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18 years 9 months

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Well, 57 of the IAF's Jaguars are pretty young..they were progressively delivered from 2005 onwards. So they have plenty of life left in them, if they were to be re-engined and could easily go on till 2035 at least. However, the cost vs capability benefit is what is now driving the IAF to re-think the logic behind retaining the older Jaguars (those that were delivered in the late 1980s and early 1990s) much longer versus buying more Su-30s that could continue to be delivered by HAL Nasik's existing Su-30 assembly line.


Cost vs capability indeed. Lots of money wasted on an over-ambitious re-engining selected in a "competition" rigged so only one contender could win, & therefore felt it had the IAF & MoD over a barrel, when a low-risk upgrade of the existing engines was on offer. Ten years later, the re-engining has cost money & gone nowhere, & some of the aircraft originally scheduled for it have aged too much to be worth upgrading. Result? Lots of cost & no added capability.