Aren’t you the pretty thing?
American, French and South Korean aircrews are getting a close look at one of the world’s fabled aircraft – the Indian air force’s Su-30MKI strike fighter.
An Indian air force group of 50 pilots and weapon systems officers – flying eight Su-30MKIs, two Il-78 tankers and an Il-76 transport – are just finishing a month-long deployment to the United States with a training cycle at the latest, annual Red Flag aerial combat excercises (sic) based at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev.
The SU-30MKI is the Indian Air Force export version of the SU-30 Flanker-H, with forward canards for high alpha stability and thrust-vectoring engines (each of them grunting out >27,000 pounds of static thrust in full blower) to help get her there. A passive electronically scanned array radar – cheaper to manufacture than the active arrays on the F-22 and F-35 – helps support the AA-12 “AMRAAMski” medium range missile system.
SIGINT exploitation – if any such thing was even considered – may have been limited by the Indians’ use of a training load for the NIIP-BARS radar, while for their own part the IAF complained of the numbers of air superiority missions they were scheduled for – there’s never enough to go around – as well as restrictions on the use of expendables and their fighter-to-fighter datalink.
Red Flag is high-end training: Waves upon waves of fighters, strikers, jammers, SAMS and AAA - as close to real combat as you can get. Every fighter pilot worth his salt wants to be there for the kill, but most of them want to come back with their shield rather than on it. For that purpose, there’s no substitute for rigorous training, flawless execution and superior equipment to raise survival odds.
But with so much metal – real and simulated – flying through the sky at all altitudes, so much information to process and so little time to do it, what with opposing forces closing in upon each other at multiple Mach numbers, being the killer rather than the killee is nothing like certain. It’s a numbers game, and maybe losing an eight-ship of Eagles is considered a fair trade, so long as they took down twenty or thirty bandits with them. Worse comes to worst, everybody gets to look inside his soul and learn something.
Because holding on to the reins on a bucking fighter surrounded by multiple, maneuvering wingmen, each of them toodling along at 1.3 IMN in max grunt in the low 40′s while multiple bandit groups march down the radar screen, everyone racing to share his own slice of situational awareness even as the lead issues terse targeting instructions, the RWR gear chirping and clucking in your headset – all that is pretty damned stimulating. To a degree exceeded only by the electric chair, maybe. Which might explain the less than jubilatory comments of the IAF commander at the end of the exercise:
“It was almost what we expected,” Choudhry says. “Because we couldn’t use our chaff and flares, when we were targeted by SAMs we were shot down. And there was no picture in the cockpit to help our situational awareness so the workload on the [aircrews] was very high.” Nonetheless, “We came a long way. We trained hard. And the degree of difficulty was not unexpected.”
That’s leadership talk – let me just translate that for you.
Given that what I know of the subject is mostly guesswork, but doesn’t the phrase, “Because we couldn’t use our chaff and flares” usually mean “OH CRAP, JUST START PUSHING BUTTONS!”?
Just guesswork, you know?
That’s a damn fine looking airplane. And I’d hate to have to face them in anything like even numbers with even systems behind them.
(by systems, I mean the airborne controllers, GCI, jamming support, datalinks, etc.)
Byron,
I got the impression that Red Flag told them that they couldn’t use chaff and flares. They said something to the effect that there was a limitation on the use of expendables. I could be wrong though, and probably am
Jim C
Actually, (admitting my vast ignorance) I do know that if you have to go chaff/flares, you got a nasty something with smoke coming out the rear end and a whole lot of hate on the front end, and if you can’t do a pretty square turn to fox the Doppler and dump some sweet looking chaff and a bit of tender loving flares, you might become the object of some unwanted attention. More clearly put, it means they have to fly on and take it like a man
They typically have constraints against the use of flares in the summer season. The chaff restriction is new to me, but there has been a number of complaints from environmental types over the years.
I’m just guessing tho.
Lex, how do you think you would have fared against the -30?
Couldn’t a flare create substantial FOD? As well as being, perhaps, a fire danger in the dry of the summer.
Mike
Well, the rule of thumb is “train as you fight” unless there is a fire hazard, environmental hazard, possible safety hazard, someone pulls out a stress card, possible cold weather injury, hot weather injury, lack of funds for O&M, no spare parts, no ammo budget…..
Byron,
Two quotes in answer to your question.
Only the spirit of attack borne in a brave heart will bring success to any fighter aircraft, no matter how highly developed it may be.
— General Adolf Galland, Luftwaffe.
An AIM-9M makes any 2nd Lt lethal.
-Spook Heitzig 12 TFS OpsO
Take your pick.
Cheers
Rick
Sounds like the Indians need an AEW aircraft. Call 1800 -NOR-GRMN and I am sure one of their fine salesman would be happy to help them.
Luv me that translator!
Ah, Chet, forever Chet. To wit: “I’m gonna’ butter your muffin . . . ”
Dumb as rocks, so says my brother. But a great method actor and fun to be around.
Wonder how much seppuku went on to be the first to the kill box with those -30′s . . .
Skippy, to the best of my knowledge the IAF is currently in the (long, drawn out) process of acquiring a AEW platform utilizing the Israeli’s Phalcon radar mounted on an Il-76 airframe. There’s also some pie in the sky program to develop an indigenous AEW&C aircraft, but we’ll see about that.
That’s the best use of an Aliens clip that I’ve seen in awhile, Lex. Pvt. Hudson just never gets old.
Mike
The Indian Airborne Surveillance Platform program ended when the prototype crashed in 1999, killing several of the program’s staff. Since then they have been trying to import the requisite technology and/or buy a complete platform.
Cheers
Didn’t them Indians wax our ass in some joint exercises back in 74 or 75? Weren’t there a lot of red (no pun intended) faces on our side? Couldn’t be we rigged it so payback time came out our way, could it? Could bee, Could beee….
PS: One of my best friends, Col. Tom Lorden, USAF, Ret.was CO of the 414th back in late 70′s as lite col.
A few years back, there was a story making the rounds that F-15′s got waxed by the Indians in an exercise. The explanation at the time was that the F-15′s were not using any countermeasures and using other things that they did not want to reveal to the Indians-since they would pass it on to someone we did not want them to.
Which is the big risk with India, they want technology from who ever will sell it to them.
India as an ally indeed!
Cope India back in…’03, IIRC. The list of things that the Eagles weren’t allowed to use was rather long…any sort of external radar support (AWACS or GCI), operating their AESA radars to the highest performance level, Slammers (simulated semi-active Sparrows only for BVR), and very restrictive ROE.
Most of the sensationalist news stories at the time reported on the fact that OMG THE F-15 GOT BEAT!!!111, completely ignoring the fact that exercises like this one are never about a true force on force knock down dragout and instead are always carefully crafted to impart training value to both sides.
J.M., the program you’re talking about was using the relatively ancient HS 748 as its platform, right? That one was shelved after the crash but to my knowledge they’ve brought the program back in a more limited capacity, planning on using an Embraer commuter as their platform.
Mike
One of the stories: http://www.hindu.com/2003/10/11/stories/2003101104811100.htm
I think they’re still shopping around.
Cheers
@Byron,
Something remarkably similar to this was said during a NATOPS check at the UAV schoolhouse once. The scenario was one of those unwinnable jobs, constructed to see if the neophyte (read: me) could deal with being put into a position where there were no really good answers and things had gone completely sideways.
He had asked: “Well, what’re you planning to do if something like this happens in the Fleet?”
I replied: “Push ‘Nav to Coordinate,’ ‘Camera Guide,’ and turn the lights on.”
In turn, I was asked: “And this gets you what?”
“100 lives and infinite missiles.”
“AT1 Cray,” he says with a sigh, “you’re really not funny.”
Figured this was relevant to your PUSH ALL TEH BUTTANS NAO.