List of high-quality authors In previous articles, the author talked with you about a series of stories about the construction and development of China's Air Force, such as China's J-11BG, J-16, J-10C and other fighters. Today, we talk about India's Tejas series fighters. According to India's development plan, it is preparing to produce more than 220 Tejas series fighters to replace the MiG-21, Jaguar, MiG-27 and other fighters of the Indian Air Force. So, to be fair and objective, what is the comprehensive level of the Glorious Fighters?
Indian Tejas series fightersFirst of all, let's talk about the current level of equipment of the Indian Air Force. At present, the Indian Air Force is equipped with 272 Su-30MKI fighters, 46 Mirage 2000 fighters, 60 MiG-29 fighters, 36 Rafale fighters, more than 30 domestically produced Tejas series fighters, 110 Jaguar attack aircraft, and more than 250 old MiG-23, MiG-27 and MiG-21 fighters. This is all the background of the Indian Air Force, in general, the Indian Air Force is not weak, after all, there are more than 270 Su-30 fighters, which is huge.
However, India has a very obvious problem, that is, the domestic military-industrial system cannot be established, and all kinds of ** equipment are heavily dependent on imports. Taking the various fighters of the Indian Air Force as an example, in addition to the Tejas fighter, other types of fighters of the Indian Air Force are imported from Russia, France, Britain and other countries. Imported fighters face two key problems: first, the number is insufficient and cannot withstand attrition. Second, key technologies are controlled by others, and it is easy to have the risk of getting stuck.
Indian Su-30MKI fighters are not unaware of the above problems. Thus, as early as 1983, India had already begun the famous glorious war ratio. It has to be said that the positioning of the Tejas fighter is not low, it was proposed by India for the positioning of the new generation of fighters, and the main goal is to replace the MiG-21 and other fighters. Due to the limited level of design of India's fighters, in the process of designing the Tejas fighter, technical support was received from France. At that time, India had just imported Mirage 2000 fighters from France.
Therefore, in the process of designing the Tejas fighter, the design of the French Mirage 2000 series fighters was heavily borrowed, such as the use of a tailless delta wing layout. Such a design layout is very distinctive, which further improves the instantaneous hovering ability, which is a very good level among the best fighters. At the same time, the stable angular velocity can reach 15 to 16 degrees per second, which is also a very good level.
If the Indian MiG-21 fighter is put into service in the early 21st century according to the initial plan, it will definitely be a light fighter with medium performance. The key lies in the fact that after the completion of the aircraft design, there have been technical bottlenecks in India in various fields such as thunder methods, engines, and air-to-air missiles, and various technologies have been unable to integrate for a long time, and the development plan of the Glorious Fighter has been repeatedly postponed.
India initially planned to use the domestic "Kavrey" engine for the Tejas fighter, but because the engine could not be finalized, in the end, it had to use the American F404-GE-IN20 engine. In terms of fighter radar, the Israeli EL M-2032 pulse-Doppler radar is used. Due to the immaturity of air-to-air missiles, the Tejas fighter used both Russia's R73 combat missile and Israel's Python medium-range bomb.
India's MiG-29 fighter has gone through many difficulties, and in 2013, the Tejas fighter finally began mass production and was delivered to the Indian Air Force. As of 2023, India's Tejas MK1 fighters have entered service with a total of more than 30 aircraft. In other words, the output of India's Tejas fighters has never been able to rise. Because all kinds of equipment are imported, it takes a lot of time to import equipment and integrate and debug. India's limited fighter production line resulted in Tejas being equipped with only 2 squadrons.
Compared with a series of the world's main fourth-generation and four-and-a-half-generation fighters, India's Glorious fighters have obvious gaps, mainly due to limited radar performance and insufficient fighter payload capacity, such as F15EX, J-16, J-10C, F16Block70, FA18E F fighters, etc. According to reports, the Guanghui MK1 fighter has 7 hardpoints, a maximum bomb hanging capacity of about 4 tons, and a combat radius of 500 kilometers, which is a standard light fighter.
In view of all aspects of the Tejas fighter, India plans to replace Israel's phased array radar with the Tejas MK1A fighter and the Tejas MK2 fighter under development with the American F414 series engine. Please note that the F414 series engine is still very strong, and it is also the standard configuration of the American FA18 series carrier-based aircraft. In terms of the overall level of the Tejas fighter, the author believes that the Indian Tejas fighter belongs to the fourth-generation aircraft, but it belongs to the level of laying the fourth-generation aircraft.
Because the Tejas fighter has a limited level in terms of combat radius and payload capacity. At the same time, in terms of circling stability, imported engines, imported radars, etc., it is remarkable, and it can suppress traditional old fighters. According to the plan proposed by India in November 2023, the Indian Air Force plans to order more than 220 Tejas series fighters.
A question has arisen with India's Rafale series fighters, why does India still produce Tejas fighters in large quantities knowing a series of problems with the Tejas fighters?First, India's proud Su-30 series fighters have stopped importing them in 2021. Since 2022, Russia's production capacity has been limited, and the various fighters produced are mainly used for its own use. Second, a series of fighters of the Indian Air Force, such as the MiG-21, MiG-23, MiG-27, and Jaguar, have entered the end of service and need to be replaced by fighters.
Secondly, the Rafale fighter imported by India from France belongs to the standard fourth-and-a-half-generation fighters with strong performance. But ** is expensive, India will only import a small amount and equip a couple of elite squadrons. With the Rafale too expensive, the Su-30 being discontinued, and a large number of old fighters needing to be replaced, India had to mass-produce the Tejas series fighters. After all, the Air Force squadron cannot be easily compressed, and pilots need to constantly fly aircraft and maintain combat readiness.
For the PLA J-16 series fighters, it is better to use old fighters temporarily than to face the problem of "inorganic availability". Therefore, India also needs to have to mass-produce the Tejas fighter even though it is aware of all aspects of the problems of the Tejas fighter. The key is that the production of Tejas fighters has not been able to rise, and in 10 years, India has produced a total of more than 30 Tejas fighters, and it still needs to make great strides to reach the goal of 220 fighters.
In fact, not only the Indian Air Force, but also the air forces of all countries in the world maintain old fighters and wait for new ones. The PLA Air Force is also in a similar situation, according to foreign reports, the PLA currently has more than 100 J-7 series fighters, more than 70 J-8 series fighters, a total of more than 200 old fighters. Due to the large demand for J-20, J-16 and other fighters, the production volume cannot meet the demand in a short time.
Some aviation brigades of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) still need to use J-7 or J-8 fighters, waiting for the next few years to be replaced with J-16, J-10C or J-20 fighters. In news reports, there was a situation in which the aviation brigade using the J-7 was replaced with J-16 fighters.
There are many more stories about the development of various foreign main fighters of the PLA J-8 series fighters. The author will talk to you slowly in future articles.