By Robert Farley
Despite the disappointment stemming from India’s Rafale deal, the country’s future in carrier aviation remains bright.
In the fallout of the Rafale deal, can the Indian naval air arm be saved? More to the point, could French-built Rafale fighters still, eventually, fly from Indian aircraft carriers?
As the Diplomat has detailed, one of the fruits of India’s relationship with the United States should be the EMALS catapult system. Catapult launched (CATOBAR) aircraft differ from their conventional and Short Take Off (STOBAR) cousins in several ways, primarily with respect to their ability to endure the stress involved in the catapult system. Although INS Vikramaditya currently operates MiG-29Ks from her STOBAR deck, no one has yet made clear (PDF) which fighter will fly from India’s catapult-capable carriers.
At the moment, only five fighters operate off CATOBAR carriers; the F/A-18 Hornet (and its Super Hornet cousin), the A-4 Skyhawk (theoretically off the nearly immobile Brazilian carrier Sao Paulo), the Rafale and Super Etendard, which fly off the Charles de Gaulle, and the F-35C Lightning II. Various schemes have been proposed over the years to develop CATOBAR variants of the MiG-29, Su-33, Eurofighter Typhoon, and Saab Gripen, but none of these have yet come to fruition.
Read the full story at The Diplomat