Here is the F-21: India's new Super Fighter or just an old F-16 passed for some sort of F-22 or F-35? – DEFENSE AND INTELLIGENCE

According to journalist Angad Singh, the likely winner is the twin-engine fighter Rafale of the French company Dassault.

Singh explains his logic in the May 2019 issue of Combat Aircraft magazine. India had previously ordered 36 Rafales as part of a previous hunting contest. "With 36 aircraft already ordered and the existing infrastructure for another 36, it could certainly be argued that the costs of training, base and support for additional aircraft would not be an impossible burden."

Other candidates for the Indian tender are the Saab Gripen from Sweden, the European Eurofighter Typhoon, the MiG-35 from Russia and the Boeing Super Hornet from the United States. Whatever fighter chooses New Delhi, he now needs new fighters, according to Singh.

In 2019 the Indian air force maintains only 30 hunting squadrons. The units operate with vintage 244 MiG-21s from the 1960s and 84 MiG-27s that are only slightly younger. The MiG-21s in particular are subject to accidents. Since the first of the 874 MiG-21s entered service in India in 1963, about 490 have crashed, killing around 200 pilots.

But the MiG-21 remain active. On 26 February 2019 Indian planes crossed the line of control at the border of India with Pakistan and bombed what New Dehli described as a terrorist training ground near Balakot.

Several days of aerial fighting followed the bombing. On February 27, 2019, Pakistani F-16s and other planes crossed the line of control to attack Indian forces, New Delhi said. MiG-21 Indians and other fighters intercepted the Pakistanis and shot down a plane, according to the Indian government.

Reportedly, the US government has counted Pakistan F-16s after the battle and concluded that no one was missing, questioning the New Delhi complaint.

Islamabad said its forces shot down two Indian MiG-21s, but New Delhi admitted the loss of only one fighter.

Now New Delhi wants to spend around $ 18 billion acquiring 110 new fighters to replace the old MiGs.

The new planes would fly alongside European-designed Jaguars, French Mirage 2000 and Rafale, Russian MiG-29 and Su-30 and Indian Tejas fighter in what Lockheed described as "the world's largest fighter aircraft ecosystem" .

For the purposes of the Lockheed marketing campaign, the F-21 is a new fighter, although it shares many of its main features with the F-16V that the company has sold in Bahrain, Greece, Slovakia, South Korea and Taiwan. . Lockheed can build new F-16Vs or upgrade previous F-16s to the V standard.

However, renaming the F-16V is not just semantic. An F-16V or F-21 is a radically different warplane than the F-16A which first flew in 1978. The F-16A is an agile eight-ton fighter with unsophisticated radar and weapons short range. The F-16V weighs 10 tons, boasts state-of-the-art radar and other sensors and carries a wide range of long-range weapons, all at the cost of maneuverability.

Lockheed initially implied that India could follow an acquisition of F-21 with a separate purchase of the company's F-35 stealth fighters.

"The F-21 has common components and learns from Lockheed Martin's F-22 and fifth-generation F-35 and will share a common supply chain on a variety of components," Lockheed said on its website morning of February 20, 2019.

A few hours later, this claim disappeared from the site. Despite Lockheed's stealth teasing, the French Rafale could be the pioneer in the Indian fighter race.