ADA Tejas Mark-II/Medium Weight Fighter

[IndianHawk]

Can the revived kaveri engine power LCA mk2?

Ideally yes.
Some small changes in engine bay may be required. But design will incorporate such a flexibility.

 

[airtel]

DARE-developed EW Pod

Uttam AESA

http://trishul-trident.blogspot.in/

Uttam AESA , DRDO ew pod , and Kaveri engine . By 2020 we might have an fully indegenious LCA.

at present Indian technology is one generation behind Western countries ...........................this is the reason LCA will use foreign components ..................fully indigenous LCA by 2020 is not Possible , this is the reason of that tender of Radar & EW suite .

 

[airtel]

==============================================

 

[Kunal Biswas]

Uttam AESA is ready for flight trials.

@Twinblade

 

[IndianHawk]

at present Indian technology is one generation behind Western countries ...........................this is the reason LCA will use foreign components ..................fully indigenous LCA by 2020 is not Possible , this is the reason of that tender of Radar & EW suite .

I agree . But being on the cusp of Independence gives us leverage in terms of TOT it also makes us sanction prone.

 

[Kunal Biswas]

The reason is the system are still in developing phase not because they are generation ahead or behind but, MK1 comes with its own EW suit so does MIG-21 upgraded by HAL, MK2 & MK1P EW is around their AESA radars ..

The term 'generation' is invented by American Lockheed and Boeing companies to educated general mass, Not for people who understand defense aerospace ..

at present Indian technology is one generation behind Western countries ...........................this is the reason LCA will use foreign components ..................fully indigenous LCA by 2020 is not Possible , this is the reason of that tender of Radar & EW suite .

I agree . But being on the cusp of Independence gives us leverage in terms of TOT it also makes us sanction prone.

 

[Prayash]

GE F414 delivered for LCA MK2

 

[Prayash]

http://idrw.org/new-naval-lca-mark-2-by-2020-drdo/
Tejas mark 2 is likely to fly by the end of decade

 

[Prashant12]

Uttam AESA-MMR.

DARE-developed internal ASPJs for LCA Mk.2

http://trishul-trident.blogspot.in/

 

[HariPrasad-1]

Is Range, Combat Range, Ferry Range and Combat Radius of Tejas mk-1A is better than mk-1 or same? If better, please provide above 4 datas of both aircrafts.

Definitely better because of following reasons.
1) Canopy is proposed to be elevated and this will allow 60 KG more fuel to be accommodated.
2) There shall be a weight reduction in range of 250 to 750 KG. So range should improve.
3) There will be aerodynamic improvement by some 8%. This should improve the range.

 

[Abhishek Shrivastava]

Uttam AESA is ready for flight trials.

@Twinblade

Can we compare ELTA ELM-2052 with Uttam.

 

[lcafanboy]

Despite US Sanctions, This Aerospace Engineer from Odisha Gave India Its First LCA – Tejas

In December 2000, a US magazine carried a report which said that India would never be able to fly its own Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) due to the complexity of the technology needed and the US sanctions. On January 4, 2001, a determined team headed by Dr. Kota Harinarayana successfully tested the first flight of their LCA Technology Demonstrator. The then-Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee named the aircraft ‘Tejas’ which translates to radiance in Sanskrit.

This is the the story of how an aerospace engineer from Odisha developed India’s first homegrown LCA against heavy odds.

Dr. Kota Harinarayan



In the early 80s, the country’s political leadership realised the need of an indigenous aircraft to replace the ageing MiG fleet. The ‘Long Term Re-Equipment Plan 1981’ cited that by the mid-1990s, these aircraft would reach “the end of their service lives”. This, in turn, would lead to a 40 per cent shortfall of such combat jets in the Indian Air Force.

In this light, the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) programme was launched in the 1980s. It had two primary purposes: one was the replacement of the MiG-21s, and the other was to boost the advancement of India’s domestic aviation capabilities. Back then, no single organisation had the capability to develop such an aircraft by itself. The makers of the last indigenous fighter jet, the HF 24 in 1961, had shut shop. Hence, the only way for the LCA programme to succeed was to start from scratch.
In 1984, the government appointed the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) to handle the LCA programme along with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) and other institutions. At that time, V.S. Arunachalam was the scientific adviser to the defence minister. A former scientist at Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO), he in turn chose a young design engineer from Odisha as the director of India’s fledgling indigenous aircraft programme.


Born at Badabazar in Berhampur district of Odisha in 1943, Kota Harinarayan completed his school education from City High School before cracking both engineering and medical entrance exams. He chose to pursue engineering and obtained a degree in mechanical engineering from Banaras Hindu University.
Attracted towards a career in aerospace from a young age, he followed this by joining the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru for a course in aerospace engineering. Later, he joined Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) in Bangalore, India’s largest plane-maker, as a design engineer.

Also Read: A 40-year-old Pilot Assembled This Aircraft all By Himself – on the Terrace of His House

In 1982, Harinarayan was working as the chief designer at HAL’s Nasik division when he was selected by Arunachalam as the Director of DRDO’s Aeronautical Development Agency. At that time, there simply wasn’t enough aeronautical talent in DRDO. True, HAL had built a fighter aircraft called the Marut in 1961 but it was designed by a German team (it remained in service till 1990).

So, his first step was to bring together the country’s best talent in the field of aerospace engineering. For this purpose, he recruited engineers, scientists and professionals from twenty educational institutions like the IITs and forty Research and Development (R&D) laboratories like HAL and CSIR. In a year, ADA had a team of about 400 engineers and scientists.

ADA’s talented team.

Photo Source
Now the team was in place but another problem cropped up — it did not have the right computer for designing. So Rajiv Gandhi, then prime minister, stepped in. During his visit to the United States soon after, he convinced President Ronald Reagan to give the IBM 390 computer for the design work of the Tejas.

ADA next bought CATIA (computer-aided three-dimensional interactive application), the computer-aided design software developed by Dassault, in the early ’90s. However, when ADA started its work, it had tough time buying electronic components since several embargoes and sanctions had been imposed on India by Western nations in reaction to the Pokhran tests.

This, however, made the team more determined to accomplish their difficult task of designing each element of the design, each raw material for the plane, from scratch.

Tejas in progress.

Photo Source
Since the Tejas was meant to be a light aircraft, the designers had to use carbon composite materials which were still under development. Not having the software for designing and analysing composite materials, ADA developed one for itself, which it later marketed extensively — Airbus was a customer, buying it for the A380 and other aircrafts!

A model of Tejas at Aero Show India 2017.

The next step was to identify companies that could produce the components. Furth India, a small Nagpur company, produced the steel while another small outfit in Kanpur made rubber seals used to close the fuel tank. Gradually, ADA developed all the electrical components that were earlier imported and helped local companies manufacture them. To make the production commercially viable, the rights to the intellectual property were handed over to the companies.

For the design, the team chose a compound tail-less delta wing configuration, different from other aircrafts of this class. Advanced features like Relaxed Static Stability were added to enhance manoeuvrability. Cutting-edge digital technology was used to design the cockpit’s system, the utility system and the weapon management system. All these core technologies were designed, developed and built in India itself.

Tejas.

Photo Source
The Tejas project also became a cementing force between industry and research institutes. For example, instead of importing the multi-functional display for the cockpit, ADA approached Bharat Electronics to manufacture it. Though BEL was interested, it did not have adequate knowledge about the liquid crystal display (LCD) used in the product. So ADA asked the Raman Research Institute, one of the pioneers in liquid crystals, to help out.

In January 2001, the small tail-less delta wing prototype was finally completed and ready for testing. Wing commander Rajiv Kothiyal successfully flew the first flight of the prototype named Technology Demonstrator TD-1. It was a historic day – Indian skies were seeing an indigenous aircraft after almost 40 years.



From 2001 to 2009, Tejas improved itself gradually in its speed and target accuracy. It went through a lot of changes and updates both in technology and weapon systems. After several tests and multiple prototype vehicles making successful flights, the Tejas received its certification for release to service in 2011, 28 long years after its conception. On January 10, 2011, it was certified and cleared for combat service.

On January 21, 2016, Tejas participated for the first time in an International Air Show in Bahrain. Here, it won the admiration of aviation experts and visiting Air Force teams from across the world. By this time, it had flown 3061 sorties adding 1,954 flight hours without a single accident. A rare global achievement, this is a testament to the quality of the aircraft design and development.

Dr Kota Harinarayana at Aero Show India 2017.

On July 1, 2016, after waiting in the wing for over 15 years since its first flight, two Tejas fighters were finally inducted into IAF’s No. 45 Squadron, better known as Flying Daggers. Signalling the beginning of a new era in country’s military aviation, the squadron has been fine-tuning all aspects of flying, ground-handling and repair of their new fighter plane at their base in Bengaluru.

For the man who had seen the Tejas take flight from the drawing board into the skies, it was a moment of immense joy and pride. Kota Harinarayan’s dream of seeing the LCA being inducted into IAF had finally been fulfilled.



http://www.thebetterindia.com/87665/tejas-indigenous-light-combat-aircraft-kota-harinarayana-odisha/

 

[tejas warrior]

Apart from the LCA we hope to manufacture at least 1000 helicopters in the next 10 years, says HAL's T Suvarna Raju.

Check out informative LCA discussion in this video.

 

[lcafanboy]

REVEALED: The Indian LCA Navy’s Big Fight Back
Shiv AroorFeb 15 2017 6 24 pm

On Tuesday here at the Aero India show, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar added the latest in what has been a series of nails in the coffin of the troubled LCA Navy, the carrier version of India’s in-service LCA Tejas. By now, the LCA Navy team in Bengaluru had gotten round to the reality that a paper plane that began in 2003 wouldn’t ever be an operational jet with a customer. Parrikar cajoled the team separately, assuring them that the government had no plans to pull the plug, and that the good work the team at the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) had done for over a decade would not go to waste. But the reality wasn’t going anywhere. All that work on the LCA Navy Mk1 wouldn’t result in sales of the aircraft. It would be forever be a technology demonstrator.

The last six months have brought headwind way beyond what this little jet was built for. But beyond the claimed stoicism of continuing endlessly with a project nobody wants, there’s a reality that has gone unreported so far. A reality that provides the first solid glimmer for a project that’s as good as dead but for an honour lifeline from the Department of Defence Production. And here’s the thing: it isn’t pity at all. Livefist met with ADA chief Commodore C.D. Balaji for what he described shortly after as the frankest chat he’s had on the subject. And at the centre of the LCA Navy’s struggle for relevance is a solid kernel of hope.

The ADA has opened dialogue with the Indian Navy with the hope that its customer will come round to the view that the LCA Navy Mk.2 will be a sensible graduated step to the big twin engine jets it finally wants to operate. “The LCA Navy Mk.2 would be a great stepping stone,” Balaji tells Livefist. And he’s backing his pitch with a solid timeframe.

‘We’re aiming for a first fl

ight of the LCA Navy Mk.2 in late 2020 or early 2021. The detailed design will be complete by 2019. To save time, we’ve already ordered raw materials required,’ Balaji says. Two GE F414 engines — one for the AF prototype and one for the LCA Navy — arrived earlier this month, the first batch of eight engines contracted from GE for the Mk.2 programme. That the LCA Navy will be a more powerful combat jet is well known. What Livefist has now discovered from the team is that there are design and engineering improvements being effected on the LCA Navy Mk.2 that could prove deal-maker if they work out.

For starters, the team plans to move the wings outboard by about 350mm, increasing the space significantly between the fuselage and the wings. This would immediately optimise load transfer (the ADA has had weight issues with the landing gear) and free up the central fuselage for fuel. ‘We believe the change will free up space for up to 700 kg additional fuel, providing about 22 minutes of additional time on task,’ Balaji tells Livefist. That’s huge for the tactical envelope the LCA platform was developed for.

But there’s a great deal of work left on the LCA Navy Mk.1 before the Mk.2 can begin taking shape. In the immediate future this summer, the LCA Navy Mk.1 prototypes will begin ‘taxi i

n engagement’ drills, where the jets are throttled on ground into the arrester wire at Goa’s Shore Based Test Facility (SBTF) to exercise structural compatibility for a hook. The tests have been delayed three months thanks to a damper failure during field carrier landing practice (FCLP) dummy approaches last year.

‘Our focus with the Mk.1 is carrier suitability. We’ve got a good handle on carrier ops. Control laws have matured well, and sit right on top of our simulations. Deck recoveries are a different challenge and there are several lead-up activities planned,’ he says.

The ADA has built a new test rig to test horizontal and vertical loads during a deck recovery, including 7.1 m/s sink rate and the 45 ton load on an arrester wire. ‘Structurally, everything checks out,’ Balaji says, adding, ‘We are doing more dummy approaches to fine tune our control laws. Want to narrow everything down so we have very predictable landings.’

Balaji smiles when pushed on the question of the Mk.1 and whether they are hoping for anything to come of it. ‘Saab has a Sea Gripen concept. They are in the same stage we were at in 2003 when we decided to create a carrier-capable derivative of the LCA Tejas. We have proven many technologies. The LCA Navy Mk.2 will incorporate every lesson we could possibly have learnt,’ he says.

There’s activity on the radar front too. Balaji’s team will be freeing up LCA Tejas LSP-2 shortly for ground integration of India’s indigenous Uttam AESA radar. The ADA has asked the DRDO’s LRDE lab to keep the Uttam’s interfaces as similar as possible to the current Israeli Elta radar

. ‘It will be a challenge, moving from a mechanically scanned radar to the AESA without interface changes but that is the attempt, to save time and forestall any structural changes to the aircraft or sensor,’ says Balaji. Interestingly, since the LCA doesn’t have an integrated liquid cooling system necessary for an AESA radar, the team has suggested that a small auxiliary compartment that becomes redundant after the mechanical-to-AESA switch could be utilised to house a liquid cooling system.

A full scale model of the LCA Navy Mk.2 will be ready by early next year. Commodore Balaji and his team now hope their case will have a firm taker in the Indian Navy by then.

The LCA Tejas is also the target this year of a slew of offers for comprehensive sensor/weapons upgrades, with at least three big firms detailing their packages at this year’s Aero India show. While Livefist has reported on Saab’s offer before, this year Raytheon and Israel’s Rafael have drawn out their own. Here’s a look:

http://www.livefistdefence.com/2017/02/revealed-the-indian-lca-navys-big-fight-back.html

 

[tejas warrior]

Cross post from BR - shared by JayS based on his Aero-India visit (Thank you Sir)

Uttam AESA

 

[Prayash]

Despite US Sanctions, This Aerospace Engineer from Odisha Gave India Its First LCA – Tejas

In December 2000, a US magazine carried a report which said that India would never be able to fly its own Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) due to the complexity of the technology needed and the US sanctions. On January 4, 2001, a determined team headed by Dr. Kota Harinarayana successfully tested the first flight of their LCA Technology Demonstrator. The then-Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee named the aircraft ‘Tejas’ which translates to radiance in Sanskrit.

This is the the story of how an aerospace engineer from Odisha developed India’s first homegrown LCA against heavy odds.

Dr. Kota Harinarayan



In the early 80s, the country’s political leadership realised the need of an indigenous aircraft to replace the ageing MiG fleet. The ‘Long Term Re-Equipment Plan 1981’ cited that by the mid-1990s, these aircraft would reach “the end of their service lives”. This, in turn, would lead to a 40 per cent shortfall of such combat jets in the Indian Air Force.

In this light, the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) programme was launched in the 1980s. It had two primary purposes: one was the replacement of the MiG-21s, and the other was to boost the advancement of India’s domestic aviation capabilities. Back then, no single organisation had the capability to develop such an aircraft by itself. The makers of the last indigenous fighter jet, the HF 24 in 1961, had shut shop. Hence, the only way for the LCA programme to succeed was to start from scratch.
In 1984, the government appointed the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) to handle the LCA programme along with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) and other institutions. At that time, V.S. Arunachalam was the scientific adviser to the defence minister. A former scientist at Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO), he in turn chose a young design engineer from Odisha as the director of India’s fledgling indigenous aircraft programme.


Born at Badabazar in Berhampur district of Odisha in 1943, Kota Harinarayan completed his school education from City High School before cracking both engineering and medical entrance exams. He chose to pursue engineering and obtained a degree in mechanical engineering from Banaras Hindu University.
Attracted towards a career in aerospace from a young age, he followed this by joining the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru for a course in aerospace engineering. Later, he joined Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) in Bangalore, India’s largest plane-maker, as a design engineer.

Also Read: A 40-year-old Pilot Assembled This Aircraft all By Himself – on the Terrace of His House

In 1982, Harinarayan was working as the chief designer at HAL’s Nasik division when he was selected by Arunachalam as the Director of DRDO’s Aeronautical Development Agency. At that time, there simply wasn’t enough aeronautical talent in DRDO. True, HAL had built a fighter aircraft called the Marut in 1961 but it was designed by a German team (it remained in service till 1990).

So, his first step was to bring together the country’s best talent in the field of aerospace engineering. For this purpose, he recruited engineers, scientists and professionals from twenty educational institutions like the IITs and forty Research and Development (R&D) laboratories like HAL and CSIR. In a year, ADA had a team of about 400 engineers and scientists.

ADA’s talented team.

Photo Source
Now the team was in place but another problem cropped up — it did not have the right computer for designing. So Rajiv Gandhi, then prime minister, stepped in. During his visit to the United States soon after, he convinced President Ronald Reagan to give the IBM 390 computer for the design work of the Tejas.

ADA next bought CATIA (computer-aided three-dimensional interactive application), the computer-aided design software developed by Dassault, in the early ’90s. However, when ADA started its work, it had tough time buying electronic components since several embargoes and sanctions had been imposed on India by Western nations in reaction to the Pokhran tests.

This, however, made the team more determined to accomplish their difficult task of designing each element of the design, each raw material for the plane, from scratch.

Tejas in progress.

Photo Source
Since the Tejas was meant to be a light aircraft, the designers had to use carbon composite materials which were still under development. Not having the software for designing and analysing composite materials, ADA developed one for itself, which it later marketed extensively — Airbus was a customer, buying it for the A380 and other aircrafts!

A model of Tejas at Aero Show India 2017.

The next step was to identify companies that could produce the components. Furth India, a small Nagpur company, produced the steel while another small outfit in Kanpur made rubber seals used to close the fuel tank. Gradually, ADA developed all the electrical components that were earlier imported and helped local companies manufacture them. To make the production commercially viable, the rights to the intellectual property were handed over to the companies.

For the design, the team chose a compound tail-less delta wing configuration, different from other aircrafts of this class. Advanced features like Relaxed Static Stability were added to enhance manoeuvrability. Cutting-edge digital technology was used to design the cockpit’s system, the utility system and the weapon management system. All these core technologies were designed, developed and built in India itself.

Tejas.

Photo Source
The Tejas project also became a cementing force between industry and research institutes. For example, instead of importing the multi-functional display for the cockpit, ADA approached Bharat Electronics to manufacture it. Though BEL was interested, it did not have adequate knowledge about the liquid crystal display (LCD) used in the product. So ADA asked the Raman Research Institute, one of the pioneers in liquid crystals, to help out.

In January 2001, the small tail-less delta wing prototype was finally completed and ready for testing. Wing commander Rajiv Kothiyal successfully flew the first flight of the prototype named Technology Demonstrator TD-1. It was a historic day – Indian skies were seeing an indigenous aircraft after almost 40 years.



From 2001 to 2009, Tejas improved itself gradually in its speed and target accuracy. It went through a lot of changes and updates both in technology and weapon systems. After several tests and multiple prototype vehicles making successful flights, the Tejas received its certification for release to service in 2011, 28 long years after its conception. On January 10, 2011, it was certified and cleared for combat service.

On January 21, 2016, Tejas participated for the first time in an International Air Show in Bahrain. Here, it won the admiration of aviation experts and visiting Air Force teams from across the world. By this time, it had flown 3061 sorties adding 1,954 flight hours without a single accident. A rare global achievement, this is a testament to the quality of the aircraft design and development.

Dr Kota Harinarayana at Aero Show India 2017.

On July 1, 2016, after waiting in the wing for over 15 years since its first flight, two Tejas fighters were finally inducted into IAF’s No. 45 Squadron, better known as Flying Daggers. Signalling the beginning of a new era in country’s military aviation, the squadron has been fine-tuning all aspects of flying, ground-handling and repair of their new fighter plane at their base in Bengaluru.

For the man who had seen the Tejas take flight from the drawing board into the skies, it was a moment of immense joy and pride. Kota Harinarayan’s dream of seeing the LCA being inducted into IAF had finally been fulfilled.



http://www.thebetterindia.com/87665/tejas-indigenous-light-combat-aircraft-kota-harinarayana-odisha/

We odia people are very proud of you

 

[Abhi9]

...................................

 

[HariPrasad-1]

We odia people are very proud of you

Why Odia? We all are proud of him like we are very proud of shree kalam sir.

 

[kunal1123]

3:12 Commodore CD Balaji, Director:
We are moving the wing outwards by about 350 mm on either side (1.14ft on either side?)

We are stretching the fuselage by about 1 meter (it helps in creating space between fuselage and wing, where the landing gear can be easily retracted. We have a simpler lighter landing gear that can go in).

We are freeing up center fuselage space and allows extra fuel (700 kgs)

how much that change the performance in lca mk2 /nlca mk2 wit ge f414 higher thrust engine

 

[deepak ghanvatkar]

The Tragedy of Tejas
Posted on February 17, 2017by Bharat Karnad
The Government doesn’t see that the commercial bonanza for foreign countries is choking off funds for home-grown aircraft

——-DEPENDING ON WHAT’S involved, legacy can be a good thing or a bad thing. In the case of the Indian state, bureaucracy, and especially the military, legacy has proved a liability. The colonial system and approach were retained in every aspect of government for want of ready alternatives and the fear of disruption. It has particularly hurt the armed services because they have stayed stuck in time. Thus, the Army’s main force is arrayed northwestward, the Air Force thinks as a tactical regional adjunct of another out-of-area air force (with the Royal Air Force missing), and the Navy imitates the attitude and outlook of the US Navy, which replaced its British counterpart, replete with a tilt towards big ships at a time when supersonic and hypersonic cruise missiles and remote-controlled mini-submarines and attack boats are making them obsolete.


The three services also have in common the acute institutional hankering for Western military hardware, which was thwarted for 30 odd years (the mid-60s to mid-90s) by Cold War politics and the availability of Russian equipment in the Soviet era at ‘friendship prices’. Now that that constraint is lifted, they are reverting wherever possible to buying cost-prohibitive Western armaments with a vengeance, often at the expense of indigenously designed and developed weapon systems, such as the Arjun Main Battle Tank and Tejas Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), that have proved as good, when not better, than foreign items.

No, a kill order by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) for the LCA programme is not in the offing because it is advisable for the politician and the military brass to talk desi and not openly prefer firang (refer the glossy AeroIndia pullouts in newspapers). A high technology ‘prestige’ project capable of seeding a burgeoning aerospace sector in the country and imperilling imports will, however, be undermined on the sly, by restricting funds and the offtake of the indigenous on the plea that the monies are needed to finance imports of combat aircraft to meet immediate requirements, and by simultaneously diverting the attention, effort and resources of the LCA programme into the Mk-II version and the more ‘futuristic’, ‘super-stealthy’, Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft project. By insisting on stiff specifications and delivery deadlines, these programmes will be set up for eventual rejection. Meanwhile, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA)— the progenitors of the Tejas—will be thus kept occupied and out of the IAF’s hair, which will shield the service from unwanted political pressure to ‘buy Indian’ or to invest in the LCA. But we are getting ahead of the story.

The AeroIndia 2017 Air Show, that opened in Bengaluru on Valentine’s Day and ends on February 18th, features the foreign accomplices—the Swedish Saab Gripen E, the Super Hawk optimised for short-range air defence and touted in some quarters as the UK’s answer to the LCA, the French Rafale, and the American fighter planes, the Lockheed Martin ‘Block 70’ F-16 and the Boeing F-18E/F with the prospective payoffs overcoming the initial resistance from President Donald Trump. Except for the Super Hawk, these are all aircraft that had been entered in IAF’s Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft competition, won in 2012 by the Rafale. Except, new-generation warfare featuring drone-swarms and advanced air defence systems are expected to make manned fighter planes extinct.

But why the immense foreign interest? Firstly, because India is expected to buy 200-250 of the chosen plane with a full weapons suite and costing $250-$300 million each, for a total contract with only limited holdings of spares and service support of around $7.5 billion to $9 billion. Every supplier also promises to set up a modern global manufacturing and servicing hub for his aircraft and a technology innovation and industrial eco-system of small and medium scale enterprises (SMSEs) to generate employment, and, with full transfer of technology, a capacity locally to design and develop follow-on fighter aircraft. This will take many years to realise. So add another $3-4 billion to the bill for hub-development. After factoring in inflation and currency fluctuations, over the 30-40 year lifetime of the aircraft, the total take from this deal for a single-engined fighter for the winning foreign firm could be as much as $50 billion. To get perspective, this sum equals the cost of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor with networks of roads and power plants stretching from Baltistan to Gwadar, which will be that state’s infrastructure and economic backbone.

Secondly, India’s track record of squandering high-cost transferred technology by the Defence Public Sector Units (DPSUs) and ordnance factories, and their never venturing beyond licence manufacture (LM) entailing Meccano-level screwdriver technology, is well known. Thus, no technologies were ingested from the MiG-21, Jaguar, and Su-30MKI LM contracts nor any design bureaus for technology innovation created. The international arms peddlers are only too aware of this situation and of the likelihood that LM agreements will inevitably lead to cascading sales of tech upgrade packages and CKD (completely knocked down) and SKD (semi-knocked down) kits to assemble the aircraft with. For the foreign supplier, it is an endlessly profitable cycle ensuring that, in real terms, at least 80 per cent of the monetary value of the contract is returned to the home country, and the remaining treated as ‘offsets’ mandated by the Indian Government that have so far produced few real benefits.

Thirdly, just as India’s buy of the Hawk trainer rescued British Aerospace, and that of 36 Rafales—with possibly another 80-100 of these planes in the pipeline—has put the French Company Dassault in the clover, New Delhi’s purchase of the Gripen will throw a lifeline to the combat aviation industry in Sweden, and Lockheed’s worn-out F-16 assembly line in Fort Worth, Texas, instead of being discarded, will be sold to India to earn revenue. Too much is at stake for the foreign companies in the race not to over-promise and under-bid. The extent of under-bidding is evidenced in Dassault’s original price for 126 Rafales of around $12 billion that actually ended up fetching the IAF a mere 36 planes. The larger pattern that has emerged over the past many decades is for an apparently ‘very rich’ India to subsidise and sustain defence industries in seemingly ‘poor’ states—namely, the United States, Russia, France, United Kingdom, France, and Israel.

The Indian defence industry has ‘largely failed to produce competitive indigenously-designed weapons’, a view the Indian military endorses. But why is this so? Principally because the armed services obstruct indigenous arms projects from succeeding

US defence sources estimate India’s military procurement outlays in the next few decades to be of the order of $250 billion. If roughly 10 per cent of any contracted deal is the usual down payment—in the Rafale case, for instance, it amounts to Rs 9,700 crore—a staggering $25 billion will have to be shelled out before a single item turns up on Indian shores. One can see why India is the consumer of choice in the international arms market.

IT IS WORRISOME that the Government, trapped in its ‘Make in India’ rhetoric, doesn’t see that the commercial bonanza for foreign countries will choke off the funds necessary for the home-grown, and for investment to build a comprehensively capable defence industry in the country. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar appear not to have caught on to the fact that foreign arms suppliers are not in the business of making customers independent of them, but of bolting them down as dependents. Making the country a minor partner in the global supply chains of major transnational defence industrial corporations—the best that the present tilt of ‘Make in India’ policy can achieve—begs the question if this is all India should aspire to. And more, importantly, whether India will ever have the kind of financial cushion needed for $250 billion worth of military wherewithal, even as the tradeoffs between social welfare and developmental needs on the one hand and nation security demands on the other hand get starker. If such massive defence capital expenditure is somehow managed, whether frittering away the country’s wealth when it perpetuates only a hollow national security, is politically prudent. But there’s no gainsaying that it will firm up the country’s reputation as the largest arms importer in the world. India accounts for 14 per cent of the world’s arms imports, followed by China at 4.7 per cent (except China has compensated by increasing its arms exports 143 per cent in 2010-2015 to reach $1.6 billion). Put another way, over 2000-2015, India bought weapons valued at $120 billion: money that could have obtained for the country sizeable defence industrial infrastructure and skilled manpower instead of military hardware that can be ground to a stop anytime any of a host of suppliers decide for whatever reasons to withhold spares. So, not only is India’s security hostage to the interests of external players, but the country is paying exorbitantly for it too.

The reason adduced for this sorry state of affairs by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute is that the Indian defence industry has ‘largely failed to produce competitive indigenously- designed weapons’—a view the Indian military heartily endorses. But why is this so? Principally because the armed services obstruct indigenous arms projects from succeeding. The Tejas programme has progressed in fits and starts, and been delayed interminably, in the main, for two reasons. One, the Air Staff Requirements were changed numerous times on the plea of the IAF wanting an up-to-date plane. Thus, re-design and structural alterations became necessary, for example, when the IAF demanded installation of a refuelling probe after prototypes had already been built. It imposed significant time and cost penalties and hurt the delivery deadline. Two, the IAF insisted on a ‘finished product’ with all weapons trials and fitments completed and Initial Operational Clearance (IOC) and Final Operational Clearance (FOC) secured, before accepting it.

This is contrary to the procedure followed by all other major air forces. In the US, its newest joint strike fighter, the F-35, first entered squadron service with the US Air Force and the US Marines with technical refinements, structural modifications, and proper weapons and avionics integration being carried out on the basis of continuous feedback from frontline pilots after the plane’s induction. Some serious problems with the F-35, such as with the zero- zero ejection seat system, helmet-mounted sensors, avionics, and the F-135 power plant, are all being corrected even as the aircraft is flying around. This rigmarole is called ‘concurrency’, meaning induction and capability improvements happening simultaneously after the user-service has taken charge of the combat plane. In the case of the Tejas though, the onus is entirely on the development/ production unit to put in IAF’s hands a battle-ready fighter aircraft, inclusive of the promised weapons load. It reflects IAF’s reluctance to take ownership of the Tejas even after it has proved its druthers. The truly dastardly aspect is that the standard applied by the IAF to the LCA does not apply to imported aircraft. Thus, the Mirage 2000 inducted in 1985 flew unarmed for the next three years because the contracted weapons had not been delivered. It was political prompting alone that hastened the formation of the so-far-only-Tejas unit in the Air Force, the 45 Squadron with only a handful of LCAs, based in Sulur, Andhra Pradesh.

The other means adopted by IAF to undercut the Tejas programme is to order only a few aircraft at a time to deny the production units economies of scale. Thus, the official indent is just for 20 LCAs after IOC, and another 20 for post-FOC, with the possibility held out for 43 planes for a total strength of only 83 Tejas, when the actual requirement is for 200-250 single-engined combat aircraft of this type, which IAF proposes to meet by buying one of the foreign aircraft displayed at AeroIndia. This is because IAF doesn’t take pride in the LCA, or care to have it in its fleet, and also perhaps, because the Tejas programme offers no material inducements for persons in the procurement loop, such as endless trips to Paris, Stockholm, etcetera, what is risibly called ‘pocket money’, and so on. With the IAF variant of Tejas so stymied, its navalised version too will be emasculated, with the Indian Navy now joining the Air Force in opting for imported aircraft for its carriers—the navalised Rafale, Gripen, F-18, and the MiG-29K all seen at the Air Show.

Settling on licence manufacture of foreign planes serves yet another purpose. It preserves the monopoly of aircraft production for the highly inefficient DPSUs, like Hindustan Aerospace Ltd. DPSUs are controlled by the Department of Defence Production (DPP) in the MoD and is valuable turf that its bureaucrats are loath to lose, which can happen if, despite every obstacle, a project reaches the cusp of commercial success.

Tejas is a success if only it is given a chance. A 4.5-generation aircraft, like the Rafale, the LCA is far stealthier, more agile, and with a far bigger potential for growth as a versatile fighting platform. Significantly, it has clocked in excess of 3,000 flying hours without a single incident—a record unsurpassed by any combat aircraft under development anywhere, at any time. Its sleek looks and ease of handling, evident in the demonstration flights at the Bahrain Air Show last year, evinced praise from experts and enormous interest world-wide, with many countries inquiring about its availability. Naturally, fear has arisen in HAL and DPP/MoD circles that the Tejas may elicit commercial interest in the private sector, and private sector proposals for producing this aircraft for the IAF and for profit from exports, may follow. This would set a precedent of a DPSU being bypassed, of the technologies required to be transferred to a private sector consortium by the Aeronautical Development Agency and DRDO, and the diminishing of the stake and role of the public sector and DPP/MoD in the budding Indian defence industry of the future.

It is an end-state the IAF-DPP/MoD-DPSU complex will not abide, and what it doesn’t want, it will do away with. It has a stellar record of success in eliminating inconvenient indigenous conventional armaments projects that threaten its vested interests, usually by ‘throttling them in the cradle’. In the late-70s, the Mk-II version of the Marut HF-24 multi-role fighter was terminated by the Indira Gandhi regime siding with the IAF to buy the Jaguar low level strike aircraft. The original Marut was designed by one of the greatest designers of the World War II-era, Dr Kurt Tank of Focke-Wulfe fame, who was imaginatively brought in by Jawaharlal Nehru to design and produce the first supersonic fighter outside of the US and Europe. Tank had a prototype flying by 1961, inside of six years of his getting the commission.

Tank’s most gifted Indian protégé, Raj Mahindra, designed the Mk-II, which was eliminated by the Jaguar buy, whence began India’s rapid slide towards an all imported Air Force. If Mahindra’s Marut successor aircraft was killed by jhatka, the Tejas will be bled slowly, killed by the halaal method.

Some times I feel that Tejas Aircraft is treated like a step child. See the concessions we gave to russians to supply us SU-30 which was later replaced with SU-30MKI see the Bofors Gun which did not function in the initial field trial but be believed that Sweeden would make better gun and purchased it. How we treated Vikramaditya aircraft carrier's contract? What did we do for tejas? Went for MMRCA ? The problem is that there are some Air Martial Tyagi(Retd. & arrested) like officers who are more zealous to kill Indian projects and promote some foreign system, offcourse there are some Gaddar politicians who want it. But result is sadly like Marut.

when I read http://idrw.org/both-hal-rudra-and-light-combat-helicopters-are-toothless-indian-army-chief-rawat/ my heart saddens and I wonder if LCH may become a mis-carriage or aborted project. Tejas was once at such a stage but luckyly it survived....