India to open talks with Russia on stealth aircraft

The Hindu ^ | 02/06/2010 | Sandeep Dikshit

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

After favouring the U.S. for its recent purchases of hi-tech military equipment, India has now turned to Russia, its old supplier, for the next generation fighter aircraft.

PAK FA, Russia’s fifth generation fighter, which boasts of radar evasion characteristics, made its maiden flight only late last month.

India inked an agreement with Russia for jointly developing this aircraft, but the time taken to complete the paperwork meant that 70 per cent of the plane was already developed by the Sukhoi Design Bureau. Now India has planned to enter the project mid-way. It will discuss the development schedule for the coming years and the number of aircraft it requires with Deputy Prime Minister and Russia’s India point man S.S. Sobyanin when he visits India by the middle of this month, senior government sources said.

Though its force levels are depleting, the Indian Air Force wants to ensure that the replacements are world-class and the best in the region. The 250-plus Sukhoi-30 MKI fighter aircraft to be inducted gradually over the next decade fit the bill, and so will the 126 frontline multi-role fighter aircraft, which India plans to buy and for which six vendors are in the fray.

[J Edgar]

Our Congress has forbidden foreign F-22 sales. Makes a lot of sense if you are rooting for Communism doesn’t it?

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

That is very stupid of Congress to forbid sales of F-22

[KittyKares]

Are you serious? Why are they forbidden?

[J Edgar]

Yes I am serious. The final budge bill for the F-22 contained this language, It was posed here on FreeRepublic.

[J Edgar]

“That is very stupid of Congress to forbid sales of F-22”

Stupid? I don’t think so. Deliberate treason, aimed at destroying US technological base, I do think so.

[RC one]

Because we don't want the technology that makes this particular plane so lethal falling into the hands of the Russians and/or Chinese. The F35 was supposed to be our multi role jet for export. It contained enough F22 technology to make it a worthwhile military investment but not enough to threaten our technology advantages. Our allies were balking at the F35 however and were, instead, trying to acquire the more advanced F22 which would very probably result in the technology landing in the laps of our “competitors”. The whole thing has turned into a giant mess and the advent of the T-50 is further complicating matters. We need to get a hold of a few of those T50s and see what they're really capable of. I'm sure we have people working diligently on that.

[DaveTesla]

The F22 has technology that will give the US air superiority for
decades to come.

Why would we want to sell it and risk the reverse engineering of the flight surface, avionic and computer / software systems?

Congress could not offer it for sale without changing or vacating many other laws first which prohibit certain military technology's from being exported.

Let them have the Russian junk.

[KittyKares]

Thanks, I feel better now.

[DaveTesla]

“Thanks, I feel better now.”

As you should.

[Primorsky]

F-22 is epic fail. It’s was canceled.

“The United States’ top fighter jet, the Lockheed Martin F-22, has recently required more than 30 hours of maintenance for every hour in the skies, pushing its hourly cost of flying to more than $44,000, a far higher figure than for the warplane it replaces, confidential Pentagon test results show”

“The aircraft’s radar-absorbing metallic skin is the principal cause of its maintenance troubles, with unexpected shortcomings –– such as vulnerability to rain and other abrasion “

“just 55 percent of the deployed F-22 fleet has been available to fulfill missions guarding U.S. airspace”

(Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/09/AR2009070903020.html )

Russian Sukhoi T-50 will outperform F-22/F-35 in many ways.

[LRS]

Didn’t know they made them that big...

[donmeaker]

Congress forbade sales of F-16 to Taiwan. Then when the F-20 as developed specifically to meet the congressional requirements, they changed the requirements again.

Good news: With India having one, we will probably get access and be able to more accurately assess its capability.

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

I agree

[J Edgar]

“Russian Sukhoi T-50 will outperform F-22/F-35 in many ways.”

Are you at liberty to elaborate on this? In what ways? (source please). Can further research and development address these maintenance issues?

[Constantine XI Palaeologus]

While there is a risk that you might lose technological secrets due to leaks in allied security, you will lose technological know how if production's capped at a small amount of units.

Our defense industry isn't comprised of state-owned enterprises like in other countries. If they don't make a profit, they go bankrupt and their technology-advancing (engineering) capability and skilled labor go out the door (see post-Soviet Russia). Restrictions on foreign sales mean a smaller amount of units produced. This means unit cost is higher. In the case of the F-22, the high unit cost, combined with the lack of a foreseeable competitor meant capping production at a small amount of units and closure of the production line. This makes defense contractors leery of investing heavily in similar projects in the future, and results in the loss of a skilled labor force that may not be easy to recover later. In the meantime, your competition catches up or pulls ahead.

Foreign sales mean that contractors can afford to retain their skilled labor and that us taxpayers don't have to spend as much per unit of hardware as we otherwise would have to. The price you pay is an increased chance of a security leak (even then, that's why we retain things like source code and have domestic and export avionics).

[Constantine XI Palaeologus]

I'd take that WaPo article with a big grain of salt. That said, it's expected that there'd be a maintainence penalty due to the VLO nature of the F-22. In this case, I wouldn't necessarily compare it with the F-15C (which I assume the article does) but maybe the F-117 and/or B-2. I strongly expect that it's a great improvement on at least the F-117.

While I agree that the T-50 (BTW do you know when it'll get its real name (i.e. Su-XX)) is very promising for the post-Soviet Russian defense industry, I think it's rather far stretched to claim that it'll outperform the Raptor in MANY ways. It probably will in some, like radar strength, but overall, I expect the Raptor to retain an edge over the T-50 simply by dint of the T-50 being a 1st generation VLO airplane, and the Raptor had a whole lot of resources provided by the world's number one economy thrown at it.

[Constantine XI Palaeologus]

BTW, I didn’t mean to state that the T-50 is a 1st generation VLO airplane in the sense that it’s similar to the F-117. Instead, it’s Russia’s first attempt at building an aircraft with the intent of making it low observable.

[DaveTesla]

There are many aspects of the F22 other than just software that are classified.

The taxpayers spent billions developing them.

Until the technology is duplicated it will give America
Air Superiority. We cannot, I repeat cannot just give this edge
away for reverse engineering.

Bill Clinton may not have thought so but that is just the case.

[Constantine XI Palaeologus]

I gave the source code as an example of something we withhold even when we do export aircraft to allies (which has become a bone of contention with the F-35). The problem with your argument (as I see it) is that the technology will eventually will be duplicated by our adversaries even without any reverse engineering. In the meantime, our capability for technological innovation will have have withered away.

To take an argument from my previous post, low sales means no profit. No profit means loss of engineering expertise/skilled labor required to make high-end military equipment. Loss of that intellectual edge means you're out of luck when your competition eventually catches up. You can only sit on your laurels for so long. Eventually you have to advance.

Strictly from a technological standpoint (not as a taxpayer) I think the ideal situation would be for us to buy the F-22 in the originally quoted quantities (which would drive down the per unit cost) and not sell to foreign air forces. However, I see foreign sales to reliable allies as a preferable situation to the closure of an entire production line and the possible loss of engineering expertise/skilled labor that will be necessary to produce high-end equipment in the future.