AMCA - Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (HAL)

[Hydra3]

Then what we will do with 110KN kaveri??
I think if we are able to develop aircraft with our indigenous engine then it will be a huge boost for our capabilities. It's very important for india to attain self dependability. A medium weight AMCA with a total of 220KN will be able to do super cruising.

Kaveri, where is it? I didn't see any working kaveri engine. What we have is an under coocked engine named kaveri.

 

[Hydra3]

Then what we will do with 110KN kaveri??
I think if we are able to develop aircraft with our indigenous engine then it will be a huge boost for our capabilities. It's very important for india to attain self dependability. A medium weight AMCA with a total of 220KN will be able to do super cruising.

And what if the lightest stealth fighter program in world today fall short of range and oay load.

 

[Hydra3]

1) Ask them to consider more powerful engine than GE f414, we all know what happened with tejas & f404. IAF was not happy with its under powered engine and ada forced to come up with mk2 idea .
We can choose f15's engine. I know that amca is designed around twin f414 engine and re designing works with big PWf100-229 is required. Why I want big & powerful engine is fore fe reasons
a) AMCA is a stealth fighter, with stealth coatings & advanced electronic equipments the effective usable load will not be sufficient in 2030 beyond, the time frame in which most of our medium class fighters will be retired.
B) if we are using 130kn engines, we can go for square type 2D tgrust vectoring nozzles, since box type nozzles come up with penalty od 2-3% reduction in thrust. That reduction can be cope up with higher thrust engine. Box type 2D thrust vectoring nozzle will enhance the rear stealthiness and IAF gonna ask all around stealth in future.
C) AMCA is the lightest stealth aircraft program now, we made that foolish decision in past by designing the lightest single engine aircraft.
D)Turkey is designing a stealth aircraft with PWf100-229 engines, i see a huge possibility that it may endup with PAF. Pakistan is preferring turkish equipments over chinese these days.

2) We need to start from the day 1 onwards for an EW attack version of AMCA along with regular EW suited AMCA, something like Growler. No gen5 aircraft will be able to jam AESA radar of another fighter. We need a growler type aircraft.

3) The internal weapon bay should spacious enough to accommodate missile like NSM, Scalp.

@Assassin 2.0 pls go through the points i raised, i have explained it with my logical thinking.

 

[Assassin 2.0]

Kaveri, where is it? I didn't see any working kaveri engine. What we have is an under coocked engine named kaveri.

Brother money and development towards kaveri is happening we have 10-15 years to develop that engine actually you should visit kaveri engine thread their i have posted that government have allotted 1068.69Cr to perfect non after burner variant UF20. DRDO chief himself said that work on kaveri is going on and IAF is willing to induct Amca because DRDO is fully confident that they will be able to develop 110KN jet engine. That's the reason why we are going with GE-414.

And what if the lightest stealth fighter program in world today fall short of range and oay load.

With 220KN thrust i don't think that will happen with GE-414 their will be limitations but not with Kaveri medium weight Amca will be able to do super cruising.

 

[Assassin 2.0]

@Assassin 2.0 pls go through the points i raised, i have explained it with my logical thinking.

Yes i have read that.
I have posted my point of view.

 

[Hydra3]

Brother money and development towards kaveri is happening we have 10-15 years to develop that engine actually you should visit kaveri engine thread their i have posted that government have allotted 1068.69Cr to perfect non after burner variant UF20. DRDO chief himself said that work on kaveri is going on and IAF is willing to induct Amca because DRDO is fully confident that they will be able to develop 110KN jet engine. That's the reason why we are going with GE-414.

With 220KN thrust i don't think that will happen with GE-414 their will be limitations but not with Kaveri medium weight Amca will be able to do super cruising.

Man, how much will be the weight of amca's RAM? The extra ew, eodas? Adding all these, i dont think that amca will have much useful range-payload!

 

[Hydra3]

Anyway its my opinion, the topbrass of IAF DRDo duo might have considered all these.

 

[Alfalfa]

Hi Guys,
Need some suggestions from all the gyaani folks here @abingdonboy , @porky_kicker to name a few...
A serving friend of mine is presenting to the IAF top brass during the upcoming commanders conference on the AMCA project - The topic is losely titled "IAF and AMCA - Opportunities and Challenges" to cut it short, they don't want to repeat the mistakes made with the Tejas project on this one. So are seeking suggestions from middle ranking officers on what they can do to meet the prospective timelines and how the IAF can be actively involved in the project. I gave some superfluous ideas:
1) Engine fix kar do (Two of the F404, F414 in tandem), don't wait up on GTRE
2) Weapons config clear kar do ... the ASRAAM/ Astra etc, so weapons bays don't turn out shorter than needed
3) Get the test flyers like Harsh Vardhan Thakur etc. involved early on

But I know far lesser than a lot of folks here, any pointers would help... I assure you this isn't some academic exercise... the audience would be the IAF top brass. So please help??

Much appreciated.

On another note, love the stringent moderation now, DFI mods keep up the good show.

@Assassin 2.0 if you could reply to my post and tag other folks here like @Kuntal etc. I'd be thankful

 

[Ajax01]

And what if the lightest stealth fighter program in world today fall short of range and oay load.

The DDR article is pretty good . I think you should give it a read.

 

[Assassin 2.0]

@Assassin 2.0 if you could reply to my post and tag other folks here like @Kuntal etc. I'd be thankful

I don't i have technical knowledge to pass any comments on technical front.
But i just want to say that they should be totally involved in every part of the project so that issues like design changes and other BS doesn't come later on.
I just want them to be supportive confident and treat AMCA like their own baby instead of treating it like a adopted one.

 

[no smoking]

Anyway its my opinion, the topbrass of IAF DRDo duo might have considered all these.

Yes, they might have consider all of these, but they have a very good tradition - being overoptimistic.

Last time I check, the Kaveri only went through 1300 hours testing (normal testing hours of a new engine is over 20,000 hours before put in service: i.e. M88-2 alone had 16,400h before fully operational, if you add the test hours of M88, the total could be close to 30,000). And it failed to meet the original targets (thrust & weight), not to mention the operating time, etc. Based on other countries experiences, it is a 10-15 years gap between Kaveri's current status and success (assuming the no change of parameters).

Now, DRDO not only wants to finish Kaveri in 10-15 years, but also push the thrust from less than 81kn to 110kn in the meantime. It will be an absolute miracle if they manage to do that.

 

[asianobserve]

One thing I have observe from how Americans develop new fighters, they start development of new engine/s (by asking private engine makers to come up with new engine designs) even before the specs of the new fighter is finalized. Then with the next gen engine available the USAF development team will start crafting final specs for new fighter.

Essentially, they build their new fighters around next gen engines. So AMCA should first develop or identify new engine before finalizing fighter design specs.

 

[Indx TechStyle]

The thread isn't about Chinese aerospace industry. Mention of a few fighters for comparison with AMCA is fine. But making Chinese aerospace industry a topic of debate here will attract a topic ban.

Regards

 

[Steven Rogers]

1) Ask them to consider more powerful engine than GE f414, we all know what happened with tejas & f404. IAF was not happy with its under powered engine and ada forced to come up with mk2 idea .
We can choose f15's engine. I know that amca is designed around twin f414 engine and re designing works with big PWf100-229 is required. Why I want big & powerful engine is fore fe reasons
a) AMCA is a stealth fighter, with stealth coatings & advanced electronic equipments the effective usable load will not be sufficient in 2030 beyond, the time frame in which most of our medium class fighters will be retired.
B) if we are using 130kn engines, we can go for square type 2D tgrust vectoring nozzles, since box type nozzles come up with penalty od 2-3% reduction in thrust. That reduction can be cope up with higher thrust engine. Box type 2D thrust vectoring nozzle will enhance the rear stealthiness and IAF gonna ask all around stealth in future.
C) AMCA is the lightest stealth aircraft program now, we made that foolish decision in past by designing the lightest single engine aircraft.
D)Turkey is designing a stealth aircraft with PWf100-229 engines, i see a huge possibility that it may endup with PAF. Pakistan is preferring turkish equipments over chinese these days.

2) We need to start from the day 1 onwards for an EW attack version of AMCA along with regular EW suited AMCA, something like Growler. No gen5 aircraft will be able to jam AESA radar of another fighter. We need a growler type aircraft.

3) The internal weapon bay should spacious enough to accommodate missile like NSM, Scalp.

a) Overexagerated point....F404 on TD was a 75kN class engine,today LCA flies with 84kN class,IAF problem lied in the QR which STATED over the top requirement,if you read earlier Mk2 requirement,it required the higher trust to achieve the STR and other QRs mk1 missed,STR of 18 degree which even mirage 2000 could achieve continuously. F15 type engine is not required at all,unless you wanna make your aircraft intentionally heavy and uselessly powerful which only wastes fuel in the real life performance....F35(13tons airforce variant and 15tons marine variant) is currently the only aircraft in the AMCA category and it flies with a 175-180Kn engine with a future option of 210kN upgrade if required,eurofighter typhoon flies with 2*90kN engines,that doesn't stop them to achieve their performance parameters,while the AMCA mk1 from day one wil fly with 100*2kN thrust class,and future with 110*2kN ,in either it will supercruise,in the first one it will do something like Rafale while the 2nd one ,it will cruise according to the requirement...130kN thrust engine is Overexageratied and is not required even if AMCA shoots 1 ton that the required(11-12tons).
B. most people talk about the miniaturisation of today's bombs to fit in the future delivery stealth platform...it's a continuous process,not everything can fit even in the largest bay of a fighter aircraft....
C. Aircraft is designed based on requirement,how many you think turkey,Japan and Europeans will buy their heavy weight fighters if they develop them someday barely in numbers,we have a different requirement which requires number of aircraft over the hour on air,we have more dense bases in number to field aircrafts,stay assured,AMCA will be fit most of the weapons in its bay asthe physical width and length will be bigger than the f35...
D. Turkish requirement is of a heavy weight fighter,the length of their fighter will be around 21 meters,ie larger than J20 and F22 and don't remember about the width but it is also larger than the mentioned,they aren't building a medium category fighter in the first place....
2. Its hard to jam aesa radar,you need a powerful processing unit to do so,rest assured the aesa frequency can be filtered so they can also be jammed ...
3. They will...

 

[Steven Rogers]

One thing I have observe from how Americans develop new fighters, they start development of new engine/s (by asking private engine makers to come up with new engine designs) even before the specs of the new fighter is finalized. Then with the next gen engine available the USAF development team will start crafting final specs for new fighter.

Essentially, they build their new fighters around next gen engines. So AMCA should first develop or identify new engine before finalizing fighter design specs.

Because they have made everything first in the aerospace ,for others requirements are available to adapt, americans already exporting quality engines to begin with,so most of the other countries are developing their aircraft around available American engine.

 

[asianobserve]

Because they have made everything first in the aerospace ,for others requirements are available to adapt, americans already exporting quality engines to begin with,so most of the other countries are developing their aircraft around available American engine.

It seems India has 3 options when it comes to fighter engine:

1. Indigenous - this process will take a long time with no certainty of achieving a reliable engine;
2. Hybrid approach - partly developed from non-Indian engines. This is faster than the first option but with some resteictions; and,
3. Off-shelf engine - buying from other countries' existing engines, the fastestboption but one which comes with most restrictions and least indigenous development experience.

But the point is India must first choose an engine option and come up with an engine and develop fighter design around it.

 

[Steven Rogers]

It seems India has 3 options when it comes to fighter engine:

1. Indigenous - this process will take a long time with no certainty of achieving a reliable engine;
2. Hybrid approach - partly developed from non-Indian engines. This is faster than the first option but with some resteictions; and,
3. Off-shelf engine - buying from other countries' existing engines, the fastestboption but one which comes with most restrictions and least indigenous development experience.

But the point is India must first choose an engine option and come up with an engine and develop fighter design around it.

F414INS6 is already chosen for mk1.....new engine is in the limbo and after the chinese virus,the development will further delay ...

 

[SavageKing456]

Looks a good discussion over here
Whatsup guys I am new here and a defence lover too
This is gonna be interesting

 

[IndianHawk]

It seems India has 3 options when it comes to fighter engine:

1. Indigenous - this process will take a long time with no certainty of achieving a reliable engine;
2. Hybrid approach - partly developed from non-Indian engines. This is faster than the first option but with some resteictions; and,
3. Off-shelf engine - buying from other countries' existing engines, the fastestboption but one which comes with most restrictions and least indigenous development experience.

But the point is India must first choose an engine option and come up with an engine and develop fighter design around it.

We are already going with 2 of the options together. Kaveri work is continuing . In form of k9 and k10 indigenous engine.
Meanwhile off shelf engine are coming as f404 and f414.

France has proposed the option of hybrid engine too. That may be included depending upon what USA offers in future and where does development of k9 /k10 reaches .

 

[IndianHawk]

Yes, they might have consider all of these, but they have a very good tradition - being overoptimistic.

Last time I check, the Kaveri only went through 1300 hours testing (normal testing hours of a new engine is over 20,000 hours before put in service: i.e. M88-2 alone had 16,400h before fully operational, if you add the test hours of M88, the total could be close to 30,000). And it failed to meet the original targets (thrust & weight), not to mention the operating time, etc. Based on other countries experiences, it is a 10-15 years gap between Kaveri's current status and success (assuming the no change of parameters).

Now, DRDO not only wants to finish Kaveri in 10-15 years, but also push the thrust from less than 81kn to 110kn in the meantime. It will be an absolute miracle if they manage to do that.

Again you are back with half assed analysis .
Kaveri core is successful. The problem is in afterburner integration and overall sustained performance.

It is core which will be improved for more thrust which is well within the capability of gtre.

So they are too parallel programs for next 10-15 years. 1 improve core to higher thrust.
2. Solve afterburner and integration issues. And testing.

Both can run parallel .
dry kaveri is already scheduled to go into aura ucav which is indication of it's maturity. In wet thrust it's falling short of gef404 IN. Which has to be solved which is ongoing process.