Korea's KF-21 Highlights How Far India's Military R&D Has Come
Conclusion of the "Korea & India" Series discusses stealth jets and future opportunities for synergy.
Q3 earnings required a flurry of releases to media and financial publication platforms while Diwali inspired the 5-part “Dharma” series which covered the principal historical and philosophical underpinnings of religion and culture in Asia (click here for Part 1 and sit down for a long readthrough, if you haven’t already). Now, we return to the matter of military aircraft industries in South Korea and India .
In the introduction to this series, it was highlighted that while South Korea’s military development focused on interoperability with its U.S. ally, India has been pursuing a long and hard path in its long-standing doctrine of independence. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union - from which most of India’s armaments were sourced - the Indian government explored diversification efforts.
While U.S. manufacturers such as Boeing had an early lead in supplying India's military with much-needed capabilities and more-immediate requirements in heavy transport, long-range submarine hunters and gunships, long-standing U.S. policy - which has seen little variance despite change in regime between the two parties - has ensured that armaments production cannot leave U.S. shores, despite both manufacturers and military strategists advocating for it.
Furthermore, it has frequently been determined that the asking price for almost every system - be it the "base" platform such as the aircraft or the weapons systems mounted "on top" - by U.S. manufacturers tend to be prohibitively expensive. India's battle-hardened military and government bodies seek a harmony between price, features and the harnessing of indigenous capabilities.
For example, the Indian government banned all imports of drones and unmanned vehicles this February. While "military drones" were exempted, this didn't pan out very well for U.S.-based General Atomics' $3 billion deal to supply the Indian military with 30 Predator drones. Despite the Indian Navy accepting (and deploying) two of these drones, the per-item cost of $100 million was considered far too high and the deal was cancelled after authorities determined there was ample indigenous R&D and manufacturing capability for such systems.
Given U.S. government constraints on building manufacturing capabilities outside of the U.S. (as highlighted in the introduction), U.S. manufacturers frequently find themselves unable to fulfil “offset” requirements fully. For example, Boeing had offered high-capability wind tunnels as part of the "offset" but failed to secure the requisite licenses from the U.S. government. Despite this "betrayal" by Boeing, the republic went on to establish its first hypersonic wind tunnel in 2020 (only the third nation to do so after the U.S. and Russia), following which the U.S. Congressional Research Service estimates the number of such facilities to have increased to 12 in a single year.
This, among others, underlines the fact that India isn't really a technological laggard: after all, it successfully tested a domestically-produced anti-satellite missile in 2019 as well as a domestically-produced hypersonic missile in 2020 (with further tests of the latter taking place in 2021 and 2022). The increased participation by the private sector - both domestic and foreign - has simply made development, adoption and production more cost- and time-efficient and competitive.
On the 18th of November, Indian startup Skyroot Aerospace launched Vikram-S - named after Dr. Vikram Sarabhai who led India’s space program in the sixties - using state-owned infrastructure and technical guidance.
Almost exactly two years earlier, Indian startup NewSpace Research & Development1 entered into a tripartite collaboration between India’s state-run defence research network DRDO and the US Air Force Research Laboratory to develop air-launched “wingman drones” that will accompany and support fighter jets into combat. The startup had also designed a drone capable of staying aloft for 24 hours to do long-range surveillance on enemy troop movements. Almost exactly two years later, Indian startup Garuda Aerospace entered in an agreement to provide hardware for drones to and explore deeper collaborations with Lockheed Martin.
The U.S. government’s stand on production, while arguably sound, also hobbles the U.S. military aerospace companies from being gloabally competitive. This gives the likes of Airbus the upper hand in the military aircraft market over the likes of Boeing when it comes to business in the world's 3rd-largest military spender, given that its European government shareholders enabled it to set up an entire manufacturing ecosystem in India. U.S. aerospace companies will have to settle for piecemeal deals.
The Competition
A competitor to the 4.5-generation/5th generation fighter jets like Korea’s F-21 “Boramae” (보라매) by KAI and the Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (“AMCA”) would be Russia’s Sukhoi Su-57, which was a result of the long-standing PAK FA programme (Perspektivnyy Aviatsionnyy Kompleks Frontovoy Aviatsii, lit. “Prospective Aeronautical Complex of Frontline Air Forces”). The Sukhoi Company stated in 2010 that the Su-57 incorporates “stealth, supermaneuverability, supercruise, integrated avionics, and substantial internal payload capacity”. Given that the Soviet Union had been such a consistent armaments partner to India prior to its dissolution, its largest successor state - the Russian Federation - could be considered well-poised to steal a march on HAL before the AMCA can be operationalized. As indicated in the introduction, this was not to be so.
The Su-57 was in the running for consideration, given India’s prior collaborations with both the Soviet Union and Russia. However, India’s Aeronautics Development Agency (ADA) somewhat confirmed a report from 2017 earlier this year by stating that Russian position son technology transfer wasn’t satisfactory. One such position that led to the pullout of the deal to jointly develop the Su-57 was on the Indian position that the jets should have the option to be upgraded without Russian support and the providing of computer source codes. The ADA also stated that even the Russian military wasn’t satisfied with the Su-57’s focus on maneuverability over stealth.
Another report from sources within the defence research network indicated that a team from the Indian Air Force was present at Zhukovsky airbase near Moscow when a prototype of the Su-57 caught fire during a test flight in 2014. The team had only been given limited access to the prototype before the incident and wasn’t even given a briefing afterwards about the causes - a far cry from the Soviet era when Indian engineers and pilots were given full access to the MiG-23, MiG-29, Su-25 and Su-27 even before the aircraft were in “top secret” mode.
The ADA is also working on developing fighter jets for the Indian Navy’s growing fleet of aircraft carriers. The Twin-Engine Deck-Based Fighter (TEDBF) is tentatively expected to be available by 2031-32, isn’t expected to have any Russian involvement, will be produced by HAL if approved and will be an alternative to Russian Mig-29K fighter jets that are already inducted.
Much ado is made by Western news agencies regarding China’s growing prowess in military technology. It would indeed seem that China has a long tradition of producing indigenously-designed fighter jets if just the silhouettes are considered. However, as per a rather interesting source, when not an outright clone with some differences from Soviet jets already in the Chinese military’s service, the subsystems used in these ostensibly-indigenous jets are essentially authorized or unauthorized mix-and-match elements from the Chinese military’s existing Russo-Soviet arsenal.
Of these, the Shenyang J-15 “Feisha” (飞鲨) received a fair bit of mention by Chinese media and blogosphere as a 4th- or 4.5-generation fighter and a mark of success for China’s military aircraft industry. Powered by Russia’s Saturn AL-31 engines, Russian state media has been quite critical of this aircraft, stating that it was developed after China purchased a T-10K-3 (a prototype Su-33) from Ukraine in 2001 and reverse-engineered it - just as with the Su-27 to develop its Shenyang J-11B.
Interestingly, even China’s state media have reportedly been referring to the J-15 as “flopping fish”. The jets has proven to be too big, too heavy and too unreliable for China’s current fleet of two aircraft carriers. Of these, the “Liaoning” (辽宁舰) was built over the hulk of the Soviet-era Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier “Varyag” after it was sold for scrap by Ukraine in 1998 while the “Shandong” (山东舰) is a reverse-engineered version of the Soviet design for the Kuznetsov-class. The third one - Fujian (福建舰) - has been launched, ostensibly can deploy J-15s and is currently being outfitted.
China’s media and blogosphere was also abuzz with mentions of the Chengdu J-20 “Weilong” (威龙) in 2018, touted to be the world's third “5th-generation” stealth fighter jet after the F-22 and F-35. A year before that, it was reported that Chinese hackers stole technical data for the F-35. More than a decade before that, i.e. in 2007, Chinese hackers stole technical documents about the F-35 from Lockheed Martin.
Two years before its launch, Russian state media outlets pointed out that the J-20 was eerily similar in design to the MiG 1.44 - a prototype originally designed to compete against the PAK FA to select a superior proof of concept.
In any case, it’s not much of a “stealth” jet: the Indian Air Force’s Su-30 MKI jets reported being able to track Chinese J-20s quite easily with their Russian-designed radar.
A recent article had the Chinese military claiming that it has lost 2,000 pilots over the past six decades. The stated timeline cannot explain this away as war casualties: in the Korean War, Chinese aviation losses were estimated to be 230 to 500 while another 32 were lost in the Taiwan Straits Crisis of 1958 (as per Taiwan). However, they both occurred outside of this timeline. This means that the losses, which also includes 30 test pilots, were in peacetime operations.
Western media’s moral outrage about Chinese espionage drips with hypocrisy, given how Soviet engineer Adolf Tokachev saved the U.S. at least $2 billion in costs (in eighties dollars) by passing on Soviet airborne radar systems’ blueprints before being caught2 and how assessing Soviet-designed Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) technology enabled the U.S. to turn a corner in its research. After all, espionage is a fairly conventional means for a nation to gain an edge against a potential adversary. However, both the stated casualty rate and technical issues likely highlight why both “mix-and-match” and “cloning with differences” are terrible approaches when it comes to developing modern aerospace platforms (at least).
Possible Indo-Korean Synergy?
Given reports indicating that 20 of the 24 main subsystems in the KF-21 “Boramae” are sourced from the U.S.-based suppliers plus one from Israel - with a massive list of imported components and tools to boot - it can hardly be a ground-breaker for indigenous Korean military aviation development although it is a welcome start. While the “Tejas” is incomparable since it’s a 4th-generation jet, its Mk I variant is 75.5% indigenous by component count while the Mk II variant is expected to be 80% indigenous. If an indigenous engine development ecosystem produces results, this will go into the high nineties. Following the evolution in the production ecosystem, the 5th-generation AMCA - on the other hand - is a whole new ballgame, especially given how both China and U.S. are fiercely protective of stealth technology. This highlights how far Indian military R&D has come, with increasing and innovating private sector participation poised to accelerate this even more.
The substantial number of U.S.-sourced components imputes a relatively high cost on the KF-21 and is possibly a reason why project partner Indonesia is balking at making payments. This is possibly justifiable if it turns out that there’s a large gap between what was pitched and what’s being delivered. While the high cost might make the KF-21 unappealing to new clients, existing U.S. client states, much like Poland choosing the FA-50 over the F-16, might have some demand for it over the even costlier F-35.
Korean news media, interestingly, has stated that KAI is exploring means of starting work on a 6th-generation jet, i.e. one that incorporates lasers, artificial intelligence, increased human-machine fusion, flight speeds past Mach 3, integration with a multi-level combat network, et cetera. Work on this is estimated to take at least 20 years.
Given South Korea’s military industry is already deepening ties in India and ongoing rekindling of the conversation on ancient cultural association3, the present might be the most opportune moment for KAI to join hands with India and foster an all-new development ecosystem across both countries. Of course, time will tell as to whether this will happen but it shouldn’t be surprising if it does. In fact, it would be entirely logical and natural.
All in all, these are very interesting developments with lots of growth opportunities for investors, professional opportunities for bright engineers and geopolitical implications in Asia.
NewSpace R&D is a private-sector startup while NewSpace India Limited (NSIL) is the commercial arm for the state-run Indian Space Research Organization, India’s equivalent of NASA. They’re two completely different companies.
Incidentally, the radars in the Indian Su-30s that tracked the Chinese J-20s were designed by Phazotron, the company Tokachev worked at.
Perhaps another article? Maybe, but it won’t be a multi-part series like “Dharma”.