AMCA - Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (HAL)

[Dark Sorrow]

India to get its own 5th Gen fighter! AMCA prototype to get approval next year

Prototype design for the twin engine AMCA is in the process of being finalized and is expected to be sent for approval to the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS).

The former air chief RKS Bhadauria had ruled out importing a fifth-generation aircraft in the near future and had stated that IAF will push for the indigenous AMCA.
Stage is getting ready for the launch of India’s own fifth generation stealth fighter aircraft — Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA). Prototype design for the twin engine AMCA is in the process of being finalized and is expected to be sent for approval to the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS). This will happen at the end of consultations between all the stakeholders including Indian Air Force (IAF), Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA), Ministry of Defence & Ministry of Finance.


The estimated cost of just developing the prototype of AMCA is pegged at Rs 15,000 crore and the rollout of the first prototype is scheduled for 2025-26.


The design and development of AMCA has been carried out by ADA for almost a decade and as reported in Financial Express Online earlier, ADA officials had indicated that the prototype of AMCA will be ready by 2025. However, the engine for AMCA has yet to be decided.

The former air chief RKS Bhadauria had ruled out importing a fifth-generation aircraft in the near future and had stated that IAF will push for the indigenous AMCA.

It has been reported earlier that the production of Mark-1 is expected to start by next decade and timelines set are aggressive, as the IAF is looking to induct the AMCA in its fleet soon. Most likely the IAF will be able to induct AMCA by 2035.

IAF’s Fleet & Modernisation

IAF, which is facing a critical shortage of fighters in its fleet (has around 32 fighter squadrons) has already announced its support for AMCA and has planned the modernization of its fleet accordingly.

Support from global aerospace companies

Aerospace giants including US based Lockheed Martin & Boeing Company; and Swedish Company SAAB have offered their expertise to India for the AMCA project.

More about AMCA

Sources have indicated that the first two squadrons of AMCA Mk-1 will be powered by GE-414 which is already being used in the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) `Tejas’.

The HAL CMD had indicated earlier this year on the sidelines of Aero-India 2021 that in collaboration with a foreign company work will start soon on a new engine.

The swing-role AMCA will come with advanced stealth features. There will be an internal bay for smart weapons.

It will have supercruise capability useful to attain supersonic cruise speeds without using afterburners and as data fusion and multi-sensor integration with Active Electronically Scanned Array radars.

India to get its own 5th Gen fighter! AMCA prototype to get approval next year

Prototype design for the twin engine AMCA is in the process of being finalized and is expected to be sent for approval to the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS).

www.financialexpress.com

 

[nixin]

Will AMCA MK1 have supercruise capability?

 

[FalconSlayers]

Will AMCA MK1 have supercruise capability?

Yes it will have

 

[ym888]

India to get its own 5th Gen fighter! AMCA prototype to get approval next year

Prototype design for the twin engine AMCA is in the process of being finalized and is expected to be sent for approval to the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS).


View attachment 121134

The former air chief RKS Bhadauria had ruled out importing a fifth-generation aircraft in the near future and had stated that IAF will push for the indigenous AMCA.
Stage is getting ready for the launch of India’s own fifth generation stealth fighter aircraft — Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA). Prototype design for the twin engine AMCA is in the process of being finalized and is expected to be sent for approval to the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS). This will happen at the end of consultations between all the stakeholders including Indian Air Force (IAF), Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA), Ministry of Defence & Ministry of Finance.


The estimated cost of just developing the prototype of AMCA is pegged at Rs 15,000 crore and the rollout of the first prototype is scheduled for 2025-26.


The design and development of AMCA has been carried out by ADA for almost a decade and as reported in Financial Express Online earlier, ADA officials had indicated that the prototype of AMCA will be ready by 2025. However, the engine for AMCA has yet to be decided.

The former air chief RKS Bhadauria had ruled out importing a fifth-generation aircraft in the near future and had stated that IAF will push for the indigenous AMCA.

It has been reported earlier that the production of Mark-1 is expected to start by next decade and timelines set are aggressive, as the IAF is looking to induct the AMCA in its fleet soon. Most likely the IAF will be able to induct AMCA by 2035.

IAF’s Fleet & Modernisation

IAF, which is facing a critical shortage of fighters in its fleet (has around 32 fighter squadrons) has already announced its support for AMCA and has planned the modernization of its fleet accordingly.

Support from global aerospace companies

Aerospace giants including US based Lockheed Martin & Boeing Company; and Swedish Company SAAB have offered their expertise to India for the AMCA project.

More about AMCA

Sources have indicated that the first two squadrons of AMCA Mk-1 will be powered by GE-414 which is already being used in the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) `Tejas’.

The HAL CMD had indicated earlier this year on the sidelines of Aero-India 2021 that in collaboration with a foreign company work will start soon on a new engine.

The swing-role AMCA will come with advanced stealth features. There will be an internal bay for smart weapons.

It will have supercruise capability useful to attain supersonic cruise speeds without using afterburners and as data fusion and multi-sensor integration with Active Electronically Scanned Array radars.

India to get its own 5th Gen fighter! AMCA prototype to get approval next year

Prototype design for the twin engine AMCA is in the process of being finalized and is expected to be sent for approval to the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS).

www.financialexpress.com

2035， is too slow.

By then it will be the age of the sixth generation fighter.


AMCA should be in service by 2030

 

[IndianHawk]

2035， is too slow.

By then it will be the age of the sixth generation fighter.


AMCA should be in service by 2030

First 5th gen jet flew in 1997. Yet even today only America has a battle ready numbers of 5th gen jets and f35 doesn't even has foc.

6th gen jets won't be in service before 2050 in any meaningful numbers.

 

[Kalkioftoday]

Will AMCA MK1 have supercruise capability?

Gripen with F414 can supercruise. I think AMCA will also be able to do that with certain amount of payload in certain altitude

 

[Spitfire9]

Found a video covering the RR and SAFRAN offers. It reports that both offers price development cost in the order of US$6 billion.

 

[srevster]

First 5th gen jet flew in 1997. Yet even today only America has a battle ready numbers of 5th gen jets and f35 doesn't even has foc.

6th gen jets won't be in service before 2050 in any meaningful numbers.

Simulations, 3D printing and physics engines will reduce the cycles going forward.

 

[IndianHawk]

Simulations, 3D printing and physics engines will reduce the cycles going forward.

It had to with costs mostly. F22 was 200 million plus for each jet. F35 initial batches were approx 150 million.
Russia has build just 2 su57 presumably because of cost . On top of that operational and maintenance costs are much much higher compared to 4th gen jets.

Due to deterioration of ram coatings maintenance is a nightmare and time consuming means less availablity rate .

Plus long range strike weapons if carried make stealth of jet irrelevant.

6th gen will too face many many new challenges. Initial batch of 6th gen planes may cost upwards 300 million a jet.

 

[Spitfire9]

It had to with costs mostly. F22 was 200 million plus for each jet. F35 initial batches were approx 150 million.

As I remember it the UK paid $250 million each for its first 2 F-35 jets.

 

[Marliii]

Coooool

 

[THESIS THORON]

Coooool

we are also making meta materail ram coating for AMCA ??

 

[ersakthivel]

AFAIK you can buy standard FBW wire enabled mission computer and avionics from off the shelf market.
They can use these off the shelf hardware then the only part pending is their interfacing (for which these companies provide design services) and implementation of FBW software which is also available off the shelf. Optimizing with respect to aircraft's aerodynamics is done by they company providing FBW software or their design partners.

Turks will not disclose what and how much work has been outsourced to third party contractors. By import what I mean is that Turks will outsource a part of work to European design house (most probably German). In EU their a lot of specialized design houses some as small as 1 man team to team comprising of 1000s of individuals; these design houses do R&D and give you the product or technology with or without IP rights depending on the deal. They might even assist with production. (kindly note in other EU countries such design houses might also be available).
Why they are handing out ambitious timelines? Don't know. May be they thought it was doable or propaganda or etc. take your pick.

No one is comparing Turkish fighter to AMCA, both are independent aircraft. Lets see how things pan out for both these aircraft.

I wold like to know who is selling ,standard fly by wire enabled mission computer off the shelf,

IMHO mission computer is a just a tiny bit(like a switch) of the control laws based fly by wire tech.

In 1980s even the french were were developing 3 channel digital and one channel analog hybrid fly by wire tech fr their rafale, and offered the same to tejas , but this was rejected in favour of US offer of 4 channel all digital fly by wire tech by india.

The tejas legend philip rajkumar himself says this decision delayed tejas by at least a decade, He explains it in his own words below,

just update yourself on the torturous path that tejas took in the quest for cutting edge 4channel fly by wire RSS tech that no one had at that time,

Book excerpt: In The Tejas Story, a retired air marshal chronicles his experiences of test flying the LCA jets

The story that comes to life through his book is that of his team of pilots and of the LCA programme itself, how it was commissioned, the challenges in the development phase and the pressure of realising the dream of domestically developing a fighter plane.

www.firstpost.com

"
. Air Marshal Philip Rajkumar in his book stated

"The software in the DFCC is broadly divided into 2 parts.

The first part is the CLAW which decides how much the control surfaces should move depending on the flight conditions.

From a mathematical flight model of the aircraft based on wind tunnel and CFD data, control engineers calculate the amount of control deflection required to control the aircraft at various points in the flight envelope, and create a big look up table which is stored in the computer memory.

The flight conditions are sensed by the air data probes on the aircraft and passed on to the computer. The computer accesses the look up table in real time and decides the amount of control deflections required.

Each computational frame lasts 12.5 milliseconds or in other words, is repeated 80 times per second, but the actual movement of the control surface takes place about twice per second."

Above from Air marshal philip Rajkumar book,


"
I think the part about it being instantaneous, random and time dependent went past you. I tried getting you to think how it could be done if instead of elevon deflections you put gas jets instead. Let me try something simpler.

I assume you know how to ride a bicycle . A bicycle, just like the LCA is a statically unstable system,but dynamically stable system. At low speeds (higher speeds, it is stabilized by gyroscopic effects of the spinning wheels) how you stabilize the bike is that you lean your body left and right and turn the handle bars (steering angle) and ride in a stable upright position in a straight line!.

Now in a bicycle, how many times a second do you lean your body and turn the handle bars when riding in a straight line, even in a pretty bumpy and rough roads like in India?. After all, every single undulation should see you come crashing down . So why is it that you dont lean your body and turn handle multiple times a second (is it even possible for a human to do it if that is what is required?) . Ponder over this. If you can answer this question, you have found the answer for the LCA .

(hint, response time of the bike to an undulation is x sec and if your control response aka YOU can apply minor correction within x sec you are stable.. larger a bump, larger the response. and once you turn the handle, it comes back to straight ahead position , unless you want to keep turning, in which case, you simple turn handle back and forth around turn angle . In LCA, computer is equivalent to YOU on bike and elevons are equivalent of you leaning left and right and steering the handle) "

Some simple explanation of fly by ire nuances by Vina in BR.

LCA news and discussion - Page 68 - Bharat Rakshak

All this complexity comes from the fact that tejas is a relaxed static stability fighter,i.e it will veer offcourse an fall off the sky , if its actuators like elevons are not corrected many times in a second. A pilot cant do it, its done by hundreds of thousands of lines of software written by professionals ,

And this had been tested to death by Iorn Bird test rig in HAL fr years , with codes controlling deflectors proving the veracity of the control laws.

So engineers hv to write vast amount of programs fr so many operation per second, , because it is their coding which flies the plane, not the actual control input by the pilot when pulls the stick.

remember this software is specific to this fighter.

AMCA is a new fighter and needs to do the same process all over again, but tejas experience vastly cuts the time needed as it has produced people like deodhar, who now head the AMCA effort.


If you get a copy of the article below, You can read more, (I dont hv one)


"DESIGN, DEVELOPMENT AND FLIGHT TESTING OF CONTROL LAWS FOR THE INDIAN LIGHT COMBAT AIRCRAFT"
by Shyam Chetty, Flight Mechanics and Control Division, National Aerospace Laboratories, Bangalore 560 017,
Girish Deodhare, Centre for A. I. & Robotics, Raj Bhavan Circle, Bangalore 560 001, INDIA
and B.B. Misra, Former Research Test Pilot, Aeronautical Development Agency, Bangalore 560 017, INDIA


but a relaxed static stability fighter like tejas and AMCA are all unbalanced like bycycle an needs continuous inputs to even fly.

As far as I know there is no fighter in made in Asia , even in Russia,which has proved its Relaxed Static Stability Fly by WIre tech like Tejas did, spread over tens of thousands of flights spread over two decades ,

Not a single PLAF operational fighter has this tech , as all of them are positive static stability platforms(means fighter tends to come back to level flight , once the pilot stops his control input,) i.e pilot input at control stick is directly transferred to hydraulic actuators to steer the plane it no interference from softare.

in these fighters if the pilot inputs exceed a prescribed limit in high agility flight control, flight stalls and falls off the sky, but in tejas the ALSr takes over an always recover the plane from falling an brings it back to operational flight envelope.

Also mig29s and mirage 2000s are multi role fighters, means they can both do strike an air combat, but pilot has to adjust his input depending upon the load on the fighter to get best agility on various load configuration all from his training skills

but in rafale and tejas Fly by wire operates the fighter at the maximum efficient limit regardless of the weight on the fighter thanks to software . So they are is called swing role fighters. tejas has swing role capacity built into it from day one. So will AMCA.

Even SAAB outsourced fly by wire tech to US after crash of few gripen prototypes due to fly by wire issues,



SO Fly by wire is a process mostly, not off the shelf product that can be bought and sold.

it is the very soul and nervous system of a modern 4.5th gen,fifth gen fighter

 

[Ar.gaurav28]

what do you think guys?? Does it make sense!!

 

[Tshering22]

Leaked picture of ADA team answering Finance Ministry babus' question of why smol plane Tejas can't be "enlarged" and another pipe be inserted in it for the second engine and why they want funds meant for MSP to be diverted to fund AMCA.

I sometimes feel that common Indians need to start doing the thing they showed in RANG DE BASANTI movie when it comes to dealing with MoD officials.

 

[Sir pe tapla]

I sometimes feel that common Indians need to start doing the thing they showed in RANG DE BASANTI movie when it comes to dealing with MoD officials.

Need to make these commitee hearings public in full view of media. They should let all Indians see their "genius".

 

[fire starter]

What a beauty.

 

[Dark Sorrow]

What a beauty.
View attachment 122261

When was RR chosen as engine partner. I thought we still choosing between RR and Safran.
Also when was 3D thrust vectoring decided upon. Aren't we still in the pahase where we identify engine specification .

 

[Dark Sorrow]

I wold like to know who is selling ,standard fly by wire enabled mission computer off the shelf,

BAE, Thales and lot of other companies sell off the shelf mission computers. You just can google it.

IMHO mission computer is a just a tiny bit(like a switch) of the control laws based fly by wire tech.

The companies that sell mission computer also offer servies to develop flight control law. Also third part servies are aviable for the same.

In 1980s even the french were were developing 3 channel digital and one channel analog hybrid fly by wire tech fr their rafale, and offered the same to tejas , but this was rejected in favour of US offer of 4 channel all digital fly by wire tech by india.

The tejas legend philip rajkumar himself says this decision delayed tejas by at least a decade, He explains it in his own words below,

just update yourself on the torturous path that tejas took in the quest for cutting edge 4channel fly by wire RSS tech that no one had at that time,

Book excerpt: In The Tejas Story, a retired air marshal chronicles his experiences of test flying the LCA jets

The story that comes to life through his book is that of his team of pilots and of the LCA programme itself, how it was commissioned, the challenges in the development phase and the pressure of realising the dream of domestically developing a fighter plane.

www.firstpost.com

"
. Air Marshal Philip Rajkumar in his book stated

"The software in the DFCC is broadly divided into 2 parts.

The first part is the CLAW which decides how much the control surfaces should move depending on the flight conditions.

From a mathematical flight model of the aircraft based on wind tunnel and CFD data, control engineers calculate the amount of control deflection required to control the aircraft at various points in the flight envelope, and create a big look up table which is stored in the computer memory.

The flight conditions are sensed by the air data probes on the aircraft and passed on to the computer. The computer accesses the look up table in real time and decides the amount of control deflections required.

Each computational frame lasts 12.5 milliseconds or in other words, is repeated 80 times per second, but the actual movement of the control surface takes place about twice per second."

Above from Air marshal philip Rajkumar book,


"
I think the part about it being instantaneous, random and time dependent went past you. I tried getting you to think how it could be done if instead of elevon deflections you put gas jets instead. Let me try something simpler.

I assume you know how to ride a bicycle . A bicycle, just like the LCA is a statically unstable system,but dynamically stable system. At low speeds (higher speeds, it is stabilized by gyroscopic effects of the spinning wheels) how you stabilize the bike is that you lean your body left and right and turn the handle bars (steering angle) and ride in a stable upright position in a straight line!.

Now in a bicycle, how many times a second do you lean your body and turn the handle bars when riding in a straight line, even in a pretty bumpy and rough roads like in India?. After all, every single undulation should see you come crashing down . So why is it that you dont lean your body and turn handle multiple times a second (is it even possible for a human to do it if that is what is required?) . Ponder over this. If you can answer this question, you have found the answer for the LCA .

(hint, response time of the bike to an undulation is x sec and if your control response aka YOU can apply minor correction within x sec you are stable.. larger a bump, larger the response. and once you turn the handle, it comes back to straight ahead position , unless you want to keep turning, in which case, you simple turn handle back and forth around turn angle . In LCA, computer is equivalent to YOU on bike and elevons are equivalent of you leaning left and right and steering the handle) "

Some simple explanation of fly by ire nuances by Vina in BR.

LCA news and discussion - Page 68 - Bharat Rakshak

All this complexity comes from the fact that tejas is a relaxed static stability fighter,i.e it will veer offcourse an fall off the sky , if its actuators like elevons are not corrected many times in a second. A pilot cant do it, its done by hundreds of thousands of lines of software written by professionals ,

And this had been tested to death by Iorn Bird test rig in HAL fr years , with codes controlling deflectors proving the veracity of the control laws.

So engineers hv to write vast amount of programs fr so many operation per second, , because it is their coding which flies the plane, not the actual control input by the pilot when pulls the stick.

remember this software is specific to this fighter.

AMCA is a new fighter and needs to do the same process all over again, but tejas experience vastly cuts the time needed as it has produced people like deodhar, who now head the AMCA effort.


If you get a copy of the article below, You can read more, (I dont hv one)


"DESIGN, DEVELOPMENT AND FLIGHT TESTING OF CONTROL LAWS FOR THE INDIAN LIGHT COMBAT AIRCRAFT"
by Shyam Chetty, Flight Mechanics and Control Division, National Aerospace Laboratories, Bangalore 560 017,
Girish Deodhare, Centre for A. I. & Robotics, Raj Bhavan Circle, Bangalore 560 001, INDIA
and B.B. Misra, Former Research Test Pilot, Aeronautical Development Agency, Bangalore 560 017, INDIA


but a relaxed static stability fighter like tejas and AMCA are all unbalanced like bycycle an needs continuous inputs to even fly.

As far as I know there is no fighter in made in Asia , even in Russia,which has proved its Relaxed Static Stability Fly by WIre tech like Tejas did, spread over tens of thousands of flights spread over two decades ,

Not a single PLAF operational fighter has this tech , as all of them are positive static stability platforms(means fighter tends to come back to level flight , once the pilot stops his control input,) i.e pilot input at control stick is directly transferred to hydraulic actuators to steer the plane it no interference from softare.

in these fighters if the pilot inputs exceed a prescribed limit in high agility flight control, flight stalls and falls off the sky, but in tejas the ALSr takes over an always recover the plane from falling an brings it back to operational flight envelope.

Also mig29s and mirage 2000s are multi role fighters, means they can both do strike an air combat, but pilot has to adjust his input depending upon the load on the fighter to get best agility on various load configuration all from his training skills

but in rafale and tejas Fly by wire operates the fighter at the maximum efficient limit regardless of the weight on the fighter thanks to software . So they are is called swing role fighters. tejas has swing role capacity built into it from day one. So will AMCA.

Even SAAB outsourced fly by wire tech to US after crash of few gripen prototypes due to fly by wire issues,



SO Fly by wire is a process mostly, not off the shelf product that can be bought and sold.

it is the very soul and nervous system of a modern 4.5th gen,fifth gen fighter

It doesn't matter how you do what matters is the end result. The fact remains Tejas still not mass deployed.
This hold true for all our projects be it drones (DRDO Rustom) or aircraft where we have still failed to operationalize our project with end user while our adversaries have be it Turks with their drones or Pakistan with JF-17 or PRC with whole plethora of aircraft and drones.
Even Pakistani have developed their UCAV and we are still stuck in Taxi trails for our UAV/UCAV and at the same time buying IAI Heron.

As per you mission computers and fly-by-wire control laws are small part then was it worth wasting a decade on that rather that working with Americans and have incremental development cycle there by reducing development time.
Same goes for Kaveri engine. We coupled Kaveri engine program with Tejas. These caused delays when the Kaveri engine project failed we went to GE404 and took more time.

You are not getting extra point for reinventing the wheel. You are getting the project delayed.
You can't be in a perpetual cycle of endless development and no product to show for.

just update yourself on the torturous path that tejas took in the quest for cutting edge 4channel fly by wire RSS tech that no one had at that time,

We are almost at the end of 2021 yet the aircraft is not mass deployed. Remember one thing in real life only results matter and not the process. Yes we learnt a lot but what we gained from it. How will you quantify the lives of Pilots lost in Mig-21, the aircraft that was supposed to be replaced with Tejas? The aircraft that can't be phased out until equivalent number of Tejas are available.

Remember the goal of Tejas is to replace Mig-21 and be one of the mass deployed supersonic fighter aircraft in our forward airbases and not be academic project for our government agencies.

 

[Spitfire9]

You can't be in a perpetual cycle of endless development and no product to show for.

We are almost at the end of 2021 yet the aircraft is not mass deployed. Remember one thing in real life only results matter and not the process. Yes we learnt a lot but what we gained from it. How will you quantify the lives of Pilots lost in Mig-21, the aircraft that was supposed to be replaced with Tejas? The aircraft that can't be phased out until equivalent number of Tejas are available.

Remember the goal of Tejas is to replace Mig-21 and be one of the mass deployed supersonic fighter aircraft in our forward airbases and not be academic project for our government agencies.

Are MiG-21's going to be retained in service post-2025? There will not be enough Mk1A's to replace the venerable MiG's until way past 2025.