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https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/failures-indian-tejas-crippl ing-fleet
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>>65208545
It's okay, france is doing a great job of ruining their own jets.
Rafale F5 is the new FCAS, even dassault has started calling the F5 a "bridge to 6th gen" which is just pure cope.
There is no real plan for a domestic FCAS replacement program, nor is there any money to pay for it even if a program did exist.
India's 114 Rafale order is supposed to help fund the M88 TREX upgrade, as well as the nEUROn derived UCAV wingman development.
The 114 rafale order is ALSO tied to the indian/french AMCA engine development deal which would see Safran develop a clean sheet 5th gen engine for india's AMCA program. But that clean sheet engine requires the M88 TREX upgrade to be successful, as that TREX upgrade is supposed to be a technology proof that can then be scaled up for india's AMCA engine.
The problem is the M88 TREX upgrade is already incredibly difficult because of the size/age of the engine core, it could take years of testing before france has a working engine, and since this engine upgrade gatekeeps the AMCA engine, which itself gatekeeps france's 6th gen VCE engine design, there is basically zero real reason to believe france is even capable of producing a 6th gen airframe by themselves at this point.
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>>65208448
Indians are the most delusional race on earth. I had the misfortune of working with several of them. They will promise things out the ass. When you try to point out all the technical challenges, they'll double down in some izzat preserving instinct and say they're so good they can handle it no problem <insert head bobble>
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>>65208684
>nEUROn
Vaporware, and its pajeet equivalent GhatACK is in desperate need of a, and I quote, "cum production partner"
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>>65208705
I know you didn't bro. Tis for the keks.
Reading about the unmanned jeetcraft gave me a hearty laugh, they've really not thought it out too well.
That being said anything they fly can be categorized as unmanned because, well, anybody who has seen an indian can see why there is a categorical mismatch with what the term "manned" implies.
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>>65208444
CHECKED
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>>65208440
Indians' overpopulation, population density, izzat culture, low IQs, and massive total population make for some very weird dystopian dynamics different than what you'd see in Africa.
They have very few smart people per capita BUT they have so many people total they do have enough intelligent people to create real things. The western ratio is typically 1 genius and 3-4 intelligent people per 40-50 normies. In India that's more like 1 intelligent man per 300 retards. It's a very flat org chart. There are a few legitimately human Indians, but they face a different challenge from Western geniuses. The Western genius's personal challenge is admitting the normies are useful and avoiding becoming an overconfident sociopath. For Indians its the opposite: they have to train themselves to sociopathically ignore the masses and accept the normal people of their race are retards who cannot be fixed.
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>>65208440
>Indian government wants the Tejas to have an entirely domestically designed and built engine
>High performance jet engines are stupidly complex specialty industry
>Despite having no expertise in this field, Indian government gives the engine program a shoe string budget and rushed development time
>que decades of cost overruns and nothing getting done until they switch to a foreign jet engine
Unrealistically ambitious and underfunded seems to be one of the main tells of Indian military procurement.
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>>65208939
WIth the amount of time and money they've spent on it to date, if they had actually given that much money/time back in the late '90s or early 2000s they MIGHT'VE had a shot.
But with this piecemeal bullshit and demanding success in just a couple of years, it's no surprise they come back needing more money and lacking any real progress every single time.
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>>65208939
I'd add that India is too ambitious with procurement. It was originally just a replacement for the MIG-21 but then it morphed into an everything fighter that was supposed to be bootstrapping local industry to compete with modern airframes.
They could have just gone slow and steady. Nobody would laugh if they were honest and made incremental steps with aircraft that were worse than the international competition BUT that built up their own industrial expertise and supply chains. Make it a multi-generational programme with steady support and you could get there.
>>65208448
>Buy foreign jets and stop pissing money down a drain.
Incompatible with Indian foreign and industrial policy.
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>>65209138
>>Incompatible with Indian foreign and industrial policy.
Sure, but their foreign policy forbids them from joining either eastern or western hegemonies, and thus they can never be a close enough ally to either side to get the tech transfer they're looking for, so instead they get treated like a bank by france/russia/US instead of as a peer or true development partner.
Just like the current AMCA engine deal with Safran, they're promising full tech transfer but everyone knows that'll never actually happen no matter what the contract says. They'll be reliant on france for decades to actually produce the hot section at scale, india might be able to hand build a handful of engines in a lab, but france will be the only one capable of producing the engine at the scale needed for a fighter program.
And at the end of the day Safran is treating the AMCA engine as the bridge between the M88 and their VCE engine for 6th gen, so once again, france is basically treating india like a bank for their own R&D.
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>>65209164
Other parties are extremely willing to do deals and tech transfer. The government however requests for insane things
>100% tech transfer
>85% local production
>Foreign company is culpable for failures despite NOT ACTUALLY MANAGING PRODUCTION
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>>65209170
>Other parties are extremely willing to do deals and tech transfer
Not for shit india actually needs, which is why they push for 100% tech transfer and local production.
They've played the tech transfer game for 40+ years now and they've never gotten a real fighter out of it, they're making these demands because they're tired of getting jerked around.
but since they really have no way to stop it, it'll just keep happening.
It's not like india can go buy chinese jets.
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>>65209138
> Nobody would laugh if they were honest and made incremental steps with aircraft that were worse than the international competition BUT that built up their own industrial expertise and supply chains.
The problem seems to be that the India stronk crowd takes great offense at the implication that anything Indian made isn't #1. So even if the program is meant to cultivate industrial expertise that doesn't exist yet, blinged up requirements are written up as if they do.
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>>65208440
India has the same timeframe problem the UK had in the late 20th century. When a program's budget is cut but to make up for it the completion date is set back there is a critical limit which is the remaining career length of the senior/expert people involved. If those people are 45 and there is 20 more years for the project to go its probably going to die because the new people coming in won't be up to speed and no-one will be there to supply critical details things will go off course. Tejas was serious development in 1986. 40 years. Very unlikely the original senior designers are still there, maybe some juniors. This sort of problem is a "not my problem" to politicians.
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>>65208444
>>65208939
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_HF-24_Marut
The funny part is this isn't remotely India, or even HAL's first rodeo when it comes to indigenous, albeit the first time around they had Kurt Tank carrying them until he got fed up with jeet BS and left.
Wouldn't you know it, it was grossly underpowered then too.
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>>65208939
>Turkey is currently on schedule to produce their domestic engines by mid 2030
>South Korea is likely to do the same
>China's domestic engine program is quickly catching up to the West
>Ukraine's previous plans to produce a domestic engine has been put on pause due to the war
>Somehow India still can't figure it the fuck out
What's their fucking problem
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>>65209549
Bureaucracy and multiple players.
Right now India is going to produce the
Ge-414 from the Amerimutts
Safran is offering the m-88 based upgraded engine for AMCA on top of that
M-88 will be produced for the Rafale
Then rolls Royce offering engine codevelopment for AMCA
Then Al-31 is already being produced as well as the al-41/51 for the fgfa su-57 order
Then the Kaveri for the Tejas mk1 and Ghatak UCAV
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>>65208440
Should have added some canards
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>>65209379
> there is a critical limit which is the remaining career length of the senior/expert people involved. If those people are 45 and there is 20 more years for the project to go its probably going to die because the new people coming in won't be up to speed and no-one will be there to supply critical details things will go off course. Tejas was serious development in 1986. 40 years. Very unlikely the original senior designers are still there, maybe some juniors.
This seems to also apply to the Arjuan tank program to a lesser extent. Technically authorization began in 70s, design didn't start until the 80's, it underwent trials/revisions in the 90s, and only started serial production in the 2000s with the army randomly throwing new requirements at this point*. That's a sufficiently drawn out timeframe that I don't think most of the initial senior engineers/designers would have been around by the end. And given the limited production run (they only made about 120 of the things, compared to the thousands of Soviet/Russian tanks the Indians operate) I can't imagine much expertise at building an indiginious design at scale was either generated or retained.
*Requirements that didn't apply to the licensed built T-90s coming into Indian Army service at the time because Indian bureaucracy is fucking random.
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>>65210663
It struck you that way, because it is.
They hyped themselves up enough that they honestly thought they could be the next china once russia started failing in the early '90s.
Sadly China was the next china and india has been unable to cope with that fact ever since.
They're diametrically opposed to china, but they also can't "lower" themselves to becoming true allies with the west as it would be an admission that India isn't a real global power.
For the last 30-40 years this worked fine since China (and Pakistan by proxy) were stuck on 3rd and 4th generation fighter jets and shitty russian tanks.
But with china making real strides in aviation over the last 20 years and actually being able to produce at scale 5th gen fighters, AND now offering those fighters to pakistan, India has gotten to the end of the road.
Sadly they've gotten to the end of the road AFTER 40 years of propaganda and brainwashing to convince the domestic public that india is strong and india can make everything themselves. So it's not like Modi can suddenly pivot to holding hands with the west and buying western jets/tanks. Yet at the same time, India is hopelessly outclassed by the new generation of chinese fighters and they really have no answer.
Even if safran does agree on the AMCA engine development deal, that would still mean we're looking at a minimum of 8-12 years before AMCA would be flying, and a more realistic timeline would be 15-20 years.
Rafale F5 while better than their current jets, can't compete with the J-20 or J-35
And India can't buy F-35s
So yeah, they're fucked, and it's really their own fault.
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>>65210675
>They're diametrically opposed to china, but they also can't "lower" themselves to becoming true allies with the west as it would be an admission that India isn't a real global power.
Another dumb thing is the stupid fuck-fuck games they keep playing with their own currency and capital markets. Also, their agricultural subsidies makes the US look like they hate farmers.
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>>65208444
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>>65210675
>They hyped themselves up enough that they honestly thought they could be the next china once russia started failing in the early '90s.
What's extra goofy about that is India wasn't exactly doing fantastic in the early 90's either. The License Raj and shitty central planning had stagnated/fucked the Indian economy for decades. I think the main thing that saved them from critical existance failure was that they DID allow some (massively regulated and corruption prone) free enterprise and hadn't been running decades of near war time levels of military spending like the Soviets had been. That's less being poised to become one of the next great powers, and more being in desperate need to unfuck decades of poor decisions.
My impression is that what's fucked them in relation to China is that their economic reform/liberalization programs came about a decade latter and in a lot of areas were just more half-assed. Which has finally manifested in such disparities as China mass producing their own domestic Stealth Fighters, while India is just barely getting a light 4th gen jet into service after 40 years.
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>>65210971
Most people focus on the cultural stuff, but the real kicker is that politically India is closer to a confederation of autonomous states bound by a heavily centralized and regulated quasi-command economy. Even if they fixed all the cultural and social issues they'd still be fucked by the sheer inefficiency of their national economy.
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>>65208444
FPBP
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>>65208939
Funniest part about the Kaveri engine is that it wasn't supposed to be a jet engine, it was supposed to be the most advanced jet engine in the world. A variable cycle engine. Its something Americans were developing at the time and in mid 90's decided that they can't do it as actual engine development for practical applications and went back building experimental prototypes to solve major issues with it for couple decades. Burgers were spending something in ballpark of 10 billion on it, Jeets thought they could develop it for like 250 million.
General Electric resumed full scale development of a variable cycle engine in 2016 or was it 2017 as alternative engine for F-35 and for NGAD. They hope to actually have it flying by 2030.
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>>65213289
>>65213289
>resumed full scale development of a variable cycle engine in 2016 or was it 2017 as alternative engine for F-35 and for NGAD.
U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy began pursuing adaptive cycle engine in 2007 with the Adaptive Versatile Engine Technology (ADVENT) program, a part of the larger Versatile Affordable Advanced Turbine Engines (VAATE) program
This was then followed by the Adaptive Engine Technology Demonstrator (AETD) program in 2012, with tests performed using demonstrator engines. GE's ground demonstrator consists of a three-stage adaptive fan and a high pressure compressor derived from CFM LEAP’s ten-stage compressor; the tests in 2015 yielded the highest combined compressor and turbine temperatures in the history of jet propulsion. The follow-on Adaptive Engine Transition Program (AETP) was launched in 2016 to develop and test adaptive engines for sixth generation fighter propulsion as well as potential re-engining of the F-35 from the existing F135 turbofan engine. The demonstrators were assigned the designation XA100 for General Electric's design and XA101 for Pratt & Whitney's. The AETP goal is to demonstrate 25% improved fuel efficiency, 10% additional thrust, and significantly better thermal management.
Further contract awards and modifications from Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC) in 2018 increased the focus on re-engining of the F-35, and GE's design became "F-35 design-centric"; there has also been investigations on applying the technology in upgrades for F-15, F-16, and F-22 propulsion systems. GE's detailed design was completed in February 2019, and initial testing at GE's high-altitude test facility in Evendale, Ohio was concluded in May 2021.
However, in 2023 the USAF chose an improved F135 under the Engine Core Upgrade (ECU) program over an adaptive cycle engine such as the XA100 due to cost as well as concerns over risk of integrating the new engine.
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>>65213348
In 2016, the Adaptive Engine Transition Program (AETP) was launched with the goal of developing and testing adaptive engines for the future sixth generation fighter programs, Penetrating Counter Air (PCA) or Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) for USAF and F/A-XX for US Navy, as well as potential re-engining of the F-35. The program assigned the new designations XA100 for General Electric's design and XA101 for Pratt & Whitney's. The next generation fighter engine would eventually become separate from the F-35 efforts due to the different optimizations required and was split off into the Next Generation Adaptive Propulsion (NGAP) program. The competing designs for NGAP are the XA102 from General Electric and XA103 from Pratt & Whitney.
While the XA100 and XA101 became focused on the potential re-engine of the F-35, a separate engine program was initiated for the Air Force's Next Generation Air Dominance fighter, which is expected to be optimized differently with a greater emphasis on supersonic cruise (or supercruise) performance; this program became the Next Generation Adaptive Propulsion (NGAP) and the entrants were the General Electric XA102 and Pratt & Whitney XA103.
Critical design review of the XA102 was completed in December 2023, and flight testing is expected to begin in the late 2020s.
Critical design review of the XA103 was completed in February 2024, and flight testing is expected to begin in the late 2020s.
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>>65209138
Even bigger problem is that indians are notorious for refusing to admit any fault, so they go out of their way to cover up problems which is one of the reasons this project is taking forever. It's hard to fix a problem if you don't know or admit is there
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>>65208440
Indians went wrong.
>>65208448
>without spending the 40+ years of R&D leg work required.
None of that matters in a culture built around lying about everything and smugly trying to sabotage everyone around you.
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>>65210591
It looks to me like both these projects are more like a form of academic research grants where the government is in theory working on developing indigenous defense industry but is more like studying how to actually do anything, and doesn't actually-impose strong demands to get the projects finished and out the door. It must be that the gov doesn't demand "the Tejas must be finished within X months or it's terminated" kind of pressure and is more like "we will keep trying to make a jet and a tank ourselves until we actually-do it, then we can start to take our own industry seriously and develop it."
For the "ok but we do also need something there that works and actually exists that we can use in case shit goes down" reality of running a military they just buy foreign.
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>>65208444
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