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Tom Cooper, an author and aviation expert, expressed his surprise that the Indian air force reportedly wants Su-30s and MiG-29s to meet its emergency requirement for a couple squadrons worth of jets. The Su-30, while seemingly impressive on paper, lacks performance and combat capability compared to Western models.
"Your air force has got 200 to 250 Su-30s," Cooper pointed out on Facebook. "Still, when you want to bomb a terrorist gang in the neighboring country, you need almost 40-year-old Mirage 2000s, instead."
Cooper was referring to the February 2019 clash between Indian and Pakistani forces over disputed Kashmir, roughly in the same region where Indian and Chinese troops would collide more than a year later.
Indian Air Force Mirage 2000s initiated the combat with a precision strike on a suspected terrorist base inside Pakistani territory. Pakistan responded with F-16s. When the dust settled, the Indians had lost a single MiG-21 fighter.
Those same Mirage 2000s had been decisive during an earlier conflict in Kashmir back in 1999. India's Russian-made fighters had struggled to strike Pakistani bases high in the mountains. But a single coordinated strike by Mirage 2000s hauling Litening camera pods and laser-guided bombs succeeded in knocking out a key Pakistani headquarters.
"In these attacks, the target was acquired through the Litening pod's electro-optical imaging sensor at about nine miles out, with weapons release occurring at a slant range of about five miles and the aircraft then turning away while continuing to mark the target with a laser spot," Air Force Magazine noted in 2012.
Cooper's point is that, for decades, the Mirage 2000 has been a more effective fighter in Indian service than the Su-30 has been. The Rafale, the French-made successor to the Mirage, likewise is among India's better fighters. But the country has ordered just 36 Rafales.
The Su-30 not only lacks the latest precision air-to-ground ordnance, it doesn't perform well from the high-altitude air bases that support Indian operations along the so-called "Line of Actual Control," the border between Indian and Chinese forces in the Himalayas. Diplomats drew that line as part of truce talks following a bitter, bloody border war in 1962.
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It should be obvious. Indian firm HAL builds the Su-30s under license in India. Buying Sukhois funnels Indian money to Indian companies. Although, as Cooper pointed out, with adequate political will India could license the Rafale, too.
"The experiences of last year should've brought the Indians to their senses," Cooper said. "They could've bought more Rafales."