises.
NEW DELHI – Mingling over a few rounds of golf, dogfighting a bit over the jungles of West Bengal - this month's Cope India 2005 war games were billed as a standard two-week exercise between Indian and American top guns.
But in website chat rooms devoted to the arcania of fighter aircraft, there was a buzz. Arre, wa! Oh, wow! Had the Indian Air Force beat the Americans?
Not exactly, according to observers and participants. The exercises had mixed teams of Indian and American pilots on both sides, which means that both the Americans and the Indians won, and lost. Yet, observers say that in a surprising number of encounters - particularly between the American F-16s and the Indian Sukhoi-30 MKIs - the Indian pilots came out the winners.
"Since the cold war, there has been the general assumption that India is a third-world country with Soviet technology, and wherever the Soviet-supported equipment went, it didn't perform well," says Jasjit Singh, a retired air commodore and now director of the Center for Air Power Studies in New Delhi. "That myth has been blown out by the results" of these air exercises.
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
My interpretation: Let's send China a message -- there's a billion people to your West. They're tough. They have good relations with the West. Don't try anything.
TOP GUNGA!
The results of these tests should reinforce the case for the new fighters.
That may be a good point.
LOL! A great title for a Bollywood production...
From the article:
Yet, while the Indian Air Force designed the exercises to India's advantage - forcing pilots to fight "within visual range" rather than using America's highly advanced "beyond visual range" sensing equipment - both observers and participants admit that Indian aircraft and personnel performed much better than expected.
The Su-30 MKI "is an amazing jet that has a lot of maneuverability," Capt. Martin Mentch told an Air Force publication, AFPN. Maneuverability is key for missions of visual air combat.
This is the "hidden" message that the lamestream media seems to be missing all along. The Indian Air Force just completed a very successful joint training exercise with the United States Air Force. It was of course to India's benefit, and proves the training of the IAF (much of it from Israel). It also quickly proved that they can mopre than competently work in joint operations. And that message is aimed at Mainland China.
And just what were the ROE? Was it all ACM?
Need more data.
Only the Israelis could kick out butts to a 50:50.
> I have heard of theses results before. The future of US
> air superiority does not depend on the F16 or even the
> F15. The F-22 and other planes are to replace the older
> equipment.
Consider the Dem spin if the F16s clobbered the Sus
decisively: "This proves we didn't need the F15,
and don't need the F22, much less the F35".
Really?
Do you mean the ones that manage to fly once or twice a month without needing serious maintenance? Which ones would those be?
Every couple of months, we get these BS stories. It is P-R-O-P-G-A-N-D-A.
BINGO!
This is a MAJOR point! If there were a real fight, we would not be giving the enemy vectors to our aircraft.
When you put our total "package" together, we could probably put some new missiles on a C-130 and knock the enemy out of the sky before they detected us.
The US does not fight fair, except in these BS exercises.
When Israel needs to spend billions on weapons, it is a good idea to let them win a few fights to keep some political mouths shut.
agree with you Pukin. But that's OK too - let the Indians believe their own press releases - just like the Egyptians did.
It's all silliness and stupid chest-thumping.
The only pilots on earth who could conceivably stand toe-to-toe with American pilots would be the Israelis...and I'm not too sure about them these days (20 years ago? no doubt).
Are the Indians 'bad pilots'? Heavens no. Smart people, educated people, no doubt very skilled. Are they the battle-tested warriors our pilots are? No. Are they using superior hardware in these games? Yes. Would they stand up to our pilots using our newest generation fighters? No contest.
Still........who cares???? Jeez, people.....we're freakin' ALLIES. Doesn't anyone (including the Indian media or the politically correct American media) remember that???
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