India is poised to get fifth generation aircraft sooner than expected.
India is poised to get fifth generation aircraft sooner than expected. While an Indo-Russian programme to develop a fifth generation fighter aircraft is already underway, Russia has agreed to provide India with an advanced version of Sukhoi-30MKI, which boasts of fifth generation capabilities, including stealth features.
The Indian Air Force (IAF), which currently operates over 100 Sukhoi MKI, has placed an order with Russia for about 280-300 aircraft, which are likely to come in the form of the Super Sukhois.
This development is expected to provide India a considerable edge over Pakistan to which China had in January 2011 agreed to deliver its J-20 fifth generation fighter - touted to be the world’s most advanced fighter aircraft.
The timeframe of the delivery has not been specified, but India plans to deploy four squadrons of the advanced Sukhoi-30MKIs in the Northeast by 2015.
The Super Sukhoi has come about after India decided to get rid of some of its outdated combat jets and replace them with superior ones. As part of the plan, India decided to return 18 Sukhoi-30K aircraft to Russia and replace them with the advanced Sukhoi-30MKI, which is being christened as “Super Sukhoi”.
The 18 Sukhoi-30Ks were part of the first production batch.
According a US-based Defense Update report, Russia has agreed to replace the aircraft by production versions of the advanced Su-30MKI, in a ‘buy back’ transaction as the Su-30K were found to have downgraded avionics as compared with the advanced Su-30MKI.
Further, the aircraft, of which 10 have already been sent back (the remaining eight will be returned by November) would be inducted into the Belarusian Air Force.
Commenting on the decision to return the old aircraft, Air Commodore (Retd) Jasjit Singh, director of New Delhi-based Centre for Air Power Studies, said India had been asking for the Sukhoi-30K to be replaced for sometime now and the decision to go in for the upgraded version of the aircraft is a step in the right direction.
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