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[daifo]

I think this might be a little off topic but, if I weren't looking into this part of into (here anyway) I genuinely never expected their industrial capabilities to be so shockingly lacking, joking about the Tejas is one thing but seeing how big of a failure the entire project is a wholly different thing.

It is a thing in the west too but likely bigger in India, people that would traditionally look into engineering or industrial science gets brain drained into more lucrative IT/business related fields or leave the country. This is magnify in India since it is a huge center for outsourcing of those fields.

 

[Clango]

The Tejas is not even the epitomy of India's lack of industry in the aircraft space.

To genuinely understand the lack of capability, you need to look at their Saras -- a prop-driven utility plane that had been in development as long as the Tejas.

Failed even worse than Tejas in the four decades since development began in 1980s.

Wait they only made two? This can't be right surely this is some deliberate sabotage right?

 

[Clango]

India's weapons research and development is a disaster. Almost all projects are shoddy to varying degrees, especially the Arjun tank and the Tejas fighter, two epic shit projects.

I sincerely hope to god (or Brahman, I guess) that at some point they're gonna get off their asses and actually upgrade their MKIs, they're still flankers and in my eyes all flankers deserve love, whether it will actually any good is another story though.

 

[Clango]

Mark my words, by the time FC-31 is adopted, it will have a domestic engine. Sure it might have a RD-93, but that's with The Russians on board as a partner, and not merely as a supplier.

Sure, the only large component you see now is the F-414, but I'll bet a lot of the electronics and navigation will be foreign sourced. BTW, since India doesn't have its own GPS and Beidou, what will it use?

Don't kid yourself, copying is only fucking way to go. The going might have been tough for WS-15, but if the Chinese had not started out with WS-10 and its granddy: CFM-56, it would've taken then even more time. There is only so many ways to compress air, you might as well take from a mature design. On the other hand, if the Indians want to blaze their own path, you will know they are really just trying to drag out the program for more $$$$.

Nobody build a gen 5 bird for domestic only. Everyone would like to export a little to spread out the cost as much as possible.

There is a 3 choice, not building the thing and build out India's industry one step at time. Indians are too eager to promise the moon and trying to quantum leap evolution. History and experience has shown that they are successful at squandering Indian tax payer funds and fucking up, decade after decade.

They really should take a page from Deng, and lay low for 20 years, focus on catching the last train on the globalization express. India has no real existential threat, just make peace with Pakistan and work in modernizing domestic industries first.

I don't know if you still use this forum but holy shit you're spot on, the J35A indeed entered service with the WS19 engine.

 

[GiantPanda]

The idea that a country would choose to built a tiny fighter jet for reasons other than ease of development is pretty much just taking a ridiculous self-serving reason given by Indians:

"It's really hard fitting everything into that super small frame. That's why it took us four decades. We were too ambitious."

No, they chose the easiest possible path -- and it was the right choice. Their industry was/is just not up to it.

Look at the picture below. This entered service in 1990s. It is a point defense fighter with twin trainer engines.

It was/is obstensibly a more complicated aircraft than the Tejas being a machine that needs sync, monitor and fly with two engines.

It was built by an industry with little experience before or since. And it arrived on the tarmac of the ROCAF decades before the Tejas.

This is the reason why all developing aircraft industries go with a tiny point defense aircraft in the beginning and not larger more capable aircraft.

 

[Clango]

The idea that a country would choose to built a tiny fighter jet for reasons other than ease of development is pretty much just taking a ridiculous self-serving reason given by Indians:

"It's really hard fitting everything into that super small frame. That's why it took us four decades. We were too ambitious."

No, they chose the easiest possible path and it was the right choice. Their industry was/is just not up to it.

Look at the picture below. This entered service in 1990s. It is a point defense fighter with twin trainer engines.

It was/is obstensibly a more complicated aircraft than the Tejas being a machine that needs sync, monitor and fly with two engines.

It was built by an industry with little experience before or since. And it arrived on the tarmac of the ROCAF decades before the Tejas.

This is the reason why all developing aircraft industries go with a tiny point defense aircraft in the beginning and not larger more capable aircraft.
View attachment 162750

And shocker, when the F404 wasn't available they didn't wait 20 years asking for engines and just went with something else so they could actually get the plane made, funny how the F404 is a common factor between these 2 planes while the F-CK-1 is already upgraded as best they could.

 

[Gloire_bb]

No, they chose the easiest possible path -- and it was the right choice. Their industry was/is just not up to it.

Look at the picture below. This entered service in 1990s. It is a point defense fighter with twin trainer engines.

It was/is obstensibly a more complicated aircraft than the Tejas being a machine that needs sync, monitor and fly with two engines.

(1)F-Ck-1 was aircraft done with not insignificant US help. Furthermore, Taiwan is most certainly a far more developed...province - it's developed island in the first place (and 1980-90s were arguably its relative peak), particularly capable at things that tend to make aircraft equipment grow beyond specifications.
(2)Up till now, you managed to come up with exactly one requirement, that a heavier(? F-ck-1 is lighter than Tejas) aircraft won't need. That by itself is a very questionable take (tying all power and cooling requirements on a plane to a single power source is far harder balance game when compared to two or more).
On the other hand - systems don't scale up comparably with aircraft. Cockpit is still largely the same. electronics will be the same, etc. etc. They simply take larger proportion of smaller aircraft, making every weight mistake far more damning.

Soviet fighters, by the end of CW, were visibly heavier(yet had lower useful margins) than lighter western aircraft. This was exactly a way of fielding competitive aircraft with not very competitive electronics industry.

Tejas, on the other hand, was as small as it gets. It's very compact even for its weight, as it was always meant to fit in mig-21 reinforced hangars on Indopak border. India was poor, and building second air force infrastructure wasn't seen as a bright idea.
Tbf, given how much new reinforced infrastructure went up for Su-30MKIs in economically booming India(i.e. it didn't at all), these suggestions were quite on point.

 

[GiantPanda]

And shocker, when the F404 wasn't available they didn't wait 20 years asking for engines and just went with something else so they could actually get the plane made, funny how the F404 is a common factor between these 2 planes while the F-CK-1 is already upgraded as best they could.

India had more choices than the ROC. It could have gone with a RD-33 too like the JF-17. They had a plethora of options and help from all sides.

But managed to delay by decades the easiest fighter class you can build aside from trainers. Speaking of trainers, the IJT project which also began at about the same time as the Tejas is worse off than the Tejas.

So India's industrial capacity is not capped at the smallest and least sophisticated fighter class available. It's probably capped at the trainer level. Or even more likely, the light utility propeller level (Saras.)

I think without extraordinary outside support which the Tejas got (foreign engine, avionics, radar, ejection seat, even nosecone,...) as a signature project, I believe India's aviation industry cannot even productionize a new equivalent of a Y-12.

 

[Clango]

India had more choices than the ROC. It could have gone with a RD-33 too like the JF-17. They had a plethora of options and help from all sides.

But managed to delay by decades the easiest fighter class you can build aside from trainers. Speaking of trainers, the IJT project which also began at about the same time as the Tejas is worse off than the Tejas.

So India's industrial capacity is not capped at the smallest and least sophisticated fighter class available. It's probably capped at the trainer level. Or even more likely, the light utility propeller level (Saras.)

I think without extraordinary outside support which the Tejas got (foreign engine, avionics, radar, ejection seat, even nosecone,...) as a signature project, I believe India's aviation industry cannot even productionize a new equivalent of a Y-12.

Honestly I have newfound respect for the F-CK-1, just by existing alone under the constraints it was.

 

[Gloire_bb]

Honestly I have newfound respect for the F-CK-1, just by existing alone under the constraints it was.

Main constraint against it was puppy-like love of Taiwanese government to kill off its own programs the moment US alternative was made available. Aircraft design was probably more straightforward - it was one of the line, with a rather modest design goal (early sketches in that program were quite ambitious, but risk management led to a rather modest aircraft - half sister of T-50/FA-50, in a way).

Which is ironic, as F-CK-1 is a platform actually controlled by them, and all key aerial munitions island produce are only usable through it - not through their F-16 waffen.
Problem is, IDF production was cut far too early when US opened F-16 option, and it struggles to get even most basic upgrades.