ADA Tejas (LCA) News and Discussions

[CuriousBen]

prophecy and rationalism are two diametrically opposite words, So don't use them in combination.

Mk-2 will fly within a year or two is my idea , since there is nothing new in it, same wing shape, same wing loading , most of the teething problems already resolved in Mk-1 , flight performance all validated in 2300 Mk-1 flights with HAl and IAF on board from the word go,

So I am afraid that your rational prophecy wont hold good as far as Mk-2 timelines are concerned.
One fighter destroying all 4 fighters with four air to air missiles only happens in simulations and not in real world,

It has seven pylons for its empty weight , effective enough.

What is to be noted is tejas is as modern and as effective for the price. If you compare lifecycle costs you can field at least 3 or 4 tejas for every single imported comparable 4.5 the gen fighter, So you can have an idea about the effectiveness.

And your statement regarding chinese and pakis having Tejas design makes no sense, and nobody is going to mount engines blades on carbon composites,

Most of the modern fighters are made of composites , so strength is same for all of them.

Flying fortress type crafts wont be fielded anymore , because heavy fighters wont pull requisite Gs to escape missile shots in modern world, So there is no practical use for them.

Today's fighter are fast,stealthy, , agile and bomb from high altitude with long range stand off precision munition ,

they get out before their presence is known and even if dog fights ensue mostly long range BVR missiles and high off bore sight WVR missiles account for many of the kills. Then only comes direct gun kills.
So they can not be aimed for at like flying fortress of yore with swarms of bullets and shells from anti aircraft fire.

Lets wait and watch about mk2. However based on what is said, I wish and hope to see it sooner.

Please clear thing about clean config . "It has seven pylons for its empty weight , effective enough." Please define clean config. Does it mean an aircraft will not carry any weapon in clean config ( empty weight ). If no weapons then how can it fight and subsequently whats the use? Either way does clean config define minimum amount of weapons ? if yes then how much weapons (i assume 7 ) ?

Wars are fought just not with hardware in air, water , sear or under- sea. intelligence is necessary. To cite eg. in ww2 the american pilots had full knowledge about the strength and weakness about the japanes zero plane.
In the arab israeli confict the israelis got a signifiant advantage over the arabs even before the conflict, when they evaluated the adversary mig 21 aircraft (which during that time was fresh and cutting edge). Its believed that the israelis got a pilot of any arab country to defect. This renegade pilot flew a fully-armed war-ready mig 21 from an arab country ( i thik it was syria) and submitted it to the israelis in working condition. Though the cockpit controls were russian, that was no problem as there were many jews from russia whose services were employed.
Result , the weakness of mig 21 was that the pilot could not view who was behind him at position 5 to 7 o clock , i.e.when the chase aircraft ( mig 3) was flying less than the level of the mig 21 . This was used very effectively and the mig 3 virtaully made us of the blind position to effect may kills.

In the vietnam war , american pilots were frustrated that their fighters had only rockets and no guns, as the rockets were not effective when the enemy aircraft was flying at a very low level. They realized this and re-introduced the guns which effectively helped.

in combat anything can happen. like in the case of the many dog fights , when an aircraft wing gets hit by either missile or artillery, the first thing is that the wings get damaged. In case the wing is hit, will it be strong enough to sustain the impact or might it just come off . Consider a situation when an lca tejas is pursuing a paki very hotely deep inside the badlands of pakistan, and it comes under m/c gun fire when flown a a very low level. then what happens ?

Also if all competitive aircrafts are being made of composites, then wont their RCS be decreased as well ? so considering what has been said ,arguably is RCS comparision being done of existing mig 29 su 30 or against upcoming chinese clones that may have composites with less RCS ?
Or is low RCS a function of composite material and slealthy design ?

If at all tejas has an export potential ,lets say , for eg if the vietnamese want to puchase it in bulk to ward off any bull chinese then they might as well ask the same questions about its strength and robustness. Forget the world for a moment, will our guys be able to come out alive of this aircraft, assuming the wing has sustained damage. Pilots are very valuable. I am sure no one of the aircaraft manufacturers will have a guarantee , but can we at least calibrate the strength and safety .

 

[CuriousBen]

Any progress about the twin seat trainer ? Is it being tested or is it planned for later than 2014 ?

 

[p2prada]

Mk-2 is still far away and it evokes less enthusiasm given that it has been stalled for now till maybe ioc . So maybe 5 years down the line when one mk-2 test aircraft is flying it will make sense to talk about it. I hope i am not wrong in rationalizing the prophecy.

Indeed, Mk2 is very, very far away. We have ordered only 9 F-414s for prototypes and put the rest of the order on hold until some progress is made.

In clean config how much weapons can it carry ? In clean config , for air to air combat are those weapons sufficient to destroy a fleet of 4 aircrafts ?

What do you mean by that? Clean config is "clean." No weapons, not even cannon ammo.

As we discuss these things openly, how are we to be sure that the chinese are not emulating the same design of tejas ? The chinese are master copy cats.
Given that we have a very inefficient secret service, the chinese and pakis may already have access to the designs.

They don't need it. LCA's design is obsolete, especially when they already have the J-10 and are developing J-20 and J-31.

What is the life of the present tejas technology ? However since this is not the scope of the forum I rest the case.

Service life is currently not known. If they give anything between 4000-6000 hours, that would be an achievement.

Coming to kaveri, if we can make the engine fan blade moulded out of carbon composite would it help to reduce the weight ? What stops us from thinking about it ? i dont need to be a scientist to think about it . Bad idea maybe , but if it works out , why should anyone complain.

The Russians are working on carbon composite blades for the new Type 30 engine, but we are going for SCB presently on the K9+. We will see what happens with K10 when it happens because we are yet to choose a development partner.

How strong is tejas. If its receives gunshots on it wings , would the software of fly by wire malfunction and will the ac drop out of sky ? I dont expect it to be as strong as flying fortresses employed during workd war 2. But one might have calculated the possibility of damage in combat.

Not much, the mantra is avoidance.

 

[p2prada]

Off beat there was report that materials have been developed for warhead on agni 5 that can withstand 2000 to 2500 degrees temperature. Given that there is a need to have materials in kavei engine that need to withstand 1700 degress cellcius, can such is .. can such technology be adapted to the blades of Kaveri engine ?

If you look at what the Russians are doing, they are using SCB as 4th/4.5th gen engine technology, for 5th gen they are going for carbon composites(PAKFA's Type 30 engine) and for 6th gen they will possibly use ceramics. So, in another 10-15 years we may see the development of engines using such high temperature materials.

Has LCA tejas been tested in a digfight with any other IAF plane ? lets say the Mig 21 or the mirage 2000 or mig 29 ?

Should happen sometime after 2020. LCA is still under development and will not be ready for operational use for a few years after induction, until ADA gives the program a clean chit for the user to operate it independently.

 

[angeldude13]

i started foruming to get updated on tejas but it feels like this sh8t is not going to be inducted in IAF's inventory :why:

foc has been pushed to 2015

Tejas will not be ready for war before end of 2015 - Times Of India

 

[dealwithit]

i started foruming to get updated on tejas but it feels like this sh8t is not going to be inducted in IAF's inventory :why:

foc has been pushed to 2015

Tejas will not be ready for war before end of 2015 - Times Of India

The conditions which are required for FOC are full filled ...except Air to air refueling...
some small itches are there which will be cleared before mid 2014...

 

[Twinblade]

i started foruming to get updated on tejas but it feels like this sh8t is not going to be inducted in IAF's inventory :why:

foc has been pushed to 2015

Tejas will not be ready for war before end of 2015 - Times Of India

Old news. All the subsequent interviews have stated late 2014 as the FOC date.

 

[p2prada]

The conditions which are required for FOC are full filled ...except Air to air refueling...
some small itches are there which will be cleared before mid 2014...

After IOC-2, Tejas still needs to clock another 1000-1500 hours of flight before FOC is given. Some of the FOC tests seem to have overlapped with IOC testing, but it won't happen by 2014 with the small number of hours that it is clocking every month.

2500 hours is the benchmark. If Tejas has not clocked even half of this until today then you can only imagine how far away FOC really is.

Don't go by such reports, simply look at the hours of flight clocked. The day it clocks over 2000 hours, that's the day you can say some small itches are still left.

 

[angeldude13]

The conditions which are required for FOC are full filled ...except Air to air refueling...
some small itches are there which will be cleared before mid 2014...

kindly refer to the post made by p2prada.

tejas will be getting ioc-2 in year 2014 and foc in 2015.
i will not be shocked if foc of tejas is delayed by another 2 or 3 years.
i am following tejas program since i was in 10th standard and i've seen lots of delays and change in requirement by iaf

 

[dealwithit]

I am assuming to present scenario...

If BJP comes to power.. Its main intention will be Moving LCA project Forward...

It wont get delayed in BJP regime.. May be my assumption..

 

[sayareakd]

I am assuming to present scenario...

If BJP comes to power.. Its main intention will be Moving LCA project Forward...

It wont get delayed in BJP regime.. May be my assumption..

if BJP comes to power then Rafale or EF will get more orders for jet.

 

[bennedose]

Coming to kaveri, if we can make the engine fan blade moulded out of carbon composite would it help to reduce the weight ?

Composite blades are not used in the hot sections of the engine. They are used in the bypass/fan section - which is huge in the high bypass civilian engines. That is where composite blades come into their own. Probably not for Kaveri

Here is an image of the civil jet engine CFM 56. The huge blades seen in front from which air bypasses the hot section can be made from composites. The central core engine seen at the back will need regular alloy blades

 

[p2prada]

I am assuming to present scenario...

If BJP comes to power.. Its main intention will be Moving LCA project Forward...

It wont get delayed in BJP regime.. May be my assumption..

It won't make a difference who is in power.

There is a concerted effort by the whole nation for the success of the program. Meaning, no party will get in the way of the program.

The delays have nothing to do with ministry or bureaucratic hurdles, it is all technical. It won't make a difference who is in power as long as the landing carriage is heavier than required or if the radar is not yet fully integrated.

 

[ersakthivel]

Lets wait and watch about mk2. However based on what is said, I wish and hope to see it sooner.

Please clear thing about clean config . "It has seven pylons for its empty weight , effective enough." Please define clean config. Does it mean an aircraft will not carry any weapon in clean config ( empty weight ). If no weapons then how can it fight and subsequently whats the use? Either way does clean config define minimum amount of weapons ? if yes then how much weapons (i assume 7 ) ?

Try to google and find something about what is meant by clean config instead of typing a passage about that in this thread.

all makers give the RCS of the fighter in clean config. Among those clean config RCS the tejas has one of the lowest in non stealth fighters.

In my previous posts I have clearly explained what happens once a fighter fires all the long range BVR missiles fitted on its pylon.

Please red that to know the significance of clean config RCS.

Wars are fought just not with hardware in air, water , sear or under- sea. intelligence is necessary. To cite eg. in ww2 the american pilots had full knowledge about the strength and weakness about the japanes zero plane.
In the arab israeli confict the israelis got a signifiant advantage over the arabs even before the conflict, when they evaluated the adversary mig 21 aircraft (which during that time was fresh and cutting edge). Its believed that the israelis got a pilot of any arab country to defect. This renegade pilot flew a fully-armed war-ready mig 21 from an arab country ( i thik it was syria) and submitted it to the israelis in working condition. Though the cockpit controls were russian, that was no problem as there were many jews from russia whose services were employed.
Result , the weakness of mig 21 was that the pilot could not view who was behind him at position 5 to 7 o clock , i.e.when the chase aircraft ( mig 3) was flying less than the level of the mig 21 . This was used very effectively and the mig 3 virtaully made us of the blind position to effect may kills.

In the vietnam war , american pilots were frustrated that their fighters had only rockets and no guns, as the rockets were not effective when the enemy aircraft was flying at a very low level. They realized this and re-introduced the guns which effectively helped.

in combat anything can happen. like in the case of the many dog fights , when an aircraft wing gets hit by either missile or artillery, the first thing is that the wings get damaged. In case the wing is hit, will it be strong enough to sustain the impact or might it just come off . Consider a situation when an lca tejas is pursuing a paki very hotely deep inside the badlands of pakistan, and it comes under m/c gun fire when flown a a very low level. then what happens ?

once again, today's 4th gen or 5th gen fighters are not designed to take loads of bullets like Flying fortress. That was already explained to you.

If you design a fighter so heavy that has to take as much punishment as in the days of armored planes or flying fortress types then the agility of the fighter will be so low it would be shot out of the sky like a crow by today's air to air missiles. So there is no use in making multi role 4th and 5th gen fighters that heavy.

Only the USAF has A-10 type planes that can take some punishment . But by no stretch of imagination can you call it a multi role fighter.

You are asking these questions without even knowing for what purpose a modern multi role fighter is built.

No modern multi role fighters from Su-30 to F-22 can take loads of bullets like A-10 and come back home.

Also if all competitive aircrafts are being made of composites, then wont their RCS be decreased as well ? so considering what has been said ,arguably is RCS comparision being done of existing mig 29 su 30 or against upcoming chinese clones that may have composites with less RCS ?
Or is low RCS a function of composite material and slealthy design ?

RCS is not a result of composites alone. It should be sorted out from design stage itself. just by introducing composites on say J-10 or Su-30 you can not resuce their RCs by 10 times.

If at all tejas has an export potential ,lets say , for eg if the vietnamese want to puchase it in bulk to ward off any bull chinese then they might as well ask the same questions about its strength and robustness. Forget the world for a moment, will our guys be able to come out alive of this aircraft, assuming the wing has sustained damage. Pilots are very valuable. I am sure no one of the aircaraft manufacturers will have a guarantee , but can we at least calibrate the strength and safety .

Once again if you want a robust plane that can take the punishment that an A-10 can take IAF should ask ADA to build a new slow moving close air support type dedicated type plane for that.

you can not ask a TWR of 1.07 and a 3 ton fuel load along with 5 tons weapon load and class leading ITR and STR on a single engine plane that can take loads of bullets in a ground fire and fly the pilot back home.

try to learn what is the purpose of the modern multi role fighter plane before asking those ridiculous questions.

 

[ersakthivel]

fter IOC-2, Tejas still needs to clock another 1000-1500 hours of flight before FOC is given. Some of the FOC tests seem to have overlapped with IOC testing, but it won't happen by 2014 with the small number of hours that it is clocking every month.

2500 hours is the benchmark. If Tejas has not clocked even half of this until today then you can only imagine how far away FOC really is.

Don't go by such reports, simply look at the hours of flight clocked. The day it clocks over 2000 hours, that's the day you can say some small itches are still left.

passages like the above are made without even acknowledging that today's flight test team has 8 LSP s along with many PVs, which is not the case in 2000.

So it is stupid to expect that the time taken for the remaining 1500 flights will be at the same ratio of the previous 2300 flights which had less than half the number of LSPs available from 2000 to 2005.

And most of the time consuming design modifications asked by IAF are already done in the past decade. And LSP-7 and 8 are closest to freezed production models. So remaining flight tests can be completed easily .

Already there are reports that IAF is satisfied with the STR of tejas mk-1 and AOA has gone past 22 deg AOA. This was not the case in 2000.

So it is absurd to sweep these critical facts under the carpet and attribute the same time lines for the remaining 1000 flights.

They don't need it. LCA's design is obsolete, especially when they already have the J-10 and are developing J-20 and J-31.

If Tejas is obsolete then the J-10 which has an absurd AL-31 engine mated to Israeli Lavi airframe dating back to 1970s is space age perhaps!!!!!!!!!

Methods to defeat 5th gen stealths would be deployed by 2030. In that case J-20 too will become obsolete by the time it's numbers reach 200 or 300 in PLAF perhaps!!!!!!!!!!

The only thing Tejas can not do for some "Policy makers" is ---

1. It has no facility to funnel hard earned Indian tax payer money to Swiss bank Accounts through slush funds

2. It can not summon leggy beauties in lavish parties held by Arms dealers in posh farm houses on the suburbs of New Delhi.

3. Also ADA can not get ASRs diluted in it's favor like the makers of Pliatus,West land and FGFA can pull it off with their "very high technical expertise".

Much worse due to the lack of "experience " of ADA the ASR only gets stricter with passage of time for LCA tejas, which by the way is not to the liking of India's adversaries.

Other than these three very critical short comings ,

it can do the mundane tasks of delivering Long range BVRs and doing decent close combat dogfights against incoming enemy fighters,

while taking the base line IAF capacity to the levels above Mirage-2000 and F-16 class , which is the purpose of it's design.

 

[ersakthivel]

@p2prada, @Twinblade @ersakthivel @Kunal Biswas sir. The mirage 2000s we have must have gone up gainst the mkis. WHat were the results? There must be some comments by the IAF pilots on the matter. Because however it fared, the tejas is supposed to fare better according to the test pilots who say the tejas is better than the mirage 2000 in essential parameters and because of its lesser rcs and visual stealth in the WVR. It will give s an idea as to how the a sqaudron of tejas can tackle the sukhoi clones of PLAAF.

The Mirage-2000 does not have 120 Km range BVRs like meteor.

IF it has such a long range missile , I see no difference in BVR department as Su-30 will have many times higher RCS than the Mirage-2000.

And if SU-30 uses it's powerful jammers to jam the Mirage-2000 radar the jamming signal alone will be used to guide the BVR fired from Mirage-2000 on to Su-30 MKI.

Since older Mirage-2000s does not have such EW based ESM suites it is no wonder it will be beaten by Su-30 MI whose avionics and EW suite are top notch compared to two decades old suites for Mirage-2000.


however If Mirage-2000 gets upgraded with ESM suites and equipped with 120 Km range Meteor in it's upgrade then the comparison will be meaningful.Just imagine if it gets all the goodies present in RAFALE in upgrades then it will be a different ball game all together.

Also Tejas mk-2 is slated to be fitted with 120 K range BVR{meteor according to ADA chief's interview to broadsword}. And it will have modern EW and ESM passive homing suites as well.


Even in mk-1 tejas will have more TWR , and lower wing loading than the Mirage-2000, coupled with lower clean config RCS.

So it will do well is my opinion.

 

[Sridhar]

Tejas flight update

LCA-Tejas has completed 2328 Test Flights Successfully. (25-Sep-2013).


(TD1-233,TD2-305,PV1-242,PV2-222,PV3-371,LSP1-74,LSP2-285,PV5-36,LSP3-157,LSP4-94,LSP5-220,LSP7-57,NP1-4,LSP8-28)


from

LCA-Tejas has completed 2318 Test Flights Successfully. (13-Sep-2013).

(TD1-233,TD2-305,PV1-242,PV2-222,PV3-370,LSP1-74,LSP2-282,PV5-36,LSP3-157,LSP4-94,LSP5-217,LSP7-56,NP1-4,LSP8-26)

 

[CuriousBen]

Indeed, Mk2 is very, very far away. We have ordered only 9 F-414s for prototypes and put the rest of the order on hold until some progress is made.



What do you mean by that? Clean config is "clean." No weapons, not even cannon ammo.



They don't need it. LCA's design is obsolete, especially when they already have the J-10 and are developing J-20 and J-31.



Service life is currently not known. If they give anything between 4000-6000 hours, that would be an achievement.



The Russians are working on carbon composite blades for the new Type 30 engine, but we are going for SCB presently on the K9+. We will see what happens with K10 when it happens because we are yet to choose a development partner.



Not much, the mantra is avoidance.

Development partner would be self-defeating. Its better to design everything from scratch by orselves.

I am not able to understand , if we have make significant strides in missile tech and are almost self-reliant, can't we, with the same focus propel LCA tejas development program ,specifically kaveri engine program faster .

The spin off or own development will have positive consequences. Knowledge never goes waste.

 

[CuriousBen]

If you look at what the Russians are doing, they are using SCB as 4th/4.5th gen engine technology, for 5th gen they are going for carbon composites(PAKFA's Type 30 engine) and for 6th gen they will possibly use ceramics. So, in another 10-15 years we may see the development of engines using such high temperature materials.



Should happen sometime after 2020. LCA is still under development and will not be ready for operational use for a few years after induction, until ADA gives the program a clean chit for the user to operate it independently.

After 2020. Its not very convincing.

I think the experts might have evaluated it and might already have a fair assessment of the capabilities.
I think it may take not more than 1.5 years to prove its worth.

 

[Kunal Biswas]

Tejas are made as per requirement, Small mass produce fighter with lesser operational and maintenance cost so does have a high sortie rate from short runways and Roads ..

Corruption has a big role in making Tejas project slower, Its roots are from within MOD and IAF, Tejas are already proved there worth in Iron Fist 2013, They will do again when needed with full capability...

As of now Tejas are already in mass production ..