[Here I am posting an article by an American author (Name at the end). The article contains very negative analysis (with very little positive analysis) of Indian capabilities as a fighter jet producer. I shall say that he is mocking Tejas. Strong heart needed to read. About: Tejas Mk1. Are you agreed with his views?]
T H E L I G H T W E I G H T C O M P O N E N T
THE TEJAS MARK 1
For many years, the IAF resisted the notion that the Tejas Mark 1 was an adequate combat
aircraft because of its myriad weaknesses. It accepted the lightweight fighter in small numbers
only in test units with a series of waivers to its desired requirements. The many shortcomings
of the aircraft are by now well-known: it was developed by civilian design bureaucracies—
primarily the Aeronautical Development Agency in collaboration with Hindustan
Aeronautics Limited—without any significant IAF input until very late in the engineering
and manufacturing development phase.
The net result was an aircraft that is overweight, possesses a suboptimal thrust-to-weight
ratio despite the heavy use of composites, has poor energy addition and a limited top speed,
and an egregious ergonomic design of the cockpit. Even the aircraft’s remarkable instantaneous
turn capability—superior to that of the MiG-21—does not compensate for the limitations
of its compound delta wing design, which, like other aircraft with similar planforms,
produces an extremely high airspeed bleed-off rate in any turning fight. As one Indian
engineer, Prodyut Das, savagely concluded, “We have a fairly mediocre fighter somewhere
between the Gnat F1 and the MiG-21 on our hands.”
For all of the shortcomings of the Tejas, what is perhaps most attractive to the government
of India right now is its supposedly low cost. The Tejas Mark 1 is advertised as costing
somewhere in the vicinity of $38 million apiece. If the development cost of the program
thus far—some $2.7 billion—is factored in, the unit cost of each aircraft rises to about $60
million, which if true would be about 72 percent of the price of the Gripen NG offered to
Norway in 2008. The publicized price of the Tejas, however, must be taken with a grain
of salt: senior Indian aerospace industry insiders expect that the aircraft will cost closer to
$50 million each and that its unit cost would actually rise to about $80 million when its
development bills are included. If true, the Tejas may end up being somewhat cheaper than
the least expensive foreign competitor on the horizon, the Gripen NG.
But the critical question that is as yet unanswerable is how much cheaper it would be, an issue
that bears fundamentally on the matter of cost effectiveness. Given the Gripen’s impressive
air combat capabilities, operational flexibility, and low operating and life-cycle costs,
it would be hard to make the case that the Tejas is, even at the low end of the cost range,
more than 72 percent as capable as its Swedish peer. That argument will become even more
untenable as the expenses of the ongoing rectification initiatives are added to the overall
development costs of the Light Combat Aircraft program. At $80 million per unit, the cost
effectiveness of the Tejas as compared to the Gripen NG disappears almost entirely, leaving
the IAF with a fighter in its inventory that is pricey, hard to maintain, and ultimately
suboptimal for the swing-role mission.
In any event, the lure of lower costs, however marginal the difference, appears to have
swayed the Modi government’s decision in favor of the Tejas. This accountant’s approach
to force modernization may be understandable, given the fiscal pressures on the Indian defense
budget, but it hardly meets the test of cost effectiveness, let alone mission superiority. Despite the
fact that it is still not obvious whether the domestic manufacturer, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited,
has the production capability to build the Tejas Mark 1 in the numbers required annually, the Ministry
of Defense has obliged the IAF to acquire six squadrons of this improved version to replace the
early model MiG-21s that will be retired in a few years. This translates into 126 aircraft, with
108 deployed in squadron service and the rest stored as maintenance, attrition, and war
wastage reserves.
Because no other alternatives appear to be viable, acquiring some 100-odd upgraded Tejas Mark
1s seemed to be the best solution that the government of India could come up with at this
point, despite the IAF’s well-founded and continuing reservations about the aircraft’s
performance. Some of the limitations of the Tejas will be addressed through specific fixes: it
appears that the final production version will be equipped for air-to-air refueling; will have an
Israeli active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar, the EL/M- 2052, as its principal sensor; and
will be equipped with an Israeli weapons suite, consisting of Python short-range infrared-guided
and Derby long-range active radar-guided air-to-air missiles, besides various other free-fall
and precision-guided air-to-ground munitions.
With such improvements, the Tejas Mark 1 could be transformed into a serviceable fighter,
thirty years after its conception, but its aerodynamic deficiencies will almost certainly be
harder to correct. The claims from early 2016, as reported in the Indian newspaper Tribune,
that remediation engineering will produce an aircraft that is “1,000 [kilograms] lighter than
the existing version” are simply laughable. Consequently, it is still too early to declare, as
one unidentified Indian defense official did in an interview with the Times of India, that
the Tejas “will be more than able to outgun the similar JF-17, which Pakistan is acquiring
with China’s help,” let alone surpass the Chinese J-10, which has also turned out to be an
impressive lightweight fourth-generation combatant.
Whether the Tejas ends up being superior to such comparable adversaries will depend on
many things, especially the aircraft’s flight performance; the quality of the situational awareness
enjoyed by its pilot, which hinges in substantial measure on its radar detection and
tracking range and the effectiveness of its integration with other onboard and offboard
sensors; the quality of its air-to-air weaponry, including their maximum kinematic range
and, more important, the size of their no-escape zone, the effectiveness of their guidance
systems, and their levels of electronic protection; as well as the sophistication of the aircraft’s
air-to-ground munitions and their associated targeting systems; and the sophistication of its
defensive avionics suites.
There are reasons for concern in some of these areas. A detailed evaluation of the Tejas as
an air-to-air fighter, both intrinsically and in relation to its rivals, cannot be undertaken
here, but the following issues are worth considering. For starters, it is unlikely that the
aircraft’s thrust and maximum speed can be dramatically improved at this juncture because
its General Electric F404 engine unfortunately cannot be replaced by the advanced General
Electric F414-INS6 successor without major modifications to the airframe—and, by implication,
without further delays in acquiring an aircraft that is unlikely to complete entering
service before the first quarter of this century. A high top speed is irrelevant for close-in
maneuvering, but it can make a huge difference in a fighter’s ability to engage and disengage
at will; a high thrust-to-weight ratio, meanwhile, is desirable, especially in maneuvering
air-to-air combat, because it affects a fighter’s climbing, acceleration, and sustained G performance,
giving it great advantages especially in the vertical plane and allowing it to regain
energy quickly after high-G maneuvers. The Tejas’s limited top speed and thrust-to-weight
ratio in particular will force the IAF to develop air combat tactics that minimize its vulnerabilities—
the latter especially in regard to vertical performance—given that the aircraft will
have to live with the General Electric F404 engine permanently. This is especially true given
that the IAF has decided to drop the Mark 2 variant, which was supposed to be powered by
the General Electric F414-INS6 engine; instead, all the Tejas fighters, in both Mark 1 and
Mark 1A variants, will be powered only by the General Electric F404.
Complicating matters further, the performance of the Israeli EL/M-2052 radar, the successor
to the EL/M-2032 that now equips the Tejas, is unknown because the system is still in
development. If the Tejas is to be able to pull off successful first-look, first-shot, first-kill air
engagements against comparable opponents without airborne warning and control system
(AWACS) support, its EL/M-2052 radar will have to perform significantly better than the
EL/M-2032 radar does in comparison to KLJ-7 radar that equips all fourth-generation
Chinese-origin fighters. Of particular concern is the troubling report that the EL/M-2052
radar, which Elta is supposed to co-develop with India’s Defense Research and Development
Organization, might already have been transferred to (or stolen by) China—a development
that, if true, could imply future transfers of some of its key capabilities to Pakistan.
The decision to equip the Tejas with the EL/M-2052, rather than some alternative
such as the U.S. Scalable Agile Beam Radar (SABR) or the Raytheon Advanced Combat
Radar (RACR)—both AESA radar systems—was apparently reached because Elta offered
the Defense Research and Development Organization the prospect of co-development.
While it is hoped that this gamble will pay off over time, the fact remains that the EL/M-
2052 is a developmental AESA radar that is not yet fielded on any combat aircraft, let alone
on Israel’s own fighters that are equipped largely, though not exclusively, with U.S. sensors
and weapons.
In comparison, the Israeli weapons suite intended for the Tejas offers more promising prospects.
The Derby active radar-guided air-to-air missile that will be the aircraft’s primary
beyond-visual-range weapon is excellent, with superb electronic protection features and a
range of pulse repetition frequencies that provide high accuracy in the intercept endgame.
But it is shorter-ranged than the comparable active missiles carried by Chinese fighters, the
Chinese PL-12, and by Pakistani fighters, the U.S. AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range
Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM). The versions already in Indian employ do not have a data
link, which presumably will be added as it is integrated with the Tejas’s EL/M-2052 radar.
These limitations will matter less in short-range engagements, but in the AWACS-supported
beyond-visual-range combat that will increasingly become the norm in southern Asia,
they could turn out to be costly. The Python 4 within-visual-range missile that the Tejas
is likely to carry, in contrast, outclasses anything India’s adversaries can bring to a close-in
fight, and the Israeli display and sight helmet (DASH) mounted sight will enable Indian pilots
to target adversaries in the beam or in other difficult geometries without having to pivot
the entire aircraft. Success in maneuvering combat, however—especially when it involves
multiple adversaries—is as much a product of comparative pilot proficiency and luck as it
is a function of technological superiority. The odds of success in this aerial combat regime,
therefore, will increase greatly if the Tejas is gradually armed with the even better Python
5, a weapon with significant range and countermeasure advantages over all the short-range
air-to-air missiles now carried by Chinese and Pakistani combatants.
Finally, the Tejas’s defensive avionics will need appropriate improvement if the aircraft is to
dominate the kind of combat to be expected in the future. The aircraft’s electronic warfare
suite has the four basic subsystems—a radar warning receiver, a missile approach warning
system, chaff and flares, and an automated countermeasures dispensing system—carried by
modern fighters, except for an onboard self-protection jammer. The solution now settled
upon seems to be a podded system, mostly likely the EL/L-8222, which is already carried
by several other IAF fighters. The EL/L-8222 is an excellent narrowband digital radio
frequency memory (DRFM) system. It is almost certainly superior to the Chinese KG300
DRFM-based jammer, which equips the JF-17; whether it surpasses the defensive avionics
system on the J-10 is unclear.
In any event, coping with Chinese airborne electronic warfare capabilities will be the test
facing the EL/L-8222, because although Pakistani capabilities are modest, the equivalent
Chinese threat is not. China’s airborne electronic warfare investments are enormous, with
diverse and often high-powered systems equipping fighter aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles,
and dedicated standoff jammer aircraft; they have also historically profited immensely
from both Russian and Israeli technology. A key component of Tejas modernization will,
therefore, have to include focused investments in upgrading its electronic warfare suites
to keep up with the Chinese fighters and combat support aircraft it is likely to encounter.
The critical issue here, however, is not simply improving specific components such as the radar
warning receiver or the missile approach warning systems or the self-protection jammer.
More important, the entire defensive avionics suite needs to be sufficiently integrated with the
new EL/M-2052 AESA radar to enable those jam-and-search, jam and-track, & jam-and-shoot
capabilities that would give it the upper hand in the face of its other maneuvering and energy state
deficiencies in air combat.
All this adds up to the sobering conclusion
that the Tejas has potential but that it is a
mixed bag. Accordingly, the Indian government
should be cautious about pushing
ahead with plans to acquire more than the six squadrons currently authorized until the
shortcomings of the aircraft as an aerodynamic platform and as a combat system are satisfactorily
addressed. Of those two deficiencies, the combat system may be easier to fix: the
IAF at least has the option of selecting the SABR or the RACR at some future point if the
EL/M-2052 does not deliver according to expectations, and the U.S. government has released
the AMRAAM for integration with the Tejas if India seeks to acquire this weapon in
addition to the Derby. Such a shift, however, is likely to be both time-consuming and costly,
and so one can only hope that the contemplated Israeli systems work as advertised. The
integration of any sophisticated AESA radar would transform the Tejas into at least a useful
standoff air intercept platform, especially when operating over Indian territory or above the
interstitial battlefields in southern Asia. Even with improvements, however, it is unlikely to
ever become a sophisticated air superiority fighter capable of operating in depth or successfully
against high-end opponents. But if its problems can be sufficiently corrected to allow
its acquisition in larger numbers—say, twelve squadrons, a prospect with which the IAF is
extremely uncomfortable, and for good reason—the shortcomings in the IAF’s lightweight
fighter force could arguably be mitigated, albeit with a compromise in capabilities in regard
to the all-weather point air defense and strike missions.
Serious problems would arise, however, if efforts to improve the Tejas fail to yield a satisfactory
outcome, because that would leave the service with a huge gap at the low end of
the force, given the hopes that this aircraft could still come to serve as the IAF’s principal
short-range air defense fighter and the backbone of its light multirole component. In such
circumstances, the IAF would be compelled to consider further expanding the medium (30
tons or less) and heavyweight (40 tons or less) segments of the combat aircraft inventory.
Such an outcome would bring considerable increases in war fighting capability, but at much
higher costs at exactly the time when the service is struggling to find the resources to fund
its medium-weight aircraft requirements as well as its future heavy acquisitions.
Author: Ashley J. Tellis
Source Article: TROUBLES, THEY COME IN BATTALIONS
Subject/About: The Manifold Travails of the Indian Air Force
© 2016 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
