I was about to get a bit proud of our tejas until i saw this below ( taken off
https://www.defenseindustrydaily.co...10-but-foreign-help-sought-with-engine-01901/ ...and dated onlyone month back ! )
LCA Tejas: An Indian Fighter – With Foreign Help
Apr 23, 2013 15:55 UTC by Defense Industry Daily staff DII
Latest update [?]
A critical view –
from Pakistan
(click for video)
April 21/13: Tejas a lemon? The Sunday Standard reports external link that the Tejas is much farther away from viability than anyone is admitting, and says that DRDO's notional stealth AMCA (Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft) has been put on hold until the LCA project can be made to work. A stealth FGFA/SU-50 is already in co-development with Russia, so AMCA's value is unclear anyway. With respect to the Tejas LCA, the Sunday Standard's unnamed sources say:
The above passage proves this report is anything based on truth.
Reasons ,
IOC means the plane has behaved as predicted with minor modifications as per the design through the partially tested flight envelope. That is the meaning of the term IOC. Since the plane met all test points specified for it , IT WILL BEHAVE IN THE SAME WAY AND VALIDATE ALL THE REMAINING TEST POINTS , and complete FOC .
All fighter programs follow the same procedure.All test points are divided in two sections,
1.before IOC,
2.IOC to FOC.
Extreme performance specs like high AOA testing and testing the fighter at the edge of it's performance envelope like
1. top speeds at high altitude,
2.spin testing to study the departure predictions i.e stall testing
3. Long range air to air roles ,
4. High G turns testing the fighter at the edge of it's G attaining capacity,
are always carried out after the IOC , and once these testing are completed and FBW is validated , FOC is given.
You may ask why? the reason is first you test the fighter within 70 to 80 percent of it's operating capability to check whether your design specs are properly translated in production version.If there are any shortcomings found , then alter the fighter to achieve the goals. Once it completes the 80 percent of the operating capacity , then it means that your design is working as you predicted in software simulations and wind tunnel testing. So it will continue to work in the same way you predicted in the rest of the 30 percent untested flight envelope.
World over this is the norm in all test flight programs.
If you want a real world analogy , lets say ferrari designs and builds a sports car that can reach 0 to 400 km speeds in 6 seconds.And will remain in control with say 200 km per hour speeds while cornering bends with certain angle.
The same design process will give some intermediate targets as well, like-- 0 to 200 in 3 seconds, 0 to 300 in 4.5 seconds
How will they proceed wit the testing?
there are two ways of testing it.
1. They will just take the first model and press the pedal to the bottom to check whether it reaches reach 0 to 400 km per hour in 6 sec,
And ask the driver to throw the car around at 200 km per hour at the first bend in the road he sees .
or,
2.They will first test whether the car reach 0 to 200 in 3 seconds ,
and if the t target is not achieved ,
then they will analyze the problem and solve them by design modifications,
and test it again to satisfy themselves whether it reaches those targets, before proceeding to next test point of 0 to 300 km per hour and , 0 to 400 km per hour.
Before testing whether it corners solidly at 200 km per hour, they will test it's cornering ability at say 70 km hour and satisfy themselves, then 150 km per hour and if there are any problems modify the suspension and weight distribution and validate it. And then finally they go for 200 km per hour at cornering.
What do you think a rational Eng Design team will do? A test flight is thousand times more complex than driving a new ferrari on the road. it involves the pilot's life as well. So with meager resources available to ADA , what it will do?
Another wrong assumption is FGFA will do all AMCA can. How did the reporter found this out? FGFA will have inferior stealth specs even compared to the much lampooned F-35.
AMCA wil be many times more stealthier than FGFA.And the ASR forming for AMCA is going on for ten years from 2002 to 2012.
And just now it's specs were freezed and funds released for FSED phase.There are two design teams working separately on AMCA and LCA. So no one will pluck members from AMCA team and plant them midway in LCA mk-2 team.
And the reason for the delay in LCA mk-1's IOC is slow production rate of LSPs by HAL, which was due to the time taken to validate minor design changes, not due to lack of design effort as few people mike to mislead others into believing.
"The plane cannot fly on its own.
It needs a lifeline in the form of support and monitoring of its systems from the ground by technicians"¦. The common man thinks the plane is doing fine, its engine sounds great and the manoeuvres are perfect. But those flying and weapons firing displays are done with ground monitoring and support. The plane is still not ready to flying on its own""¦. the sources noted that LCA was grounded for three months between September and December 2012 following problems with its landing gear. "Normally, a combat plane is ready for its next sortie following a 30-minute [servicing].
In the case of LCA, after a single sortie of about an hour or so, it needs three days of servicing before it can go for its next sortie," they said."
This is the most dumbheaded part of the report. Plane flies on it's own. many of it's flight parameters are monitored and relayed to ground via telemetry systems on board Tejas,to check whether all subsystems perform as per design specs.
And this is the reason for flight test program. if the plane needs no monitoring , How will it fly? The TEJAS LSP-7 took part in IORNFIST exercise and did missile firing and ground bombing far away from the ground handling canter in bangalore, Who was helping it at that time?
And this testing and telemetry equipment on board tejas weighs more than 300 KG. If they are removed it will only improve the flight specs of TEJAS, not degarde it.
Entire SUKHOI and mirage fleets were grounded after a few crashes, Does that mean they are substandard projects?the reason for the grounding was the rearrangement of fuel lines after a fuel leak was found on just one of the LSps and the HMDS overshoots the pilot's seat and will be a safety hazard incase of an emergency for pilots.
it has been proved that many tejas LSps took off many times in the same day and did the assigned jobs. Most of the flight test have a day or twos time in between. the reason is for analyzing the previous flight's data and to set parameters for the next flight according to that.For God's sake , it is flying on world renowned GE engines, so what is the reporter attempting to cook here?
Problems like this are not peculiar to Tejas, due to unresolvable vibration issues all royal Airforce TYPHOONs are flying at just 80 percent of the capacity, There were many cracks found on the Naval hornets bound for US navy,And a pilot death is speculated to have happened on F-22 due to faulty OBORG system.
Less said the better about the russian fighters operating in IAf, hundred MIG-23s were grounded (after a group captain was killed in a crash)prematurely because their engines had unresolvable problems,
Su-30 MKi often return to base with one engine, due to engine shaft failures, and a couple Su-30 MKI crashes leading to death of IAF pilots was determined to have resulted from FBW bugs.
During those times the entire sukhoi-30 MKi fleet is grounded.You would have read what is happeneing with Dremliner civilian planes in broadsheets.
The less said the better about the state of our MIG-21 fleet.Despite decades of induction , only last year IAF achieved least accidents comparable to world standards.
Shall we say all these products are useless.
These revelations come against a backdrop of pressure from India's defense minister Antony and India's government to buy designed-in-India items unless there's no other choice. He's selling changes to external link India's Defence Procurement Policy as an anti-corruption effort – but what do you call spending billions of dollars on politically-allied state organizations, who don't deliver on the critical defense projects assigned to them, and never pay any serious penalties for it? Their competitors in China and Pakistan are consistently faster and often better – while doing a better job developing their industries. See also India PIB external link.
All of India's defence procurement is riddled with corruption and it will be so as long as we buy billions worth stuff from abroad.
And no anti corruption effort is going to prevent it as long as we are governed by corrupt leaders, tejas program has nothing to do with it.
So this GOD given revealations have nothing to do with tejas program .
The initial 40 SUKHOIs delivered to india ten years before had no weapons on them and are decidely inferior to SU-MKI specs and spent ten years wasting Indain tax payer's money under the guise of honing tactics in IAf fleet, They were recently returned to Russia to be as secondhand stuff to some other nation and are being replaced by new ones in SU-30 MKi standards.
Guys salivating over foreign mall and saying tejas completed IOC with relaxed or inferior specs will keep all their holes shut , if you confront them with fact like this..
The reason is all new equipment will mature over years in deployment.
RAFALE has F-1, F-2, F-3 phases of development,
Grippen A/B, C/D and now NG demo,
f-16--A/B ,,,,and Blk-40, Blk-52, blk-60.
Sukhoi line starts from SU-27 to , 30 , 30 MKI, Su-35 and now being evolved into FGFA.
If you want to buy fully mature weapon systems that have finished their developmental lifecycles and at the peak of their performance, you can buy F-16 and Mirage-2000 inducted in the seventies. not new models.
March 20/13: More delays. A Parliamentary reply confirms the obvious, formally extending the scheduled end of the LCA's Phase 2 Full Scale Engineering Development from December 2012 to March 2015.
This second phase began in 2004 only after IAf revised ASR to include more heavy, longer range, hihger launch stress inducing beyond visual range BVRs , leading to major redesign of composite wings, which is also specified by the same report of a parliamentary committee.
the reporter is showing his mischeavious intention by suppressing this vital fact.
The IAF has ordered 20 fighters in "Initial Operational Clearance" (January 2011) status, and another 20 in "Full Operational Clearance" (i.e. combat-ready) configuration. Full Operational Clearance is now expected in December 2014. PTI, via Zee News external link | India MoD external link.
{^}
The above update is a recent abstract from our full article, itself part of our subscription offering. Keep reading to know more.
LCA Tejas Underside
Tejas LCA
(click to view full)
India's Light Combat Aircraft program is meant to boost its aviation industry, but it must also solve a pressing military problem. The IAF's fighter strength has been declining as the MiG-21s that form the bulk of its fleet are lost in crashes, or retired due to age and wear. Most of India's other Cold War vintage aircraft face similar problems.
The LCA project was conceived in 1983 and due to inter departmental wrangling I posted in TKS tales link , and financial crunch of the 1990s , it's funding for TDs (FSED-1)was released only in 1993. The Td flew in 2001. And then again in 2004 IAF revised ASR resulting in FSED-2.And it is now being completed in 2013.
this is pretty much the norm for all fighter projects.
From FSED phase the grippen, Eurofighter TYPHOON and RAFALE all entered service only after around 17 or 18 years and are still being upgraded in phases in newer versions.
But tejas ASr was upgraded in 2004 itself. it is akin to jumping directly to F-16 blk 52 without operationalizing F-16 A/B.
So if the LCA program took 5 or 6 years extra , it compares quite well to other international program.
TYPHOON is yet to complete it's ground bombing role , which tejas did before IOC, SO why the howling cries for tejas's head?
In response, some MiG-21s have been modernized to MiG-21 'Bison' configuration, and other current fighter types are undergoing modernization programs of their own. The IAF's hope is that they can maintain an adequate force until the multi-billion dollar 126+ plane MMRCA competition delivers replacements, and more SU-30MKIs arrive from HAL. Which still leaves India without an affordable fighter solution. MMRCA can replace some of India's mid-range fighters, but what about the MiG-21s? The MiG-21 Bison program adds years of life to those airframes, but even so, they're likely to be gone by 2020.
The troubles with MIG-21 fleet is du to the piss poor engineering design qualities of it's aerodynamic config and unreliable parts supplied by russian firms and it's faulty aerodynamic layout of pre historic era. Just laying all these at tejas's door is simply a motivated lie.
That's why India's own Tejas Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) project is so important to the IAF's future prospects. It's also why India's rigid domestic-only policies are gradually being relaxed, in order to field an operational and competitive aircraft. Even with that help, the program's delays are a growing problem for the IAF. Meanwhile, the west's near-abandonment of the
global lightweight fighter market opens an opportunity, if India can seize it with a compelling and timely product.
Displaying 633 of 16,752 words (a
