Indian Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

sndef888

Captain
Registered Member
To say India is x number of years behind makes no sense, because India is currently not even in the timeline. Their experience "building" AL-31 and GE414 is worthless, basically just screwing together various imported parts. India is currently just sitting around doing nothing (with their failed Kaveri prototypes) and hoping someone just randomly gives them engine technology.

With this style of political mismanagement and joke levels of funding, they won't have a decent engine in a million years. The gap between what India can produce and what is considered modern will only get larger and larger.

I also don't believe in any potential technology transfer from France. India has been dreaming of tech transfer since 2006 at least and predictably nobody is willing to sell core engine tech. I don't see why that would change now.
 
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Tay

New Member
Registered Member
Transfer of technology is just a term used to make Indians think they are getting a good deal.

There's no way any western company will give proprietary technology to a country like India.

At best you'll be able to assemble engines from kits like Turkey does. I doubt that'll even happen given your ties to Russia.
There's no evidence of that.
Also it's foolish to assume nationality because one doesn't agree with random nationalism.
 

Tay

New Member
Registered Member
This is how the US does tech transfer of jet engine technology in the best of times.
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"It was decided that GE would produce 65% of the engine and send it as a kit to VFA, who would manufacture the remaining 35% of the parts and be responsible for final assembly and testing."

Do not expect to produce any of the critical parts of the engine. At best you will produce the low pressure parts and assemble the whole thing from kits.
This is reasoning by analogy, you're welcome to that, I would say it's one step above steaming turtle shells and divining the future based on the shape of the cracks.
India is already "producing" the AL-31F for SU-30MKI. You haven't put that engine in anything else. Either you are not licensed to use it anywhere else or you don't have the critical components from Russia to make beyond the numbers allotted to the MKI.

Why would the F-414 be any different? Chances are pretty much absolute that you'll be locked to a particular contract for its "production" because the US and GE are not in the business of giving away its intellectual property.

Now, let's say India through some act of divine intervention gets full rights to the F-414. Then what? You only have a medium size engine that is equivalent to the WS-13, WS-21 and WS-19.

India still wouldn't have a heavy engine equivalent to the WS-10 or WS-15.

And it certainly wouldn't have a high-bypass turbofan like the WS-20, CJ1000 or CJ2000.

Then there is the production infrastructure that allows China to build and put the WS-10 into four concurrent frontline programs in J-10, J-11, J-16 and J-20.

Indian have never introduced and produced an indigenous engine so there basically no production infrastructure in place besides the AL-31F assembly that is restricted to the MKI. So India catching up to China's full range of turbofans is more than 20 years even if we assume you were gifted the F-414 in five years.

But first get the F-414 produced in India and then maybe we'll have a baseline for discussion. Right now, it is the WS-10, WS-13, WS-9, WS-15 and WS-20 all powering Chinese production or prototype aircraft versus the Kaveri which was never put onto an Indian aircraft. There is nothing to compare with.
This is just 100% speculation, and no facts. You've assumed that India will not be able to import the technology for an engine and then talked about the implications of your assumption. That might have a value to some, but I don't think it's valuable.

Also, as I mentioned to another poster, it's foolish to assume nationality because someone doesn't conform with random nationalism.
 

Tay

New Member
Registered Member
Regarding engines, China was building WS-10As for use in production, in service 4th generation fighters since about 2010 (starting with J-11B), then other land based Flankers after that. They began use on production J-20s and J-10s in about 2019, but were equipping PLA fighters en masse nearly a decade prior to that.
But only in 2022 did the Taihang engine actually become reliable enough to be used by itself on a single engine fighter. So if one is to say that China is 20 years ahead of India, then we have to start the clock at 2022 for China, but that would fail anyway since India has been building Al-31FP's since before then.

As I said, I think the entire concept of saying China is 20 years ahead of India is silly and uninformed, the concept doesn't apply because China has to develop technology on its own, India can pick up the phone and make a contract to have the West sell the technology to them. The concept of how long it takes to develop something on your own doesn't apply when one side doesn't have to reinvent the wheel and another side does.
 

Tay

New Member
Registered Member
Let's remember that these Indian dreams are paper projects still and the WS-10 matured and evolved to be the WS-10A by 2009 already. Put into service widely with PLAAF J-11B fighters more than 10 years ago. Put into single engine J-10Cs more than 3 years ago. 3 years of single engine service proven performance and over 12 years of widespread mainstream frontline fighter service. It would be the year 2033 before that would be close to happening for India and then only with a 1980s level engine (granted WS-10 is also that) but only a medium thrust one.

To simplify and quantify it if forced, indeed it is 20 years behind if not more (assuming India gets to producing and using by 2030 it is exactly 20 years behind and on a less impressive and less powerful engine class). This also being India's only project where all their engine efforts are put into as opposed to China with 10 or more other major projects. I mean China has several combined cycle engines flying with hypersonic aircraft/missiles for a while already.
Everything is a paper dream until it isn't. The WS-10 begin its development in the late 80's, 30+ years ago. WS-10 was not reliable enough to be put into a single engine fighter until last year, I mean one could apply this same argument of yours to say that for all those 30+ years, China's engine production was just a dream. China had to reinvent the wheel, India does not.
 

Tay

New Member
Registered Member
China's road to fielding world-class capabilities across any number of domains was not built on importing world-class platforms, components or technologies, but by fielding generations upon generations of technologically uncompetitive garbage and refining and improving it to the nth degree while feeding lessons learned back into an industry apparatus energised by the simple task of doing. This is the hard route that India has refused to go down, and whatever the sins of India's defence industry bureaucracy, and they are surely many, part of that is also down to intransigence on behalf of the armed services themselves.
You take pride in doing something that others would say is a handicap - re-inventing the wheel. You're certainly welcome to take pride in the fact that China was forced into a more difficult path of military modernization than most other nations, but that doesn't make it an objectively good thing. I think it's certainly better for a nation to simply buy technology than to be forced to spend the money to rediscover what someone already discovered in another country.


To say India is x number of years behind makes no sense, because India is currently not even in the timeline. Their experience "building" AL-31 and GE414 is worthless, basically just screwing together various imported parts. India is currently just sitting around doing nothing (with their failed Kaveri prototypes) and hoping someone just randomly gives them engine technology.

With this style of political mismanagement and joke levels of funding, they won't have a decent engine in a million years. The gap between what India can produce and what is considered modern will only get larger and larger.

I also don't believe in any potential technology transfer from France. India has been dreaming of tech transfer since 2006 at least and predictably nobody is willing to sell core engine tech. I don't see why that would change now.
That's actually factually incorrect. Al-31FP was constructed from raw materials by the the HAL Nashik division in India. Prove me wrong. Feel free to show evidence of your claim: "Their experience "building" AL-31 and GE414 is worthless, basically just screwing together various imported parts."

The rest of your comment is just whistling past the graveyard and uninformed nationalist bluster.
 

Nobo

Junior Member
Registered Member
I mean all this is is trash-talking, typical of a puerile ignorant nationalist. All you have offered up is "assumptions" which you literally admit that you rely upon. To back this up, all you have is making assumptions about the nationality of the person who wrote the comment you disagree with. And the next tool in your tool set is to lie about characterizations of a comment "desperately trying to convince others." I couldn't care less what others think, you merely show that you rely on assumptions on the subject and anyone talking about it and delusions. I'm not totally surprised to find such a person as this here, but I think they're more common on flaming nationalist forums where secluded young men vent their personal frustrations into a computer and use nationalism to give their lives meaning.
Disagree with what? India is getting TOT on technology that it doesn't have? Venting personal frustration into a computer? Is that why you are here? I mean, it's totally understandably given we have seen a lot of your folks fly out of india to other nations, then going into different forums with "india rizing" whining. Since your failed nation is already en-route to further disintegration, it's only justifiable for you people to come into internet with desperation to convince others that it's all okay. You could care less but you couldn't help yourself jumping into indian military thread on "SinoDefence Forum" ,which is kind of primary definition of desperation.
You summed up your life perfectly in that last line, only missed out on the immigration part where you people leave the rizing supa pawa in droves.
As for AL31 , what parts of it do you exactly produce/ manufacture?
Because very few papers i found, besides the "news paper",
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Doesn't mention anything.
Don't think much. Trust me, one plus one results into two.
 

ACuriousPLAFan

Brigadier
Registered Member
But only in 2022 did the Taihang engine actually become reliable enough to be used by itself on a single engine fighter. So if one is to say that China is 20 years ahead of India, then we have to start the clock at 2022 for China, but that would fail anyway since India has been building Al-31FP's since before then.
Nope. China's J-10C, the only J-10 variant with the Taihang engine, has already been in production for several years now. In fact, the J-10C variant entered service with the PLAAF and PLANAF all the way back in 2018.

In fact, if you have largely followed the discussion in the J-10 Thread in this forum, the production lines for the J-10 series have pretty much slowed down or paused entirely in 2022 after around 200 units have rolled off the assembly lines.

That means from 2018 until 2021, an average of approx. 50x J-10C units were produced each year.

"But yeah, sure, let's commence the mass production of the J-10C even though we still couldn't get its engine working" - You, probably.

With around 200 J-10Cs already in service right now, where did you get the absurd idea that China somehow only managed to make Taihang reliable in God-forsaken 2022??!
 
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