Officer of Engineers

The Chinese sold J-7s at $3mil US a copy.

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Chimo

Blademaster

if they can make J-7s at 3mil a copy, then surely they can make cruise missiles capable of traveling more than 1300 miles for half a million apiece.

Officer of Engineers

They do but for whatever reason, they prefer ballistic missiles.

chakos

They prefer ballistic missiles because they are hard to kill, tend to be fairly accurate and they come down on the target at hypersonic speeds from the heavens making it all but impossible for all but a few top tier systems to intercept (hard to kill).

You cant use interceptors against them, your SHORADS are useless, your medium range stuff is useless. The only thing the Indans can use are their long range theater defence assets. And how many of them are laying around?

sohamsri

Sir, do you know exactly where the Indian and chinese airbases are ?

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" THe SiLEnt KNighT.

kuku

Sir, ?
I dont know where they are, however with a simple google search you could see some good results, such as:

Indian Air Force [Bharatiya Vayu Sena]

Indian Air Arms, Order of Battle, Maps, Squadrons, Badges, Photo's, Air bases, Database etc etc

Scramble on the Web - Chinese Air Forces

Scramble on the Web - Chinese Air Forces

Search through, you will find more.

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cheers

gunnut

sohamsri, humor me with this quesiton:

You want 30 Raptors. For that kind of money, you can get 60 F-35s. Do you think that would be a wiser choice?

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"Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

sohamsri

Yes, it would be. But the f-35s are just for the countries who put their money in the JSF project, which we apparently did'nt. SO no f-35s for us.

But yes, if they are offered, it would definitely be a good choice.

I read a report some time back that if India buys the f-16s, US might consider offering the f-35 to India.

The report is as follows :-

Vishal Thapar / CNN-IBN

Published on Thursday , July 19, 2007 at 08:55 in Nation section

New Delhi: Unmatched stealth and super cruise - the Indian Air Force got a glimpse of the future of air combat in an American presentation on its next-generation fighter, the F-35, on Tuesday.
There were indications that the US is willing to share this new weapon with India, but it's clearly a carrot for giving the older F-16 a leg up in the Indian tender for 126 fighter aircraft.
Says Lockheed Martin's Royce Caplinger, "Beyond the RFP that's on the horizon, the F-35 too could play a role, sometime in the future."
The Americans are raising the bar for the competition in the Indian arms bazaar. They are making offers which are difficult to resist. India is being told that it can have the new generation stealth fighter for the price of an F-16.
"Think one to one and I am serious when I say this," says Caplinger.
So, the F-16 is now being sold as the transition to a fifth generation fighter, which has no parallel among the competition. And affordability is the key to this sales pitch.
The price is about $50 million apiece at current prices. The Americans promise that the F-35 will take India into a different league.
"It's a game changer, in every sense of the word," says Caplinger.
The Joint Strike Aircraft will be operationalised only by 2014. The first of India's 126 fighters of an earlier generation will only start arriving by then.
So, the signal that the F-35 would be available is bound to raise an Indian dilemma: Is India investing over Rs 40,000 crore in fighters which will be rendered obsolete by a similarly-priced aircraft?




But buying f-16s just for the hope that we MIGHT get the f-35s in the future...... not very...

gunnut

India won't get F-22 either, but we're still theorizing.

OK, now, if you can get 180 Su-30s for the price of 60 F-35s, do you think that's a good deal?

Or you can get 120 Su-30s plus 2 subs from Russia, for the price of 30 F-22s, or 60 F-35s.

I'm just pulling numbers out of thin air, might even be too conservative. You have to factor in training and transitioning from Russian equipment to American equipment. That costs a lot of money. You have to set up a whole new support structure for just 30 F-22s or 60 F-35s. That costs yet more money. All at the same time you could have had 120 Su-30s, 2 subs (or some other ships, or 150 tanks), with left over cash to operate them for a year. Is that a good deal?

sohamsri

I agreed with your previous opinion but not this one sir.
A stealth fighter is a stealth fighter. I am a huge fan of sukhois and its one of the best planes according to me. But still, if put put against an f-35 or f-22, it wont be able to win.

Thats the whole point, about the stealth fighter.
Setting up infrastructure for 60 planes is not that bad. We might as well buy more of them in the future.
It wont go waste. The two squadrons of f-35s could provide a big tactical advantage. China and Pakistan just don't have any match for it.

kuku

Was talking about bigger threats like the J-10s and J-11s, SU-30s etc.

AFs work with available intel (when its available), right?

So in this hypothetical scenario, wont the Pilots in the F-22s already know what a J-7 retrun looks like?

Thats the point.
They wont face F-35s or F-22s, they will face probable face a AF with the following most modern fighters
J-10s, J-11B, SU-30MKK, F-16 50/52, JF-17s.

If the verticle take-off version of F-35 comes on line and is offered to India and if we are in a even better economic shape (considerin it looks like the world might go into a recession), that will offer us something worth investing into, because that solves a lot of problems,
- A light Fifth generation plane to go with what ever comes out of the PAK-FA.
- A Fifth generation plane for the Navy and the 3 carriers it seems to have in mind, the steathy and network centric part along with high end avionics will be much desired by the navy. On top of that it will be a verticle take-off option something the Indian Navy can apply easily.

I dont see the need of a F-22, the Fifth generation platforms are not going to arrive in the sub continent anytime soon.
IMO whenever Indian Air Force gets the PAK-FA customized version or if we get some sort of dumbed down F-35 version, you can be sure america will send some F-35s to Pakistan just like they are sending all the military supply into Pakistan right now. So that will just make all that talk of an edge vanish into thin air.

Officer of Engineers

Still have to take them out so that the strike package could proceed.

sohamsri

True true.

My mistake was that i was stressing on the raptor. My point was actually a stealth fighter. The f-35 can serve the purpose equally well.

Yusuf

I dont think the F35 is comparable to the F22. It F35 may have stealth but it might not be as dominant as F22. F35 is yet to take of the production line.

sohamsri

Every scenario i came up with involved stealth. Which is enough to give the edge unless pakistan gets em soon.

f22 is definitely better than the f-35. But the f-35 is second only to the raptor. It can lose only a raptor or another f-35, unless the pilot is really stupid, which Indian pilots are not.They are the best in the world.Neither do any of our opponents have the f-22 or f-35, so f-35 can serve the purpose.

By the way everyone, India MIGHT double its military budget

Buying the f-16s just to hope getting the f-35s is another matter though.