ADA Tejas (LCA) News and Discussions

[indiandefencefan]

India to double production of Tejas LCA

The Indian Ministry of Defence (MoD) has announced that a proposal for doubling the production of indigenous Tejas Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) is being processed.

Indian Minister of State for Defence Rao Inderjit Singh told Parliament said that the proposal suggests an increase in the present production capacity of eight aircrafts annually, stretching to produce a total of 16 aircraft.

The country's Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) has recommended an expenditure of Rs12.59bn ($186.2m), with 50% funding by HAL, 25% by the Indian Air Force (IAF) and 25% by the Indian Navy.

"The country's Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) has recommended an expenditure of Rs12.59bn ($186.2m), with 50% funding by HAL, 25% by the Indian Air Force (IAF) and 25% by the Indian Navy."
Inderjit Singh said that a timeline of 36 months from the date of sanction has been suggested.

Meanwhile, approximately 80 upgraded version LCA Mk 1A featuring a wide range of capabilities such as the active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar, beyond visual range (BVR) missiles, air to air refuelling (AAR) capability and electronic warfare (EW) suite is under production at the company's facility.

Developed by a consortium of five organisations pooled by the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) under the DRDO, along with state-run Hindustan Aeronautics (HAL) as the principal partner in the design of the aircraft, the LCA is set to replace the existing aging MiG 21 and MiG 23 aircraft for the Air Force.

The IAF has ordered 40 Tejas single-seat, single-engine, lightweight, high-agility supersonic fighter aircraft, of which 20 were ordered under initial operational clearance (IOC) standards, while the rest were requisitioned as per final operational clearance (FOC) standards.

Powered by GE F404-GE-IN20 turbofan engine, the Tejas LCA features eight external hardpoints to carry stores, with three under each wing and a tailless compound delta platform.

The aircraft avionics suite includes quadruplex digital automatic flight control and can be armed with air-to-air, air-to-ground and anti-ship missiles, precision-guided munitions, rockets and bombs.

Weighing around 5450kg, the LAC has a maximum speed of 2,205km/h, maximum altitude of 15,200m, take-off weight of 13,500kg and a range of 3,000km.

http://www.airforce-technology.com/news/newsindia-to-double-production-of-tejas-lca-4841869

 

[charlie]

You think private sector people care unlike PSU's just because they are 'private' ?
It's not about public or private.. It's more to do with the how the organization is structured..
Any organization that is big and structured in a regular fashion tends to behave the same..be it DRDO or HAL or IAF or 'the largest world class efficient private logistics companies in multiple sectors i worked for'. Nobody cares...Everybody tries to offload the responsibility on to others as there is no incentive to take responsibility and infact get punished for taking risks. Forgotten equipment is the least of their problems..That's why you see that innovative companies like google restructure themself in such a way that they become a cluster of well co-ordinated but independent hubs internally in a hope of tackling these kind of problems with partial success.



Where did HAL comes into picture if the design is not completed or perfected? Don't blame HAL for frequent design changes requested by HAL and the government for releasing too little money for prototypes. HAL maybe a PSU but it can't pour money into anything with no confirmed orders or released money from the govt because if they do so..people will say HAL is an loss making inefficient public sector company that needs to be broken into pieces and sold out.. I think i heard it somewhere...

Well why try too hard to make other's understand, I would just let it go rather then writing big para to make them understand, it's takes a bit of time and effort to write something as big as above.

 

[akk]

We talk about 8 and 16 tejas per year. We have not produced a single bird in the last 15 months. Can anybody shed some light?
1. Has there been an accident in the facility not being disclosed?
2. Are they hiding them....producing but not disclosing?
3. Busy developing 1a variant and therefore unable to make regular birds
4. Just hopeless. .....All talk and no work.
Besides, despite all talk, none of the important projects have actually delivered. No tejas, no rafale, no fgfa, no additional mki and no alternative. Even no howitzer or submarine, no s400.....nothing on ground! That's my worry....is this govt all talk and no work? How are they different from Anthony? At least congis were corrupt so they wold buy weapons for money. What will make this govt move?

 

[garg_bharat]

HJT36 is a HAL designed and manufactured trainer jet, which first flew in 2003.

"
The Indian Air Force has told Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd to address basic flaws in its design. The trainer, IJT in official parlance, must be made capable of recovering from stall and spin, the IAF has informed the Bengaluru-based public sector major manufacturer. “You cannot fly an aircraft that can’t spin and recover from it. They have to return to the drawing board and make it work,” a senior IAF officer told Express on condition of anonymity. The IAF has expressed its displeasure over long delays at HAL, besides the aircraft’s inability to meet its requirements.

The project, begun in 1999, was hit by a series of accidents and a change of engine. The first prototype took to the skies in 2003 and six prototypes are now operational. “It is an aerodynamic or design flaw. It cannot be rectified unless they start all over again,” the officer said. That means the project will be delayed further.
"
http://www.newindianexpress.com/sta...o-Drawing-Board/2015/08/03/article2954340.ece

 

[garg_bharat]

We talk about 8 and 16 tejas per year. We have not produced a single bird in the last 15 months. Can anybody shed some light?
1. Has there been an accident in the facility not being disclosed?
2. Are they hiding them....producing but not disclosing?
3. Busy developing 1a variant and therefore unable to make regular birds
4. Just hopeless. .....All talk and no work.
Besides, despite all talk, none of the important projects have actually delivered. No tejas, no rafale, no fgfa, no additional mki and no alternative. Even no howitzer or submarine, no s400.....nothing on ground! That's my worry....is this govt all talk and no work? How are they different from Anthony? At least congis were corrupt so they wold buy weapons for money. What will make this govt move?

Let us keep LCA issue separate.

Rafale - You ask A K Antony why he did not award the contract. No point asking this govt.
FGFA - Ask IAF what is its problem.
Additional MKI - ??? (Never heard about it)
Alternative to Rafale - in discussion
Howitzer - being delivered
submarines - You have seen the news reports. What is the problem??

If you are a Congi and loves inaction and corruption, then what can I say?

 

[garg_bharat]

LCA programme: India's Rs 10,397 crore disaster may finally be handed over to the private sector

http://www.firstpost.com/india/lca-...digenous-combat-aircraft-project-2336294.html

 

[garg_bharat]

HAL is yet make reliable engines, after 40 years of effort. All Western engines are being imported.

The Russian origin engine manufacturing and overhaul has been beset with problems.

Remember this is a company which employs like 10000 engineers.

 

[garg_bharat]

A company that has difficulty designing and producing a jet trainer; can it build top of the line fighter jets??

People and culture is same.

 

[garg_bharat]

HJT 36 Sitara initially faced with problems of lack of thrust the replaced the Larzac 04-H-20 engine with Saturn AL-55I. The delivery of higher thrust Engine by Saturn delayed so which in turn delayed the integration, testing, certification and others. During final tests airframe had come across Stall Recovery problems which was caused due to the assymetric design of Sitara. HAL sought consultation help from BAE to speed up the fixing process but eventually the Airframe(deisgn of fuselage, tail & wing) had to be redesigned. As airframe has been changed the everything had to be started from step1. As of now two redesigned prototypes were built and are under going test.

You need to remember that HAL has been tasked with designing and building military aircraft by the Govt, and has been a monopoly company. If it cannot even design and build a jet trainer, it shows very poor work culture and serious management problems.

 

[Neelkanth]

LCA programme: India's Rs 10,397 crore disaster may finally be handed over to the private sector

http://www.firstpost.com/india/lca-...digenous-combat-aircraft-project-2336294.html

FirstPost is a black hole of intelligence... ask them which country has ever produced an entire supply chain from scratch for an AirCraft equivalent to LCA in under $2 billion.. that is without having any infrastructure to build one. journos being dumb as they are..

 

[no smoking]

FirstPost is a black hole of intelligence... ask them which country has ever produced an entire supply chain from scratch for an AirCraft equivalent to LCA in under $2 billion.. that is without having any infrastructure to build one. journos being dumb as they are..

With American engine, Israel radar, Russia/Israel weapon system, how can you call "an entire supply chain from scratch".

 

[PaliwalWarrior]

Let us keep LCA issue separate.

Rafale - You ask A K Antony why he did not award the contract. No point asking this govt.
FGFA - Ask IAF what is its problem.
Additional MKI - ??? (Never heard about it)
Alternative to Rafale - in discussion
Howitzer - being delivered
submarines - You have seen the news reports. What is the problem??

If you are a Congi and loves inaction and corruption, then what can I say?

Bhai after all these hoople

The modi govt has CLEARED a lot of projects but has not SIGNED more than 2-3 deals

 

[PaliwalWarrior]

You need to remember that HAL has been tasked with designing and building military aircraft by the Govt, and has been a monopoly company. If it cannot even design and build a jet trainer, it shows very poor work culture and serious management problems.

Bhai HAL dies not design it only mfgs

 

[garg_bharat]

Bhai after all these hoople

The modi govt has CLEARED a lot of projects but has not SIGNED more than 2-3 deals

Why are you expecting a flurry of deals to be signed?? I just do not understand it.

The government's job is not to run in all directions and signs deals with every country in sight.

Can you be specific what is not signed??

 

[garg_bharat]

Bhai HAL dies not design it only mfgs

Who told you? Is it a hunch or some real information.
ADA does not design everything itself, but a number of other organizations including HAL are involved in designing LRUs.

HAL has full-fledged staff for designing aircrafts.

 

[myana]

To all HAL bashing people:
HAL is both Manufacturing & designing company. It has designed ALH, LCH, LUH, IJT, HTT and others(with & without foreign consultants).
HAL manufactures many aero structures whose customers are Airbus, Boeing, Lockheed & others. Not until TASL no other company was manufacturing aerostrutures in India. Why do you think those companies are giving orders to HAL.
HAL licenses many softwares which are designed inhouse and now been used in many pvt companies.

Every project has its own set of problems, incase of F35 Lockheed has been facing problems, is Lockheed a sarkari company and its mind set is bad. It has many more engineers than HAL.

I cited above example to say every project has its own set of problems you cannot say a company is bad because of failed or delayed projects. If that is the case Boeing lost to lockheed in JSF that doesn't imply Boeing is bad.

Why Sitara is delayed when it was designed to have assymetric body design, so during the final certification when people were testing the limits of plane they found that Stall was too early than expected and recovery procedure is too confusing which may lead to serious problems with rookie pilots. So they have to design the wing, tail & fuselage because for this they had to do the wind tunnel tests, re-certifications and all the tests again.

If you counter argue that why have HAL engineers failed to predict this in prior then the answer would be many things cannot be anticipated they will be found out during different phases of the development. In case of F35B they designed it to have same wing span as F35A because of which the Vertical landing became impossible to fix this they had to decrease the wing span & also decrease the weight. to decrease the weight they actually thinned out the plane's skin so thin that it can be shot at with a 9mm pistol and would be impossible to do CAS with height below gun's range. Even with that they could not take of vertically with useful load so they altogether compromised on removing the requirement and functionality of vertical takeoff.

Guys please growup and read beyond paid media articles.

 

[garg_bharat]

Lockheed work is not design work. HAL's competency is in license manufacturing. This is what it wants to do. The work obtained in offsets cannot be called competitive work.

When design (means taking risk) is involved, the situation changes.

The issues encountered in HJT-36 are normal, the timeframe is not. Design decisions need to be corrected sometimes. But a trainer project started in 1999 is still pending in 2016. This fact does not inspire confidence.

HAL has more excuses not to deliver on LCA than logic permits. For example the first 4 SP series are nowhere to be seen, God know what state they are on the shop-floor.

@myana, HAL needs to start behaving like a company. Behaving like a govt dept will make it extinct.
Look what is happening to BHEL, which was once a mighty company.

Behaving like a company means investing in tech and machines and people, and taking risks.

 

[Kunal Biswas]

Looks nicer than IAF version ..

 

[PaliwalWarrior]

Who told you? Is it a hunch or some real information.
ADA does not design everything itself, but a number of other organizations including HAL are involved in designing LRUs.

HAL has full-fledged staff for designing aircrafts.

Who designs lca airframe ?
Who puts it through SW simulations ?
Who puts it through wind tunnel tests ?
Who puts it through flight tests ?
Who gives ioc foc clearance ?
Who finalises the production standards & drawings ?

 

[PaliwalWarrior]

Why are you expecting a flurry of deals to be signed?? I just do not understand it.

The government's job is not to run in all directions and signs deals with every country in sight.

Can you be specific what is not signed??

The govt is not supposed to sign deals left right & centre with any & everyone

But when it clears some projects it is supposed to move fast & sign the deal for projects already cleared by it

The present govt says that they have cleared deals for more than 150k crore in 2 years then

The next q is how many of those deals cleared have been actually converted into firm contracts ?