India's Su-30MKI comes to USA

From Aviation Week

India's Advanced Su-30MKIs Come to USA

Aug 21, 2008

By David A. Fulghum

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 based at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev.

They were part of a contingent of 246 IAF personnel selected from 20 (fighter) Squadron, Poona; 78 (tanker) Squadron, Agra; 44 (transport) Squadron, Nagpur, and a special operations team trained for combat search and rescue, says Group Captain Dee Choudhry.

Of great interest to observers - and no doubt to U.S. intelligence - was the Su-30MKI's Russian-made, long-range radar and AA-12 Adder air-to-air missile capability. In fact, foreign air force officials admit that they suspect that intelligence gathering goes on at an event like Red Flag.

India's Su-30MKI aircraft offers an especially attractive target. It carries the Tikhomirov Scientific Research Institute of Instrument Design NIIP-BARS radar that so far has only been seen on the MKI. But it's considered a variant of what NIIP developed for Russia's new Su-35 multi-role aircraft and what it's working on for the next-generation PAK-FA fifth-generation stealth fighter.

One long-time military analyst mused to Aviation Week that the event might provide insight, although it was no certainty. "I'll bet your [intelligence] boys hovered up every little squiggly amp from BARS. [Yet] sometimes the [radar's] training mode is just a software package that emulates the radar transmissions, but it's actually not emitting."

Indeed, to observers' dismay, and no doubt to that of the U.S. intelligence community, the IAF flew with a number of handicaps, some of them self-imposed, some not.

Their powerful Russian-made radar was, in fact, emitting, says Choudhry, but operating only in the training mode which limited all its range and spectrum of capabilities. In addition, the IAF wasn't allowed to use chaff and flares to avoid being targeted by surface-to-air missiles nor did its aircraft have the common data link. CDL brings a flow of targeting information into the cockpit displays that improves the accuracy and speed of data transfer and eliminates the need for most communications. The Indian air crews had to rely on voice communications which slowed the process and limited situational awareness.

Despite its limitations, the Su-30MKI's radar was able enough to allow the IAF's Sukhois to participate in a beyond-visual-range fight with U.S. aggressor aircraft carrying simulated AA-10C air-to-air missiles. Because there were so many foreign aircraft capable of offensive counter-air/escort missions (including French Rafales and South Korean F-15Ks), the Sukhois are flying fewer air-to-air missions than Indian team members had hoped, Choudhry says.

"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."

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And, on a related note, from the ARES Blog

"The high-supersonic, ramjet-powered BrahMos is designed for export, and "2009 should be the year" for announcing export orders, Dr Pillai said here.

The "critical path" for tests of the third BrahMos version, for air launch, is the modification of a Sukhoi Su-30MKI fighter as a test platform. Dr Pillai says that Sukhoi's workload on other projects (the Su-35 and PAK-FA future fighter) has delayed this work. Sukhoi and the Indian Air Force have decided on a single-missile configuration for the Su-30, rather than the two- or three-missile loadouts seen earlier; the aircraft needs a new pylon and some structural strengthening, as well as a modified fire control system to handle the new missile."