Posted on 01/04/2012 5:32:53 AM PST by sukhoi-30mki
India to spend €950 million on missiles for Mirage 2000
PTI
India on Wednesday cleared a €950-million deal to procure 500 air-to-air missiles from a French firm for the Indian Air Force’s Mirage 2000 aircraft fleet.
A Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) meeting chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday cleared the deal to procure 490 MICA missiles manufactured by French firm MBDA for €950 million, Defence Ministry sources said in New Delhi.
The missiles would be deployed on 51 Mirage 2000 aircraft, which are already undergoing upgrades at French facilities under a €1.47-billion deal signed earlier this year.
Under the deal, MBDA will have to do offsets worth 30 per cent of the deal meaning that they will have to invest €315 million back in the Indian defence sector.
The Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP) mandates that foreign vendors bagging deals worth over Rs. 300 crore have to invest back at least 30 per cent of the contract’s worth into Indian defence, civil aerospace and homeland security sector.
India signed a deal with French companies Thales and Dassault Aviation, which will take 10 years to carry out mid-life upgrade of IAF’s 51 Mirage 2000 fighters.
Two aircraft have already been flown to France for upgrades and the remaining would be modernised in India at Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) facilities in India.
“The cost of the contract for upgrade of the Mirage 2000 with Thales is €1,470 million while the cost of the contract with HAL is Rs. 2,020 crores (around €340 million). The upgrade of the aircraft is expected to be completed by mid-2021,” Defence Minister A.K. Antony recently informed Parliament.
OT, any idea when the MMRCA decision will be out?
The Mica has a lower maximum range than the AMRAAM and costs more, but it’s about as advanced. It’s IR variant could in theory be used as a stealthy medium range weapon which doesn’t rely on radar. As far as the Rafale is concerned, it would essentially be a stopgap with the Meteor expected after 2015.
It’s hard to say when the MMRCA decision expected though articles put it as by the 3rd week of this month.
Most web discussions I have seen on the MICA (as well as virtually every other single weapon) are mostly baseless and speculative. Most of them do not even attempt to use logic, and the few that try to add some logical sense into their posts are (sadly - although there is no viable alternative really) using information that is in the public space and may/may not be entirely accurate. I've seen several threads in other forums that go on for pages where they compare various types of missiles, the MICA included, and it is always amazing to see the 'information' given. Most of it is made up, some of it is simply Wiki regurgitation, and the few posts that make some sense are still based on a medley of logic and white-paper sources. It is next to impossible to get 100% legitimate and actual information because there will be no defense manufacturer and/or country that will avail all the pertinent specifications of a particular weapons systems.
Yet on the web one will find threads that go on for pages discussing the capabilities of a Virginia Class submarine versus those of an Astute Class submarine. Details that 99.999999% of people in the world do not have, and the very few that have the data for the Virginia SSN do not have for the Astute SSN (and vice-versa), and the extreme few that may have real data for both SSNs are a handful ...and none of them would log onto a military forum and spill the beans. Yet one can easily find threads (do a google search) showing how one submarine's anechoic coatings, or sonar, or weapons management system, etc is 'better' than that of the other submarine. Other examples include how the PakFa is cr@p based on a picture (as if its developers were absolutely clueless about a particular that is totally evident to the blogospehere). Or why the Chinese SD-10 is 'better' than the AMRAAM (some Chinese forums make all sorts of silly claims - I was reading one a while back that claimed the new Chinese SSN is 'better' than the Virginia/Seawolf classes). Pure nonsense. Even on FR I have seen that, such as posts by a certain chap who left last year who claimed the S-300 is cr@p (yet for some reason American stealth technology was developed, at high cost, to defeat this type of 'cr@ppy' threat, and it is this same type of technology that makes Chinese airspace, as an example, inhospitable to any legacy fighters). Yet the guy would say it was cr@p because the Israeli airforce destroyed some Syrian SAMs that dated back to the Cold War.
The only military forum that comes close to sense is one named after a famous Western single-engined fighter jet and ends in '.net' (I am not sure what FR's rules are for mentioning other sites), where there tends to be a greater ratio of logic to cr@p, but even there a lot of the information is white-paper and while there are SOME people who post there who MAY know (there was one chap who was a F-22 pilot who got into some trouble for saying more than he should have) chances are they will not say anything at all.
Anyways, what is known about the MICA is that it is a very advanced missile, that it has an Active radar-guided version as well as an imaging-Infra-Red version with a highly advanced seeker, is very capable both in beyond-visual range as well as within-visual range, that it has a shorter range than the AMRAAM but at the same time a (far) longer range than any IR missile (apart from some special types of Russian IR missiles that are basically conversions of long-burn radar-guided missiles to give them an IR seeker, and the MICA is more advanced than those), and it has good maneuverability with high off-bore sight capability and 360 degrees launch envelope (i.e. can engage a target immediately behind the aircraft). It can also be used as a surface-to-air missile. That is about it, and that is data from MBDA. Anything more than that and either a) the person is posting cr@p/making stuff up/speculating; or b) someone is saying more than should be said on the matter (e.g. releasing information that should not be released).
As for India's purchase of the missile ...India has received one of the best missiles in the world (not the best, but one of), and a missile that will enable it to match up against anything its two main foes may possess. Easily. Also, as Sukhoi30MKI posted, the IR variant of the MICA can also be used as a stealthy medium-range A2A missile (since it is not emitting), and with the Rafale the missile's seeker has also been used to gather information even (as an additional sensor).
Bottom line - those that do not 'highly regard' the MICA are people posting on the web. On the other hand, the missile has been bought, using real money, by 8 countries. I think countries spending real money on a system outweigh comments from people saying this or that 'sucks.' India has made a good decision, and will receive a capable missile.
What difference would the RADARs on the two make ?
Thus, the radars of the F-16 and M2000 will be the first to come into play.
As for the missiles it is always tricky looking at the range provided since in many cases it is the maximum range. In real conflict making shots at maximum range will lead to no kills. Missile pK (probability of kill) rapidly falls off, and most pilots will try to ensure the target is within the missile's no-escape zone (which also means that your radar can detect the other guy before he detects you, but you are still unable to use your missile). First look is important (it allows you to decide what your next course of action will be), but it doesn't always translate to first kill. Also, an interesting exercise would be to research the pKs of AMRAAMs ...the AMRAAM has a pK of 0.59 (according to a RAND study called 'Air Combat Past, Present and Future' ...which is a very good read), with 17 AMRAAMs fired leading to 10 kills. Also, of those 10 AMRAAM kills:
- 4 were not beyond visual range
- Iraqi MiGs shot down were fleeing and non-maneuvering
- Serb J-21 had no radar or Electronic Countermeasures (ECM)
- US Army UH-60 not expecting attack; no radar or ECM (a US Army helicopter was mistakenly shot down by a F-15C)
- Serb MiG-29 FULCRUMS had inoperative radars
- No reports of ECM use by any victim
- No victim had comparable BVR weapon
- No victim had comparable BVR weapon
It is easy to see why on other threads I make fun of those who claim that the US doesn't need F-22s because its F-15s and F-16s 'slaughtered' the Iraqi airforce. Please! That was like sending the LA Lakers team to play against the 4th grade team Sister's of Mercy Girls Preparatory school and then claiming a mighty win. Against a capable foe (e.g. China) the characteristics that made the Iraqi airwar a turkey shoot will simply not exist. Anyways, I digress.
Comparing plane to plane, or missile to missile, really doesn't work unless there is a significant performance differential (e.g. comparing the Meteor missile to an AMRAAM or a MICA; comparing a Raptor to a MiG-29 or F-15; or comparing a Virginia/Astute to a Chinese SSN). However, when comparing analogues it becomes more of a speculative guessing game (e.g. comparing a F-15 to a modern SU-30 variant; comparing a Virginia SSN to an Astute SSN, comparing the Iris-T to the Python 4).
Any (hot) event that will bring a Pakistani F-16 together with an Indian Mirage 2000 will mean that both planes will be in the company of other planes and aerial assets, will be in different configurations. For instance if the F-16 gets shot down (assuming it loses) it will not be shot down by the M2000 (it would be shot down by a MKI or the MMRCA winner unless something really goes wrong).
My opinion? Both are equal. They are quite similar, and both countries are quite adept at using their respective airframes (the Indians adore the Mirage 2000, and the Pakistani have the F-16 as their premier plane).
What about in real life?
Well, in the 1990s there was an incident over the Aegean Sea where a Greek Mirage 2000 faced off against a Turkish F-16. Both are NATO countries, and both have respectable airforces. One thing led to another, and in the end the Mirage shot down the F-16 (which was a 2 seater, with one pilot dying and the other managing to eject). Does that mean the Mirage is better than the Viper? Nope ...all it means is that in that one incident the Greek pilot was better than the Turkish one.
Both aircraft are the same, and in a fight between the Indians and Pakistanis the main worry of the F-16 pilots would be the MKI (while the Pakistani army would be watching out for Mirage 2000s and Jaguars releasing death from above).
=
Thus, the radars of the F-16 and M2000 will NOT be the first to come into play.
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