My two paise.
Merely because an article is old, you cannot discount it.
I remember a person by the name of Arun Vishwakarma used to own a blog and wrote extensively about various future versions of Agnis. Almost all of his content has found real life examples now after about 15 years. He also mentioned a lot about how the nuclear agreement with US was going to hobble development of India's nuclear capabilities and that too has happened nearly the way he used to. During the K. Santhanam days he used to write about limitations of our nuclear warheads and the later developments in missile throw masses, has only gone to confirm all that. I used to suspect that he was an highly educated PR person from DRDO. Probably he was. At least he was highly educated but then things that nobody could have believed 15 years back were all indicated and they nearly all happened nearly the same way.
LCA is an excellent idea to develop further. Most people do not realize that the core team that first froze the basic characterstics of LcA were trained in US and these people were deeply influenced by engineering ideas from the west. Effectively what the old LCA team did was they transplanted the best and most cost effective ideas of western countries here in India even when the western countries themselves abandoned these ideas in favour of more lavish and bigger projects that had that much more politico-economic clout.
To cut to the chase the latest does not mean the right or the best. It may just as easily mean half-done.
LCA becoming a quasi-stealthy plane is a definite possibility given:
1) LCA already makes use of RAM, Y shaped intakes, honeycombed core CFC skined tail fin for high radar transparency, does not employ an unnecessarily large number of control surfaces, has a wing that merges smoothly into the upper body, creating no awkward reflection zones.
2) LCA will in future definitely have an IRST and an AESA.
4) Engine, in the words of test pilots 'sips' fuel and will be very efficient with fuel burn.
3) If you work on the cockpit and give it enclosed weapons pods then LCA can become a very difficult thing to spot during a merge.
All aspect stealth may not even be needed with so much going for LCA.
