SOURCE: RAUNAK KUNDE / NEWS BEAT / IDRW.ORG.
Dr Girish S Deodhare, Director General of the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) has classified Twin Engine Deck Based Fighter (TEDBF), a canard delta wing, twin-engine, carrier-based, multirole combat aircraft currently under development for the Indian Navy as a “5th generation minus” fighter.
Deodhare while speaking to “Business Standard” said that ” TEDBF is not a fourth-generation fighter, but is generation-five minus aircraft”. idrw.org in past had reported that TEDBF will be called “5th generation minus” fighter a term coined first by the U.S. Air Force.
USAF’s Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Brown Jr was the first to coin the word “5th generation minus” for an affordable, lightweight fighter to replace the F-16. A fighter that couples some of the technological leaps found in 5th-generation computing powerhouses like the F-35 with some of the cost savings found in 4th-generation workhorses like the F-15EX.
South Korean and Indonesian fighter program dubbed KAI KF-21 Boramae is proposed as a 5th generation “minus” design since initially it won’t have Internal Weapons Bay (IWB) and a third variant of the KF-21 that will be ready in 2035 will have IWB and other features of the true 5th generation platforms.
idrw.org has been hinted in past that TEDBF later variant likely to be classified as a “5th generation” as in the first batch Indian Navy plans to induct 45 TEDBF but in later batches, it will induct more than 55 units by 2040-45.
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