FA-50 Block 20 is in development, will have BVR capability, along with targeting pods and probe for air to air refueling.

https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/def...50-golden-eagle

https://www.bloomberg.com/press-releases/20...e-for-kai-fa-50

Yes you are correct. Korean Air Force wants both the upgraded FA-50 and KFX for different things.

ROKAF wants the FA-50 to be their LCA, to replace all their F-5E, and also take up F-4 tasks.

ROKAF wants the KFX to be their MMRCA, to replace the bulk of its F-16 fleet. It is designed to have a cheaper operating cost than the F-35.

TUDM can do the same, FA-50 as the LCA to replace our hawks and MB-339, and take up MiG-29 tasks, while the KFX as the MMRCA to replace our Hornets.

Actually currently the Phillipine government for now wants to buy the Gripen C because it is cheaper than the F-16V, which is unfortunate as there is very little difference in performance between FA-50 and Gripen C, especially compared to the upgraded FA-50 Block 20.

F-16V with conformal fuel tanks will give phillipines a long range combat air patrol capability. TUDM already have the capability with the very long range SU-30MKM.

I agree. FA-50 even with AMRAAM is not a direct competitor to F-16 (longer range and heavier weapons payload) or F-35 (stealth capability).

The FA-50 Block 20 has almost no hardware changes, except for the refueling probe. All the upgrade to carry targeting pod and BVR are just software related. Our LCA/LIFT requirement is for 36 aircraft in total, so 35 million per aircraft is possible.


Malaysia needs LCA to replace our Hawks while the philippines already got their FA-50. Malaysia still got our Hornets and SU-30MKM, while the philippines have no MRCA. That is the difference.


We don't have the luxury to waste money on underwhelming products for our requirements, even more so now. RM5 billion is just 1.2 billion dollars. So we just have around 2.4 billion dollars to play with until 2030. That have not taken into account the money we have spent on COVID 19 that surely has to be taken from somewhere. It would be a miracle if we can have the same budget as before, what more an increased one.

So can malaysia afford to implement your 18 M346 + 18 F-35A plan? With the budget that we usually got, malaysia can barely pay half of your want with a 10 year budget.


Used F/A-18 is at best usable for only 10 years. New LCA now will be useful for at least 30 more years.

Getting the hardware is one thing, operating it is another. F/A-18 operating costs is at least 3 times of the FA-50. No use if we cannot fly them regularly.

Even right now, from all available information, the T-7 performance is actually worse then the FA-50. Things like the extremely small nose to fit any radar, maximum speed of only 1,300 km/h, removal of most fighting capability in its design phase to reduce cost will make it nearly impossible to be modified into a better fighter than the FA-50. That thing only won because of the need to give Boeing some jobs, while Lockheed martin already got F-35 and F-16 on its plate.

RAAF and RAF probably going to get the T-7, but purely for training role. We need our LCA as the best LCA possible, while still be the best FLIT. Also we need the LCA like now, not in 10 years time.

Which is why I have asked, for the same amount of money, can we afford not to get the FA-50 block 20?


12 TA-50 at 30 million dollars each = 360 million dollars

24 FA-50 at 35 million dollars each = 840 million dollars

total of 1.2 billion dollars.

Antara pembelian yg paling berbaloi kepada negara.

Tak ada orang tengah, pembelian FMS.

Offset pembelian hornet kepada negara ialah pemberian mesin CNC rapid prototyping paling canggih pada zaman 90an yang diletakkan di technology park malaysia bukit jalil. Daripada mesin rapid prototyping ni lah kita dapat buat proton Gen-2, Waja.

Other offsets that I can remember

BAe Hawk
Given the IP rights and toolings of MD-3 aerotiga
Given the IP rights to Bulldog trainer.
Given weapons pylon manufacturing for all Hawks.
Given havard trainer aircraft to TUDM museum.

with offsets malaysia has become one of the biggest aerospace component manufacturer in south east asia, with sales worth more than 1 billion dollars annually.

Indonesia might be proud of having own aircraft, but their sales are less than 100 million dollars per year.

Malaysia is now one of the biggest aerospace composite parts manufacturer in the world (ACM Kedah and CTRM Melaka), while also producing metallic aero structures (Spirit aerosystems) and advanced metallurgic jet engine components (UMW aerospace). In a nutshell, our aerospace industry can be said to be much more advanced then Indonesia while contributing billions to malaysian economy.

We don't need 8 LIFT exclusively for FA-50.

Currently we have 5 Hawk 2 seater + 7 unoperational MB-339CM 2 seater.

12 TA-50 is enough. The Golden eagle comes with highly sophisticated full motion simulators and VR simulators. It is far cry from old training systems.



As I said previously, the FA-50 Block 20 has almost no hardware changes, except for the refueling probe. All the upgrade to carry targeting pod and BVR are just software related. Our LCA/LIFT requirement is for 36 aircraft in total, so 35 million per aircraft is possible.

" A KAI senior manager told AIN in an exclusive interview that work started in October 2018 and that the project aims to be completed no later than 2021. He added that current FA-50 users can still benefit from the software upgrade and that no physical modifications are to be made to the aircraft.

The manager also revealed that an FA-50 Block 20 is in the works, and development will begin starting this year. Block 20 will give the FA-50 the capability to conduct beyond-visual-range air-to-air missions, carrying munitions such as the AIM-120 AMRAAM. As with the Block 10, there is no requirement to modify the radar of the FA-50. "

Why can't 12 TA-50 support the training of our whole airforce?

Thailand, with 100++ fighter aircraft, will do it with 14 T-50TH

FA-50 pilots also can straight away go from TA-50 without needing any OCU training as it is the same aircraft.

https://www.defensenews.com/air/2017/07/11/...rders-for-258m/




https://www.janes.com/defence-news/news-det...attack-aircraft

The block 20 is being paid for by ROKAF as it plans to use the FA-50 to replace F-5 tiger and F-4 phantom roles. Most of it are just software differences.

about softwares. if we buy the Block 20, it will be from day 1 uploaded with the latest software, so we don't need to pay more to upgrade the software. any differences in cost will be minimal. Probably 1-2 million difference, if any.

This post has been edited by alexz23: Sep 10 2021, 01:36 PM

Okay give me another comparison. Anyway isn't the thais who whooped chinese a$$ in air combat exercise?


every fighter pilot will go through TA-50 training, but those who will go to fly the FA-50 next will need no additional OCU training as the aircraft is the same. Right now we are training 24 fighter pilots a year using rented old crappy planes (just 6 of them) in canada. So why isn't it enough to use 12 highly advanced supersonic AJT instead?



Also all FA-50 is twin seater. You can fly both a rookie and a seasoned pilot on every operational flight. so 2 pilots can log flight hours on every flight (to build up operational experience, not for basic training), unlike a single seater fighter aircraft. So no issue of using up flight hours of the FA-50.

This post has been edited by alexz23: Sep 10 2021, 02:22 PM

offsets does not need to be aerospace related, as was the offset for the hornets.

korea has plenty of electronic industries (samsung, LG), automotive (hyundai-kia) and petrochemical too (like lotte chemical). They want an exit from china (due to american sanctions) and the offsets could be by encouraging then to sett up new factories in malaysia or JV with malaysian companies like silterra.



Do we have the money to operate 24 Hornets regularly instead of say 24 FA-50 for 10 years? Look at my previous post below

To operate F/A-18 - 150 million euro times 10 years. That is 1.5 billion euro.

To operate FA-50 - 60 million euro times 10 years. That is only 600 million euro. Say 24 FA-50 will cost 800 million euro. So buying 24 FA-50 plus operating them for 10 years will cost 1.4 billion euro.

If you operate F/A-18, you will burn 1.5 billion euro then after 10 years will need to buy T-7. Even if T-7 is the same price as FA-50, that is in total 2.3 billion needed.

A difference of 0.9 billion euro, which can be better spent to buy MRCA instead.



KAI has 2 types of helicopter being built for korean armed forces.

first is the Surion which is basically a licence built puma.



second is the LAH which is a licence built dauphin. which is a scary thought as china also fields license built dauphins in its army.

Which one is chinese and which one is korean?




Anyway another offset that we could ask the koreans for LCA/FLIT is their relatively new but going to be retired 100+ blackhawks. Korea has decided not to do overhaul to its Blackhawks which is just around 20 years old and instead replace them all with Surions to support the korean aerospace industry.

https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pac...-says-lawmaker/



Korea has done the same kind of offsets before, like giving free pohang corvettes to Philippines when they buy Hyundai frigates.

This post has been edited by alexz23: Sep 10 2021, 05:18 PM

Korean companies of course will leave china, but Malaysia buying big of korean defence hardwares will give us the leverage to ask them to move to malaysia instead of indonesia or vietnam. This gives us double benefits, getting investments from korea while getting military hardwares from them.

Anyway how can our economy grow 300% (quadruple) in a mere 10 years? that would need to take into account this years growth is probably 0% or worse. Also with not much leverage to ask korean industries to choose malaysia instead of indoneisa or vietnam. Our economy has never grown more than 12% per year, and usually around 4-6%. Now with a weak government and low foreign investor confidence in malaysia i cannot see your 300% increase ever going to happen.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP...1961&view=chart

Please give me your calculation of how much the money need to be spent (including operational costs) to implement your idea of flying 24 used F/A-18 instead of LCA for 10 years + the need to buy 18 T-7 and 24 MRCA together at the same time in around 2031.

AAV7 brand new or EDA ex USMC?

USA never blocked vietnam with CAATSA, so why indonesia is blocked?

We can use our PC-7 MkII if we want to








This post has been edited by alexz23: Sep 11 2021, 12:57 PM

Yak-130 and looking at SU-30SM

https://alert5.com/2021/09/06/deliveries-of...sions-on-su-30/

T-90SK

https://www.janes.com/defence-news/news-det...anks-to-vietnam

Yak-130 is new.

Royal Malaysia Air Force trains on radar operations at WADS

https://www.army.mil/article/250146/royal_m...rations_at_wads

takes from this:

- TUDM going to get 1x TPS-77 radar in 2023.

- it will be located in sarawak, as the training is taken by 330 Sqn personnel (those made infamous by the recent shooting incident)

- the radar will join the current still brand new GM403 radar. probably this new TPS-77 radar will be used to plug the gap between RAT31 SLE radar of labuan and the GM403 near kuching, so the location must be near to bintulu.

problem no 1. that prediction was made in 2016. No one predicted a worldwide catastrophe of this covid pandemic that gobbles up bilions of dollars and halted economic activities.

Your plan of NOT buying any LCA and buying T-7 and MRCA past 2030. What can that offer us in any offset pre 2030???

Even if buying M346, what can the italians give as offset? Not buying palm oil, not having commercial aerospace industries, not having big electronic industries, so what can the Italians give?

The koreans can give plenty for us to ask for. Electronic Industries, palm oil buying, gas buying, petrochemical industries, automotive industries, access to free retired military equipment (blackhawks, kifvs, metis-m anti-tank missiles, ships)

MRCA is yes going to be ordered by 2030. In 2030 TUDM will not have the budget to buy both MRCA AND LCA all at the same time. Money wasted on flying 24 Hornets could be used to buy + fly FA-50 instead, without needing to put out additional money to buy LCA in 2030.

mines are great tools. but it does not discriminate. it will hit all including friendly and civilian ships. Best use of mines is to mine the enemy waterways, not ours. That will need the use of submarines to lay mines near enemy harbours (a good task for large unmanned underwater vehicles UUV), or flying sea mines such as the quickstrike. I hope we will get some quickstrike mines on our own.

We need a long term shipbuilding programme that would constantly churn out ships without having gaps for the workers. Korea is a good example of this for us to emulate.

This post has been edited by alexz23: Sep 12 2021, 11:31 AM

6 kedah out of a planned 27. The original plan is unsustainable anyway. 300 million dollars ship but FFBNW or as our neighbors say, ompong.

2 korean training ship is all that we need. not 6. there was somebody wanting to sell 6 korean missile corvettes to TLDM before, but that came to naught.

4 chinese LMS was not build in malaysia. A rebooted LMS should be built in Malaysia as the original plan.

OPVs, with the size of Kedah class or bigger, should cost less than the uber expensive LMS. The MMEA OPV1800 costs less than the LMS, and these OPVs that we should build more of.