Indian Maritime aircraft

The Boeing P-8I is expected to be the front runner in India's competition to find a new maritime aircraft, in competition with the P-8I Ilyushin is offering an improved Il-38 while the other rival bids are a Lockheed offering of improved P-3 Orions, an IAI bid based on the Falcon 900 and an EADS CASA led Airbus bid with an A319MMA, but there is no bid to sell the Nimrod to India by BAE. The reason being that, just as with the USN requirement that the P-8 was designed for, BAE is unwilling to restart Nimrod airframe manufacture because it is uneconomical (the basic design dates back to the 1940's). The A319 simply offers an up to date airframe for virtually the same systems, though it lacks some the Nimrods performance capabilities, and is seen as a direct rival to the P-8 which is based on the A319's commercial rival,the 737.

If it was my choice I would narrow it down to the A319 and P-8, discarding old tech airframes like the Orion and Il-38 and the Falcon 900 must surely be too small for any requirement that any of the other contenders are up for?

Not really knowing very much about the A319 variant I couldn't speculate any further than that but a modern efficient airframe, as offered by those last two contenders, must surely have beneficial knock on effects for the operating costs and reliability of the aircraft chosen?

The A319 is said to be broadly the same as the A320MMA that is interesting France, Canada and Australia. These countries wanting the larger airframe due to greater endurance and range requirements than India has.

Awww!! no Nimrod?

Question:
Why would India NOT require the range and endurance exhibited by the A319MMA?
I has a big ass coastline (7000km+ I think) and plus it has a large portion of the Indian Ocean which it considers to be worth patrolling.
Remember the Tu-142 that spotted the PLAN kilos/Sovermenys just of the Cape of Good Hope? Thats about 8000km!

Also what happened to the Tu -160? Rumor had it that they were to be employed in a swing bomber/recon role if ever acquired by the IAF.

btw.. Waynos, doesn't this belong in SS's 'Indian AF discussion thread'?
I mean the amount of rucus ppl made when he used to start new threads for different topics w.r.t. the IAF!

No Daedalus, they DO require the performance offered by the A319, it has been offered to India because they do not require the range and endurance offered by the A320, which is the basic model offered elsewhere. I also thinki that using the Tu-160 in this role would be a colossal waste of money.

I was going to put this on the India thread but then I, er, just didn't



[edit on 1-6-2006 by waynos]

My bad..
What I gather from your first post is that the A320MMA has greater endurance and a larger air frame and that is what India was NOT offered. My question was that why would India's requreiments be for an a/c of lesser capability even its size and strategic interest zone are comparable/greater to those of Canada and Australia.

Ah well, that is the question. I honestly don't know but apparently the advantage (percieved if not actual) of the A319 airframe is that it closely meets the Indian requirement but being smaller than the A320 it is also lighter and cheaper. Here's the rub, the A320MMA is the same size and weight as the P-8. I think EADS is hoping this tailoring will give them the edge over the Boeing bid.

There are however shorter 737 airframes in production for civil operators that directly compete with the A319 so Boeing could conceivably do the same thing. For all I know the P-8I may already be based on a shorter 737 than the USN P-8A?