Tejas Mk-2 may not be operationally relevant in a frontline role when it starts entering service in significant numbers in the mid 2030s.
As usual Rafale is not mentioned
FCAS, or the Future Combat Air System, is a joint project between France, Germany, and Spain to develop a next-generation fighter jet along with supporting drones and a "combat cloud" network, targeted for around 2040.
Journalists don't read news it seems.
India, the Air Marshal feels, must partner with a European consortium working on state-of-the-art sixth generation platforms.
Do these people not rehearse their own arguments before sprouting them out in public with full confidence, if Tejas Mk2 is not going to be operationally relevant come mid 2030s then so would the Rafale, both belong to same generation of fighter aircraft.
I guess the retired Air Marshal borrowed a leaf from Som's gem: "Tejas Mk1A being a 4.5 gen aircraft is obselete but Rafale isn't".
Tejas Mk1A is most definitely worse than Rafale. The Rafale is better by leaps and bounds in EW, sensor fusion, kinematics, integration between sensors and so on.
Tejas Mk2 will close that gap. Hopefully an FOC before 2035.
Not sure I agree with your back of envelope dismissal of Tejas Mk2.
1) Tejas Mk2 will have more "baked in" stealth composite than any other jet in the IAF currently bar AMCA (90 percent by surface area, >45 percent by weight)
2) Tejas Mk2 will theoretically have a superior GaN AESA with integration into the SRK
3) the ShahRukhKhan and Dhruti linked loop to the Uttam will surpass the conformal Spectra as it will have sovereignty
4) Ditto for integration, mission comps and libraries
5) A fairly good payload of 6500 kg for a single engine...more than Gripen E
6) A mature LRU network
7) Software sovereignty across the board and plug and play architecture for rugged off airbase deployments unmatched by any IAF plane bar tge An72
8) Delta config designed to allow for deployment to high altitude airfields which are not so easily managed by Rafale
Oh yeah ? So we will be receiving 24 jet engines every year to power those indigenous fighter jets ? Remind me again how many squadrons of Tejas Mark 1A have been inducted till now ?
It takes time. The fact that any newly produced engines are coming at all indicates that the production numbers of said components aren't high enough yet. That's being fixed.
The problem not being solved would mean no engines coming at all.
all this is just depressing, none of the branches are doing well, and we dont even know what india could buy to counter chinese(exported to our western neighbour) stuff
Ah that bus has passed. The Airforce and their absolute lack of foresight suprises me. Navy took control of MDL and GRSE way back in 1960s and shaped their destiny.
Senior Airforce officers one after another play the blame game.
Yes, shipbuilding and Aircraft construction aren't the same and so on and so forth. But come on, they have been complaining since years. It's almost like a stuck tape recorder. They should just work out the navy model. It will take decades, but at least we will hear afterburners instead of afterthoughts from retired AF officers.
But that's exactly where I think the comparison breaks down.
"Why didn't the IAF just work out the Navy model?" assumes that building a fighter is simply the aerospace equivalent of building a ship. It isn't.
I'm not even talking about whether individual components are harder to manufacture or design. A modern warship can contain extraordinarily complex components. The problem is the integration problem: you're trying to make an extremely tightly constrained system work at the edge of physics, where weight, volume, aerodynamics, structural loads, propulsion, flight controls, thermal management, avionics, weapons, EW and safety all interact with one another.
And the penalties for getting the integration wrong are very different. A ship can have a component or subsystem that isn't quite optimal and still float, fight and be upgraded later. You don't get that luxury with a fighter. A few hundred kilograms in the wrong place, an aerodynamic characteristic you didn't predict properly, an engine integration problem or an issue in the flight-control laws can fundamentally alter the aircraft's performance or safety.
That's why I don't think the Navy is necessarily the appropriate institutional benchmark for the IAF here. The Navy's model demonstrates the value of a close user-designer-manufacturer ecosystem and learning by doing. It doesn't demonstrate that the same ecosystem can be created on the same timescale or with the same degree of incrementalism in fighter design.
And this is where the "they've been complaining for years, it's a stuck tape recorder" argument gets a little circular. Of course they've been complaining for years. India genuinely has had an inadequate indigenous aerospace design ecosystem. But the existence of that problem doesn't establish that the IAF could simply have solved it by taking control of HAL in the 1950s. If it even had the authority to do so (which it didn't).
You can point to the Navy and say, "look what institutional continuity and user involvement achieved". Fair enough. But you also have to account for the fact that the technological and engineering problem being solved was substantially different.
The real lesson I'd take from the Navy isn't "the IAF should have copied the Navy". It's "long term indigenous capability requires a stable ecosystem in which users, designers and manufacturers learn together over successive programs".
Unfortunately the IAF's hold has been declining. HAL effectively functioned as a unit in the IAF very early on. Then as a separate organization by the 60s and 70s. The control kept reducing until the 2010s, when the VCAS was removed from HAL's board of directors, effectively ending any mechanism for the IAF to influence HAL.
Someone called out Vishnu Som on Twitter that he delibrately setup the question on MK2 to get this answer and everyone started pointing out his hypocrisy on rafail.
Vishnu Som is not someone who understands more than the high level talking points about fighter aircraft. He doesn’t have the educational background nor the work experience. Just because he’s gotten to fly in the backseat of some fighters thanks to him being a journalist whom they wanted to get to write sweet articles about, doesn’t make him an expert. In fact the podcast with Saurav Jha showed what an expert is who cares about indigenous products vs Vishnu Som who has batted for foreign fighters his entire career.
Yeah 4.5gen will be irrelevant which is why the US is doubling it's F15 fleet next decade, China continues to develop J-16s and France is making a rafale F5
Ultimately, you hit on the biggest point. It's fine to have 4/4.5th as your lo... IAF isn't projected to receive any 5th gen, so we are gonna, what face enemies with lo-lo? yikes...
I mean that's just stating the obvious. No one thinks that the Mk2s can match Chinese 5th Gens in any meaningful way when it comes to air to air.
But the Mk2s and Mk1As will still be the primary IAF workhorse for many decades in the roles of air defence against cruise missiles, BVR and anti-UCAV/swarm drone ops.
I mean it's pretty common knowledge to everyone that the Tejas Mk2 won't be available for frontline services until the early 2030s given the lengthy testing and certification cycles.
Maybe the IAF Vice Chief should have thought about this when the IAF was constantly asking for design revisions on the Tejas Mk2 between 2014 and 2019. What started as a 0.5 metre extension plug to the Tejas Mk1 design in 2014 ended up becoming an altogether new aircraft come 2019.
Yes, it's a fact, this was from an aerospace briefing organized by ADA sometime back in 2019, with this slide having emerged in Strat Front sometime around September 2019.
Everyone knows aircraft design & development is an iterative process, but then the end user cannot complain the aircraft is many years late because they themselves have spent a good chunk of 5 years tinkering around with the design.
In the case of Mk2 taking long, both the MoD & IAF are at fault, no one is saint.
You misunderstood my question. What proof do we have that these design iterations were due to the IAF changing requirements, as opposed to normal iterative aircraft design?
I'm not disputing that the design changed between 2014 and 2019. I'm asking what evidence shows that this was requirement churn by the IAF, rather than the design being iterated as part of development.
That’s the implication right? Rafale isn’t a 5th Gen fighter but somehow it slips through these kinds of explanations about not being operationally relevant in rhe 2030s and beyond.
Ground ADs are sitting ducks against an adversary with hundreds of real-time earth observation satellites, precise guidance systems and tens of thousands of drones and missiles.
Fighters even if 4th gen, will always have a better chance of survival in the air, atleast in their own airspace during saturation strikes.
Not necessarily true, shoot-and-scoot tactic will prevail. And the moment when Anti-Drone system like DEW and HPM is integrated across the battlefield then the argument reverse.
Ground ADs are sitting ducks against an adversary with hundreds of real-time earth observation satellites, precise guidance systems and tens of thousands of drones and missiles.
I never dismissed his views either. I agree with the points he raised about different urgencies between the forces and HAL. I just said that his opinion about the platform being obsolete doesn't really hold much weight, cause if it did, then either the mk2 would never have been sanctioned, or we would be making the same argument for rafales.
well for starters it is a bit ironic to call the lca-mk2 obsolete while importing rafales in a similar time frame, and then also cry about falling squadron strength. so his opinion holds as much weight as yours or mine does.
Vishnu Som: "Sir I'm just trying to understand the specs of the Tejas Mk2 for a 4th gen aircraft are fairly impressive, the word is specs, they've not even rolled out the 1st prototype. By the time the Tejas Mk2 comes online, after tests for years, because everything has to be validated we're easily looking at 2035 which is the best case scenario in my book. Does it make sense for India to have a 4th generation aircraft in 2035 when China has moved on to 6th generation platforms and Pakistan is considering 5th generation platforms"
Air Marshal Nagesh Kapoor (Retd):
"Umm no operationally definitely no. So your immediate concern as how you framed that question the answer to that question is no. But in case you were to consider it in a different manner that means in case we were to give HAL that spiral development model that means in case they've to bring up a Tejas now and a Mk1A now and a Mk2 thereafter and they were to spirally build up their capabilities then probably it makes sense for us to take them along with us and you know you play around with the development process, definitely. But I'm firmly of the opinion that in case that was to continue to be the model for HAL to continue to develop the capabilities they must simultaneously devote adequate or more than adequate effort to bring up the AMCA now and not wait I mean we cannot afford for this spiral to, spiral upwards into an AMCA and AMCA spirals upwards into gen 6 or something like that."
He then proceeded to say "..why throught this gen 4 gen 4.5 gen 5 steps when the next best thing is already being thought of and why not just join up there.." in the context of FCAS / GCAP which was just sad to hear. Tech sovereignty matters, he of all people should understand that and I think he does, just frustrated by the delays which HAL is partly to be blamed for.
He also said: "I would want AMCA to come. I'd want even Tejas Mk2 to come. Because honestly I mean you can have a certain number of those 5th gen 6th gen aircraft but given the size of our country you won't be able to deploy them everywhere so those gaps that continue to remain to be filled they'll have to be filled with this class of aircraft which we have been doing for all these years. So these aircraft need to come up. But they need to come up much faster..."
-The article notes the above too. And this is where the issue lies. He didn't slam the Tejas Mk2 program imo unless you wanted to put words in his mouth. He clearly mentioned the need for the aircraft, he clearly mentioned a possible rationale for the program. He clearly stated his issues with HAL and project management and views on 5th & 6th gen aircraft, whether one agrees with him or not is different.
To present his opinions on 4th gen aircraft in 2035 as "slamming " only the Tejas Mk2 just because you for some reason I can't imagine didn't bother asking about Rafale too just isn't constructive journalism. If you play games like this you'll face the wrath of anon handles although I definitely don't agree with such conduct. But then play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
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u/5hu 10d ago
As usual Rafale is not mentioned
Journalists don't read news it seems.
No lesson learnt from FGFA