MORE BANG FOR YOUR BUCK

Most Asian nations that operate fleets of legacy fighter aircraft continue to procure upgrade packages to increase capability and the extend service life of their jets. Around the Indo-Pacific, numerous upgrade programmes for American, European and Russian types are underway.

- Mark Ayton

One of the biggest fleets of fighter aircraft currently operated by an Asian nation resides in India. Fielding a fleet of 260 Su-30MKI multirole jets (the last of 272 produced by Hindustan Aeronautics was completed in April 2020, with 12 lost to attrition), the Indian Air Force (IAF) is a major operator of Pavel Sukhoi's best-seller. It is the mainstay of the IAF strike-fighter fleet and will remain so for decades to come. Given its age, the type first entered service in 2002, and the recent cross-border tussles with the People’s Republic of China and Pakistan, the IAF needs to maintain the jets in a configuration that provides a combat advantage over Pakistan Air Force (PAF) Lockheed Martin F-16s and JF-17s, and People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) J-16s, J-20s and Su-35s. Also, the Air Force desperately needs to improve the Su-30MKI's mission availability rates.

Such a need can only be satisfied by a fleet-wide upgrade programme. The IAF has kept the Su-30MKI upgrade programme on its shopping list for several years.

Unofficially known as the Super 30, by the summer of 2019 HAL chairman Shri Madhavan confirmed an engine upgrade, a new radar, electronic warfare suite and beyond visual range missiles are included. Some speculate the new engine model is likely to be the Russian NPO Saturn AL-41FS rated at 32,000lb thrust with afterburner, and new radar to be the Tikhomirov NIIP Irbis-E hybrid passive electronically scanned array based on the N011M Bars system.