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Capt.KAOS
28th Nov 2005, 10:17
Indian Air Force, in war games, gives US a run

Foreign fighter jets performed well against F-16s in recent exercises.

By Scott Baldauf | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

NEW DELHI – Mingling over a few rounds of golf, dogfighting a bit over the jungles of West Bengal - this month's Cope India 2005 war games were billed as a standard two-week exercise between Indian and American top guns.

But in website chat rooms devoted to the arcania of fighter aircraft, there was a buzz. Arre, wa! Oh, wow! Had the Indian Air Force beat the Americans?

Not exactly, according to observers and participants. The exercises had mixed teams of Indian and American pilots on both sides, which means that both the Americans and the Indians won, and lost. Yet, observers say that in a surprising number of encounters - particularly between the American F-16s and the Indian Sukhoi-30 MKIs - the Indian pilots came out the winners.

"Since the cold war, there has been the general assumption that India is a third-world country with Soviet technology, and wherever the Soviet-supported equipment went, it didn't perform well," says Jasjit Singh, a retired air commodore and now director of the Center for Air Power Studies in New Delhi. "That myth has been blown out by the results" of these air exercises.

For now, US Air Force officials are saying only that the Cope India 2005 air exercises were a success, and a sign of America's growing appreciation for the abilities of its newfound regional ally.

But there are some signs that America's premier fighter jet, the F-16 Fighting Falcon, is losing ground to the growing sophistication of Russian-made fighter planes, and that the US should be more wary about presuming global air superiority - the linchpin of its military might.

"The Sukhoi is a ... better plane than the F-16," says Vinod Patney, a retired Indian Air Force marshal, and former vice chief of air staff. "But we're not talking about a single aircraft. We're talking about the overall infrastructure, the command and control systems, the radar on the ground and in the air, the technical crew on the ground, and how do you maximize that infrastructure. This is where the learning curve takes place.

"So let's forget about I beat you, you beat me," he adds. "This is not a game of squash."

F-16s 'got their clocks cleaned'

Tell that to the participants of bharat-rakshak.com (Guardian of India). On any given day, this website seems devoted to which Indian fighter plane uses which missile, with occasional grumblings about why Saurav Ganguly is still playing on the Indian cricket team. But during Cope India '05, Bharat Rakshak was a veritable cheering session for the underestimated Indian Air Force.

Typical was a posting by a blogger who called himself "Babui." Citing a quote from a US Air Force participant in Cope India '05 in Stars and Stripes - "We try to replicate how these aircraft perform in the air, and I think we're good at doing that in our Air Force, but what we can't replicate is what's going on in their minds. They've challenged our traditional way of thinking on how an adversary, from whichever country, would fight." - "Babui" wrote, "That quote is as good an admission that the F-16 jocks got their clocks cleaned."

Another blogger, Forgestone, advised against such "chest-thumping." "Coming out on the winning or losing side of a scorecard doesn't change their large technological edge, their resources, their experience, their talent, their geostrategic position," he wrote, referring to the US Air Force.

More recently, an American pilot who participated in the exercise, added his own two cents on the blog. "It makes me sick to see some of the posts on this website," wrote a purported US "Viper" pilot. "They made some mistakes and so did we.... That's what happens and you learn from it."

The point of the exercise, he said, was for the USAF and the IAF to train, learn, and yes, play golf alongside each other. "For two weeks of training, both sides got more out of their training than they probably would in two months."

US fighter prowess slipping

Military experts say the joint exercises occurred at a time when America's fighter jet prowess is slipping. Since the US victories in the first Gulf War, a war dependent largely on air power, the Russians and French have improved the aviation electronics (avionics) and weapons capabilities of their Sukhoi and Mirage 2000 fighter aircraft. These improvements have given countries like India, which use the Sukhois and Mirages, a rough parity with US fighter planes like the F-16 and F-15C. China, too, now has 400 late-model Sukhois.

Yet, while the Indian Air Force designed the exercises to India's advantage - forcing pilots to fight "within visual range" rather than using America's highly advanced "beyond visual range" sensing equipment - both observers and participants admit that Indian aircraft and personnel performed much better than expected.

The Su-30 MKI "is an amazing jet that has a lot of maneuverability," Capt. Martin Mentch told an Air Force publication, AFPN. Maneuverability is key for missions of visual air combat.

If it turns out the US Air Force did, in fact, get their clocks cleaned, it will have been the second time. In Cope India 2004, an air combat exercise that took place near the Indian city of Gwalior, US F-15s were eliminated in multiple exercises against Indian late-model MiG-21 Fishbeds as fighter escorts and MiG-27 Floggers. In the 2005 exercises in Kalaikundi air base near Calcutta, Americans were most impressed by the MiG-21 Bisons and the Su-30 MKIs.

Indian training surprises US

Maj. Mark A. Snowden, the 3rd Wing's chief of air-to-air tactics and a participant in Cope India 2004, admitted that the US Air Force underestimated the Indians. "The outcome of the [2004] exercise boils down to [the fact that] they ran tactics that were more advanced than we expected," he told Aviation Week last year. "They had done some training with the French that we knew about, but we did not expect them to be a very well-trained air force. That was silly."

One USAF controller working aboard an AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) plane told reporters at Kalaikundi Air Base that he was impressed by the speed in which Indian pilots responded to target assignments given them by AWACS. The AWACS, while operated by Americans, was acting as a neutral party, feeding target assignments to both Indian and American pilots during the exercise. In most cases, the Indians responded to target assignments faster than the American pilots did - a surprising fact, given that this was the first time Indian pilots had used the American AWACS capability.

Given India's growing economic and diplomatic aspirations, it's not surprising that many Indians would have the occasional outburst of jingoism. But Indian pilots know they still have a lot to learn.

"Whether the Indians win or lose is crew room gossip," says Mr. Patney. "The important thing is for us to be involved with the Americans; the purpose is to fly alongside each other, to learn from each other, to see if there is any interoperability. And for the Americans, the main thing is to see what we [Indians] can do with limited resources."

Washington_Irving
28th Nov 2005, 10:55
A clever and timely plant by the USAF's F/A-22 mafia?

The Senate passed its Defense Appropriations Bill 3 weeks ago, which means the conference between the House and Senate to iron out their differences and come up with a joint bill to send to the White House is due to start any day now.

Meanwhile, Rummy (no big fan of the turkey) and pals are expected to complete their Quadrennial Defense Review early in the new year.

:hmm:

USAF will fight back if QDR threatens F/A-22, panelist says
BY: Andy Savoie, Aerospace Daily & Defense Report*
11/21/2005


The U.S. Air Force will fight to protect the F/A-22 Raptor if it's threatened in the Pentagon's upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review, a QDR forum panelist said Nov. 18.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld "has an emerging confrontation coming with Congress on a number of things. He can't even get his undersecretary confirmed. The relationship between Congress and Rumsfeld is pretty poisonous, and unless he wants to try to evolve an era of good feelings with Congress in the context of QDR, they're gunning for him," said Winslow Wheeler, director of the Straus Military Reform Project of the Center for Defense Information.

"There's a lot of constituencies in the Pentagon in the services that Congress is very happy to work with to reinforce their proclivities, a case in point being the F-22," he said. "I'm sure staff in the department of the Air Force and uniformed officers, I'm sure are working very closely [with congressional staffers] to protect the F-22 if it doesn't do well in the QDR. That's standard behavior."

The Pentagon plans to complete the QDR in February.

Wheeler spoke at a National Press Club forum in Washington along with Charles Knight, co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives and editor of the Defense Strategy Review Web site; and Cindy Williams, principle research scientist for the MIT Security Studies Program.

The Air Force says it needs 381 F/A-22s. The service was budgeted to get 277, but the Defense Department cut that number to about 180 last December, and the Air Force estimates it can afford only 170 F/A-22s with the money provided. The December cut is projected to stop Raptor production by the end of the decade, years earlier than planned (DAILY, Sept. 14).

The Pentagon also has asked the military services and defense agencies to cut planned spending by $32 billion over the next five years, including $8.6 billion from the Air Force (DAILY, Nov. 7).

The recent first practice deployment of the stealthy fighter has given Air Force crews increased confidence in it (DAILY, Nov. 1).

Knight said a major issue will be whether the QDR urges a shift from traditional platforms to a mix that can better fight terrorism.

"... Or does it fudge the issue by reassuring us that, as their champions in Congress and the military frequently do, expensive platforms designed for traditional battlefields can also be used in the hunt for terrorists?" he said.

The number of ground forces the Pentagon plans to deploy overseas for long periods has "considerable" force structure implications for the QDR, Knight said. "It is now around 185,000, a level that is unsustainable for long within the current structure of forces," Knight said.

Talking Radalt
28th Nov 2005, 10:59
And now.....
An M1 Abrahms against one o' them funny three wheel taxi/moped/rickshaw combos :E

Onan the Clumsy
28th Nov 2005, 12:22
I didn't read the entire article, so I don't know if the author took the opportunity to weave in the phrase "Cowboys and Indians" :E

BikerMark
28th Nov 2005, 12:35
"An M1 Abrahms against one o' them funny three wheel taxi/moped/rickshaw combos"

No, it won't be just one combo, it'll be thousands. Ever seen the traffic in downtown Mumbai?:E The tank crew'd be driven dizzy trying to cope it.

Talking Radalt
28th Nov 2005, 12:59
No, it won't be just one combo, it'll be thousands. Ever seen the traffic in downtown Mumbai? The tank crew'd be driven dizzy trying to cope it.

You mean...:eek:...the technological military might of the most powerful nation on Earth brought to it's knees by a few locals with back-yard engineering, a good welder and a bit of improvisation/adaptation?
Surely not?! :E

Onan the Clumsy
28th Nov 2005, 13:03
It's what happened to us two hundred years ago...ok two hundred and ...erm... 76 is 24 ... plus 5 = 229 years ago


I think.

Talking Radalt
28th Nov 2005, 13:05
Nah, we simply let them win to get rid of them.

pba_target
28th Nov 2005, 20:45
I seem to remember reading something similar about the -30s vs the F-15 C about a year or so back? Although it was the old (non-aesa) radar, the f-22 mafia were monking about the -Cs getting trashed... disaster, loss of air supremacy etc etc etc. A little further digging revealed that the worry was the F-15s had a kill/loss ratio of only 3:1 rather than the 5:1 or 6:1 they'd been expecting.... oh the horror...