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In aviation they talk about synchronisers and synchrophaser. The first one is where you sync speed of all propellors/engine as closely as possible.

Turbo jet tend to have synchronisers. Sometimes they have options to also sync on on EPR (Engine Pressure Ratio) during take off. on speed, or rather rpm they can either sync up on N1 (inlet turbine) or N2 (high pressure turbine). Very often it is selectable by pilots and they know which one gives the most effect reducing cabin noise depending on fight regime

Syncrophasers do all of the above and control propellor pitch.

So the basis is always speed/rpm synchronisation and on top of that synchrophasing

Do not know. I would have thought both would have some system in place. If anything the pilots would manipulate the throttle and pitch themselves.

Jeroen

Going through the Wiki article, it seemed synchronisers control speed, synchrophasers control speed and phase (like necessary for paralled generators). Why does propeller pitch come into it?

Sutripta

Now my anti-colonial red blood corpuscles are stirring.:) Agree the Americans sent their kids who were too young to vote! If LBJ and McNamara were Serbians or Iraqis they would be deemed war criminal unparalled.

In 1995 Vietnam finally released data on numbers killed - 2 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong + 1 million South Vietnamese + 200,000 South Vietnamese Army personnel. Americans killed 58,900. What Ken Burns did not show is how rampant was random killing of innocent South Vietnamese villagers, women & children because the Yanks could not tell one from the other, had a implicit racism "kill the goonks" built into the thinking of many and believed that to protect a village they needed to burn it down. In my 'working days' especially up to the last decade I dealt with a lot of pilots ex-US Army who had flown in Vietnam. One actually worked for me out of Denver. They were excellent fliers but not one of the four had any regrets about what USA did to Vietnam. Maybe they were the exception. But to be fair all four were great professionals to deal with.

Off Topic mumbling over.

In a (frontline) kill or be killed scenario one does not want philosophers. Maybe the philosophers get killed early on. Take it that they did not evolve beyond that, possibly because they didn't need to in their pursuit of a happy productive life.

Sutripta

These were not dogfights.

These were napalm carpet-bombing runs. The kind that made this picture famous.


Narayan is right. If any of the colonial powers (Spain, Portugal, Belgium, England, France, and even the US) were to be judged by the standards they expect the rest of the world to uphold their leaders would all be tried as war criminals.

Fact is these powers control the media, the UN, and the WB. Until lions can write every story will glorify the hunter.

It does not, or at least not much to my understanding. Should have said propellor position or rather propellor blade position. So it controls speed (RPM) and relative phase (position if you like) between the propellors.

Jeroen

Have always been impressed with the sheer courage of the Vietnamese.
What a brave lot. It is on my must visit list, when Covid-19 ends.

This image was quite popular and sums up the sentiment of the young American soldiers. War is a cruel thing!



Wars however are excellent for arms sales and when anyone invests tens of billions of dollars to develop them, then they have to be used on someone to get the 'Combat Proven' tag.

Am glad that India has not got caught up in superpower ambitions and sent its soldiers to fight in someone else's war. We did enough of that as part of the British empire.

I'm not sure if we've talked about this helicopter before in this thread but this is probably the most important and most delayed aircraft required by all the three services which will replace the Cheetal and Chetak - The single engined HAL Light Utility Helicopter (LUH). An article in June 15 (Link) reported that a pair of HAL Light Utility Helicopter (LUH) prototypes will head to the Siachen glacier for a final capability demonstration to the Indian Army in August since Siachen is one of the most important missions for the Cheetal and Chetak helicopters. And it is reported that the program will be completed by 2022 (Link). It will also have a derivative called the Light Observation Helicopter, though I have no idea how it would be any different. HAL also wants to sell this helicopter in the civilian market.

Ironically this helicopter might actually be inducted before the much delayed Kamov Ka-226T which was originally bought because the indigenous LUH program was getting delayed.

I do have a question though. When will the LUH and LCH be christened with their names like Dhruv (which was the ALH) and Tejas (which was the LCA)?





Image source: Livefist

Important step taken by the Air Force after the recent incidents in Ladakh - The Indian Air Force (IAF) has pushed a proposal to the government for acquiring 33 new fighter aircraft, including 21 MiG-29s and 12 Su-30MKIs from Russia. The proposal includes the acquisition of 12 Su-30 MKIs that would be required for replacing the number of aircraft lost by the Air Force in different accidents. The 21 MiG 29s that the IAF is planning to acquire are from Russia which has offered to sell these planes to help the Air Force to meet its requirement of new fighters.

Source: https://www.timesnownews.com/india/a...ircraft/608474

Yet another example of what is so wrong with the way our govts work when it comes to Defence acquisitions !! It took a highly volatile situation to wake the lethargic fellows in the MoD from their slumber to fast track these acquisitions. Anyway, better late than never!

I could never understand why the IAF did not push for more Flankers manufactured by HAL to beef up squadron numbers. I know the license production agreement specified limited number of airframes but why can't those numbers be extended by re-negotiating the license manufacture clause?

Sure would be nice if they had a moniker that rolls off the tongue a bit better.. The LUH is absolutely a critical platform considering how much the geriatric Chetaks and Cheetals are used still at such a high operational tempo. It would be wonderful for a more modern domestic platform to finally be integrated to take over this need. The Cheetal alone is proof that the requirements for the IAF and IA for Operation Meghdoot alone mean that the design and operational requirements are in an incredibly narrow band for India. Less likely then that India could just take an existing platform from an overseas vendor that fully meets those specific needs. Better to just make a more bespoke platform suited to our needs. That being said the LUH programme to me seems curiously slow. I don't think HAL can claim any concerns about lack of potential demand slowing down their development considering that current resources are already overstretched well beyond their intended shelf life. Surely the development would've been aided by learnings with the Rudra and LCH programme. Surely a lot of the LUH and LCH field testing and data collection could've been done concurrently.

A few questions:

1. Do the Rudras operate up in those high altitude environments?
2. Is there really a separate Light Observational Helicopter?! Sounds like a scout platform and why have it separate from the LUH? They're one and the same surely..

This is probably me putting on my tin foil hat but I wouldn't be surprised if this dilly dallying was a conscious decision on HALs part to buy time for their own horse to get ahead in the race..

I have to second skanchan95 here, if there's a requirement for more Su-30MKIs to replace attrition losses on the fleet, why aren't they being made by HAL? I thought the last tranche were built by HAL to start with.

Now I'm a bit fuzzy on this so correct me if I'm wrong, but I vaguely remember reading somewhere that there was a worrying correlation between Flankers having the most reliability niggles and those produced by HAL. Tied in to the lethargic production from our boys in Bangalore, maybe for such an SOS purchase, I suppose the IAF just wanted fully fleshed out airframes post haste from the original vendor. Can't imagine Russia would object. That's a no brainer sale for them should they have the inventory.

Comprehensive report on the current strategic posturing by India & China. Didn't know where to put it so parking here for now.

Thank you for sharing this. I had read it in one of my feeds. My broad conclusion is that the two sides are evenly matched in quantity and quality. The number of combat aircraft on either side sounds lower than I thought and for mountain terrain it makes sense to count in the helicopters too. Even with that we are matched. The nuclear warheads and delivery systems have almost no role here except to establish table stakes. He has a point that the Chinese have no real experience but I would not count on that. They are well trained. It will serve no purpose to either side to get into a hot war. We will need to slap them hard on the wrist with economic & political measures to re-establish the status quo at Galwan.

The Chinese have followed a policy of pushing the perimeter several tens of metres each time through insidious efforts in the eastern sector too {Arunachal}. It is a conscious policy of "nibble away" that is dictated from their senior command. They do this with their border with Kazakhastan too. It is the fundamental need for a bully to steal your toffee even when he has a plateful. This has been brought to the notice of MoD time and again especially with regard to the Eastern sector. The Army might be itching to do what it did in 1967 but the bureaucrats and politicians won't hear of it.

Sadly we have consistently lacked a thought through defense strategy and aims which are then translated down to among other things border defense. The politicians, the bureaucrats and the Army brass equally share the blame for this. Not having built proper infrastructure at the border is a part of that failing of successive governments of all parties and not allocating budgets for unglamorous but essential assets like basic border infrastructure.

Sir, you channel thoughts so well into words I must say. been admiring it since years now & it just grows more.

Every time a politician or a high ranking officer of any arm comes on record praising our front-line soldiers about valour, sacrifice, gallant fight when totally outnumbered, tough response when lacking equipment - the anger and pain we all feel cannot be put into words I'm sure. Like you precisely said, its the politicians, decision making top brass (and of course tax evading civilians) that put our soldiers in such a situation to begin with. I wonder if they feel the guilt ever of putting our soldiers in such under equipped/outnumbered situations.

Simplest example in TeamBHP context is - the primary 4x4 armored combat car used by the PLA is seen regularly in multiple pictures and a particular 2 week old video from the current stand-off. What does our infantry have on the other hand? A Gypsy. No armor of any sort. Lack of equipment isn't just the current state. The pipeline is so dry visibly that we already know that like previous 70 odd years - we are still totally reliant on the selfless valour, crazy commitment and adrenaline+insanity fueled love for the country that the front line jawans, airmen, sailors and junior-mid officer cadres show. Its disheartening to see that the primary defense strategy's foundations are built on sacrifice and not equipment.

And this is not just when talking about a really dominant adversary like China. The elimination vis-a-vis own loss ratio of the infantry in counter terrorism ops in JaK is also such that while we hear a news of 2 terrorists being killed - the other side celebrates making India pay with double the lives in count. For them & their "military" doctrine - that is the goal & its as good as victory. We lose highly trained professional comrades & human beings while the other side loses unskilled expendable lives that simply have no value for life. How can we be content with such losses for decades?

I don't want to speculate - it would add no value. But from what little information is pretty certain - our bravehearts walked in unarmed to remove a tent and were ambushed by the PLA that was clearly waiting in ambush. Who makes such a move of unarmed action in such a hostile frontline and why I wonder. Agreed that there are agreements of "maintaining tranquility in the region" - but trusting an adversary that has already built up a few divisions of forces in recent weeks, is beyond my understanding. It could be an intentionally put up tent at a tricky place besides a cliff by a river - to lure the opponent soldiers in & then beat & push them down. At least prima facie thats how it looks. I hope we don't lose any more great soldiers to such decision making.

Then again - its no surprise. We are talking of a country (our's) that for 70 years (and counting) hasn't managed to keep even a single neighbour happy (well okay 1 - Bhutan a bit), properly socialized & on good terms. So lack of policy making, strategic decision making & irreversible fiasco isn't new to us. Its identical to how we unskilled common citizen behave with neighbours in a housing society! Quarrels for petty things & no respect for others generally - poisoning relations for eternity.

Thank you Reinhard, for your compliment.:)
Yes. We survive due to the initiative and leadership at ground zero. The bureaucrats remain protected. Forget about the bureaucrats, even the Army top brass who were guilty of incompetence were not culled after Kargil. You must not underestimate how insidious our bureaucracy is with respect to protecting their own. In 1962 Krishna Menon got the sack which he truly deserved. General Thapar got the sack. But the Defense Secretary who was equally responsible for the debacle was untouched! The Defense Secretary should be from the IFS and not the IAS. This has been proposed often but the IAS will not hear of it.
Agree. That is my reading of what happened. At the Brigade/Division level at the spot I wonder why the local commanders did not beef up the unit. Does the Army put pressure on local commanders if they speak up that all is not well in their sector? - that's what happened in Kargil. But I don't want to become an armchair guy without all the facts and context.

All,

As I said in my last post we do not have a National Security Strategy from which would emerge a National Defence Strategy which will lead to a National Defence Procurement Strategy. You first need to establish long term clarity of your security goals and your resources today and tomorrow. From that would flow several priorities and what you will do and what you will not tolerate. From that will flow several decisions on molly coddling Ordnance Factories and HAL like organizations at the expense of the Armed Forces, indigenous defence manufacture in the private sector, border infrastructure, where to be magnanimous with neighbours and where to draw the line etc. I had hoped the present Govt would have put this in place. But six years on there is little in sight. While they have shown more muscle than any of the previous three full term regimes and cleared out a lot of decisions that were gathering dust they have not demonstrated the ability to think & plan deep. Just my opinion I don't want to make this a desh bhakti debate.

Sorry I am now far off topic from combat aircraft. This is a good time to have Su-30MKIs and Mirage 2000s patrolling on the northern border.