DRDO, PSU and Private Defence Sector News

[Knowitall]

The Ice-Cream Seller Strikes Back...

View attachment 197157

All said and done it's a solid display of effort commitment and devotion to a cause.

They don't have anything that we don't have funding and focus makes the entire difference.

 

[samsaptaka]

So private companies want to build tanks, jets and what not but cannot even invest in basic test facilities to develop indigenous products. And people here want DRDO/DPSUs to be privatised and project private companies to be saviour. LoL.

No Pvt industry will invest unless large orders are placed or atleast there is a high probability of large orders being placed in a time-bound manner. Looking at the history of both IA and MoD with their 20 of this 10 of that piecemeal order even after taking 2 years for a contract , which sane Pvt industry will invest , that too in RnD ? Only taxpayer funded DPSU can play this game. Hence what LnT guy said is 100 % right

 

[NoobWannaLearn]

No Pvt industry will invest unless large orders are placed or atleast there is a high probability of large orders being placed in a time-bound manner. Looking at the history of both IA and MoD with their 20 of this 10 of that piecemeal order even after taking 2 years for a contract , which sane Pvt industry will invest , that too in RnD ? Only taxpayer funded DPSU can play this game. Hence what LnT guy said is 100 % right

No private companies can produce f21 with no order chances but no they can't produce amca,lca mk2

 

[Anupu]

In my humble opinion, the issue is not HAL or the private sector, it's actually DRDO and more specifically ADA, along with our Defence Research and Design system.

We have ADA as a design house and HAL as a manufacturer, this is where I believe the problem lies, the job of DRDO shouldn't be developing production-ready designs. They should focus on experimental aircraft and involve the private sector or HAL design house when it comes to creating a production-ready product. HAL is doing a good job when it comes to Helicopters because all of them are designed in-house by Rotary Wing Research and Design Center and HTT-40 was designed by Aircraft Research and Design Centre.

The private sector should have there own design capabilities in sync with there manufacturing capability. They will be even more efficient as they don't have to take out tenders, RFPs, and RFQs for each component they need to buy.

DRDO should focus on experimental designs and sponsoring relevant academic research. The Scientist should be sent on deputation into different design departments to smoothen the transfer of tech. This will allow DRDO to eventually focus on the future rather than the past.

 

[Lonewarrior]

Redundancy Continues

Akash-NG and QRSAM done. VL-SRSAM Vs QRSAM too done. Now the next.

Are MPATGM, Amogha III and Jasmine three different missiles or simply three sides of the same coin?
If different, then how?

 

[jai jaganath]

Guys as we know cdr of amca is complete as said by sriramji
If I am wrong pls correct me
When will ccs clear the amount for development

 

[Aniruddha Mulay]

Guys as we know cdr of amca is complete as said by sriramji
If I am wrong pls correct me
When will ccs clear the amount for development

Systems level CDR is complete and approved, Aircraft level CDR isn't.

 

[jai jaganath]

Systems level CDR is complete and approved, Aircraft level CDR isn't.

Any speculated timeline

 

[Aniruddha Mulay]

After seeing the Hurjet prototype, only thing I can say is that Indian bureaucracy needs a surgical strike. It was designed by the British to run an extractive economy and after 1947 only the handlers of this bureaucracy changed but not the system itself. The same extractive, rent seeking and sarkari feudal mindset combined with a lack of urgency continues today.

LoL, the LCA Tejas is better than that trainer in each and every front and it had its first flight 22 years ago.

 

[Aniruddha Mulay]

Any speculated timeline

Ball is in IAF's court who has to approve it, should be done before mid-2023.

 

[Kuldeepm952]

So, I am hearing that one of the reason for AMCA is delay in selection of SPV partner. Although it doesn't provide any advantage apart from that air force and GoI is somewhat fixated on idea of a alternative org to HAL. But isn't it just some jumla, to even reach the level of HAL, they have to first atleast screwdrivergiri some 4th gen fighter and that was the whole point of MRFA project. Now that even MRFA is being pushed later and later, it's future itself would be in jeopardy if it gets pushed too much and Tejas mk2 comes online. With upgraded Su30mki on one end and Tejas mk2 on another, it won't make sense to make product which is going to make us more dependent on the country of origin of that plane in terms of spares and weapons systems.

Is it also true that Tata is trying to arm twist GoI that they will be ready for AMCA after they learn to assemble F16 according to alpha defense video, makes sense but we neither have the time or appetite for this B.S. at this point. Any SPV partner would have to be baby fed by both DRDO and HAL to become somewhat decent in combat aircraft manufacturing, not bad but it will delay and complicate things for sure.

I just don't see how in case of aviation, any private cos can come up unless they are willing to go all in and at the same time gov and as well as IAF is fully committed.

This SPV bs should be stopped of its producing delays, no one will be better or even equal to HAL anytime in near future. Private cos are already playing a good role in systems provider and as a integrator HAL is doing good. This private player for combat aircraft should be left to MRFA, if it ever comes.

Also to say that today HAL is confident in designing it's own HLFT, which is nothing short of a real 4+ gen fighter in terms of flight profile and avionics. It truly warms my heart to see that HAL is also evolving into a org which can design and develop their own combat planes just like the rotary division.

 

[Aniruddha Mulay]

So, I am hearing that one of the reason for AMCA is delay in selection of SPV partner. Although it doesn't provide any advantage apart from that air force and GoI is somewhat fixated on idea of a alternative org to HAL. But isn't it just some jumla, to even reach the level of HAL, they have to first atleast screwdrivergiri some 4th gen fighter and that was the whole point of MRFA project. Now that even MRFA is being pushed later and later, it's future itself would be in jeopardy if it gets pushed too much and Tejas mk2 comes online. With upgraded Su30mki on one end and Tejas mk2 on another, it won't make sense to make product which is going to make us more dependent on the country of origin of that plane in terms of spares and weapons systems.

Is it also true that Tata is trying to arm twist GoI that they will be ready for AMCA after they learn to assemble F16 according to alpha defense video, makes sense but we neither have the time or appetite for this B.S. at this point. Any SPV partner would have to be baby fed by both DRDO and HAL to become somewhat decent in combat aircraft manufacturing, not bad but it will delay and complicate things for sure.

I just don't see how in case of aviation, any private cos can come up unless they are willing to go all in and at the same time gov and as well as IAF is fully committed.

This SPV bs should be stopped of its producing delays, no one will be better or even equal to HAL anytime in near future. Private cos are already playing a good role in systems provider and as a integrator HAL is doing good. This private player for combat aircraft should be left to MRFA, if it ever comes.

Also to say that today HAL is confident in designing it's own HLFT, which is nothing short of a real 4+ gen fighter in terms of flight profile and avionics. It truly warms my heart to see that HAL is also evolving into a org which can design and develop their own combat planes just like the rotary division.

Let private players be involved in the supply chain of subsystems and assemblies, similar to the Tejas program, tried and tested approach.
No point in getting them involved in the manufacturing aspect of the project, will only delay the project more and more.

 

[ObiWanKenobi]

It's not optimised.
In case of designs like these there are so many constraints like wings should fold, be short, decrease flutter so it becomes absolute necessary to optimise each and every bit of the design. American JSOW use lift generated from body to aid the wings.

There is only (common) one way to increase the lift form a wing; increase its area. Which can be done by either lengthening it or widening it.
Now coming to what's wrong
- the wings have way less area than the weight of the projectile demands; this is the reason why it bends upwards. It's not intentionally made dihedral; it's just struggling to hold the weight.

- the wings are not stiff enough; bombs like Spice 1000 also use long thin wings but you won't find this curvature on them. So in case of sudden maneuver the wing can snap.

- the effective lift gets reduced. Let's assume a wing generate 10kg of lift and doesn't bend.
View attachment 197114
In this case when you'll resolve that force into its components then the vertical component will have 10kg of force and horizontal will have 0kg of force.
Now you bend that wing.
View attachment 197113
Now upon resolving the force gets divided into say 8kg as vertical component and 2kg as horizontal. But this horizontal component of force is doing nothing except cancelling each other from each wing. So the effective lift now becomes just 8kg.

- commercial aircrafts also suffer from bending of wings but to counter this they already have a longer and tapered wing. So even after wasting some amount of lift it has sufficient to fly.

Ab khush Chacha!?

I was also thinking to give a technical answer but don't know why this line "The scientists at DRDO definitely know more than you and me, let them take care of the bomb's aerodynamics and structural rigidity." felt bit too weird to answer in that way.

Just imagine one fine day Prasad Bansod coming up with an idea to make a sub-machine gun based on Glock. And the very next day ditching it thinking if DRDO has not yet developed something like this then it must be a dumb idea.
Would we had got the opportunity to praise ASMI?

Didn't want to bite, but please empathise as I actually took the time, effort and attention to read your whole article.

1. The only way to get more lift is to increase wing area. If the wings don't provide enough lift, they bend upwards etc.

So, lets say the wing's S doesn't generate the required L at the current Cl and V. What will happen is not that you will have more delta-y, rather your aircraft will just loose altitude. If you tried to solve your delta-y problem by making the wing area larger (increasing span is better than chord for this, better AR), you will still have as much delta-y if not more because delta-y is proportional to span.

Summary: Your problem is your bomb still weighs 1000kg and your wing is not STRONG enough - you would hence add more spars, or reinforce the wing box. Increasing its area will not decrease delta-y. So basically, you are right in your second point.

2. Wings are not stiff enough

That would be the only reason for UNWANTED deflection or god forbid unwanted dihedral (basically your wing broke). We can get into whether is intentional or a failure of the wing later because it would make more sense after understanding dihedral and deflection.

Wing Deflection vs Dihedral Wings
3. commercial aircrafts also suffer from bending of wings but to counter this they already have a longer and tapered wing. So even after wasting some amount of lift it has sufficient to fly.

You are mixing up deflection with dihedral - commercial planes have both on purpose, they don't suffer from it.

Deflection An A380 tip deflection is like 12 feet or something and very much designed into the structure. When you have gusts, crosswinds turbulence etc. you want your wing flapping to absorb that motion than transfer the loads to the fuselage.

This by the way has NOTHING to do with dihedral, commercial planes have that too (even when tip deflection is 0, there will still have a very high dihedral angle)

4. Why Dihedral? You then proceed to tell me why dihedral is bad for lift basically. With diagrams that show that the sin cos split of the dihedral takes away some lift.

Yes, you will loose some lift with dihedral wings. You also loose lift with swept wings. The best wing for best lift is a boring old straight rectangular wing.

So why do we make dihedral wings in the first place? Did you think its just an unwanted effect? It is very much an intended effect. Its all about roll stability or lateral stability.

- A positive Dihedral angle > increases roll stability,
- A negative Dihedral angle > decreases roll stability. (Anhedral)

Roll stability: if a flying body is perturbed in the roll direction, it will have a tendency to come back to being upright. Caused by high mounted wings, dihedral wings, rear sweep (very minor effect)

Roll instability: if its perturbed in the roll direction, it will continue to spin even more. Caused by low mounted wings, annhedral wings, forward seep (very minor)

Some examples:
C-17 has annhedral wings, because the high mount and heavy loads it carries makes it difficult to roll the plane - so they had to counter that with an anhedral.

Commercial Aircraft have dihedral, because their low mounted wings (driven by ease of access to engines and packing the landing gear) causes lateral instability, which needs to be stabilised.

A Cessna, and some gliders, have both high wing and dihedral - because you just want stability at this point for ease of flying and safety. Passive self correction is what you want.

Glide bombs: You want to control rolling on separation, and even during glide to have the most stable flight path with minimal corrections to counter cross winds, turbulence, gusts and other non linearities. Almost all have high mounted wings which further tells you how they are thinking. Wether you want a dihedral on top of that or want to rely on software control - thats a choice.

In my opinion, they might have gone this way because their x-tail surfaces are quite small with a horrible aspect ratio. Most glide bombs have bigger X tails with decent aspect ratio - however its understandable if this is an add on kit and you can't change the tails on the body.

S = wing area
Cl = coefficient of lift
V = velocity
W/S = wing loading
AR = aspect ratio
delta-y = wing deflection at tip
chord = wing width
span = wing length

 

[Kuldeepm952]

At this point I just want our defence industry and all of R&D establishment to make a slightly less flimsy wing for this thing
View attachment 197061
That's it, that's the epitome of expectation I've left for innovation

A 1000kg class bomb that flies upto 70-100km in range when released from higher altitudes. Do we have other pics other than this, this looks like the very early prototype, so maybe this issue was resolved. I understand it's not optimal but is that really a point for dooming when several variables to make judgements are missing, even if they are bending in production variant, it's still just ok if they don't reduce range and capability.

Otoh, if this filmsy wing provides that range capability, shouldn't it have produced some problems.

Otherwise better write an email to Adani ji, he is the production partner.

 

[johnj]

Ball is in IAF's court who has to approve it, should be done before mid-2023.

& IAF waiting for US to educate them about fifth gen capability , design, features etc and now it is upto US.

 

[johnj]

So, I am hearing that one of the reason for AMCA is delay in selection of SPV partner. Although it doesn't provide any advantage apart from that air force and GoI is somewhat fixated on idea of a alternative org to HAL. But isn't it just some jumla, to even reach the level of HAL, they have to first atleast screwdrivergiri some 4th gen fighter and that was the whole point of MRFA project. Now that even MRFA is being pushed later and later, it's future itself would be in jeopardy if it gets pushed too much and Tejas mk2 comes online. With upgraded Su30mki on one end and Tejas mk2 on another, it won't make sense to make product which is going to make us more dependent on the country of origin of that plane in terms of spares and weapons systems.

Is it also true that Tata is trying to arm twist GoI that they will be ready for AMCA after they learn to assemble F16 according to alpha defense video, makes sense but we neither have the time or appetite for this B.S. at this point. Any SPV partner would have to be baby fed by both DRDO and HAL to become somewhat decent in combat aircraft manufacturing, not bad but it will delay and complicate things for sure.

I just don't see how in case of aviation, any private cos can come up unless they are willing to go all in and at the same time gov and as well as IAF is fully committed.

This SPV bs should be stopped of its producing delays, no one will be better or even equal to HAL anytime in near future. Private cos are already playing a good role in systems provider and as a integrator HAL is doing good. This private player for combat aircraft should be left to MRFA, if it ever comes.

Also to say that today HAL is confident in designing it's own HLFT, which is nothing short of a real 4+ gen fighter in terms of flight profile and avionics. It truly warms my heart to see that HAL is also evolving into a org which can design and develop their own combat planes just like the rotary division.

Let private players be involved in the supply chain of subsystems and assemblies, similar to the Tejas program, tried and tested approach.
No point in getting them involved in the manufacturing aspect of the project, will only delay the project more and more.

Replacing HAL is like replacing Apple Inc.
Only thing Private Industry trying to do is assembly like DPSU is done so far but HAL also having R&D part and their own designs unlike most of DPSUs whos depend on DRDO, Russia, EU etc.

 

[johnj]

All business with amreekans has been on a standstill for a long time... it includes repeat orders for Chinook & P-8I, Predator UCAV etc.

BJP, NDA not good with US & its allies, and prefer Russian, Israel, French etc.
Majority the US weapons ordered under current gov were cleared by UPA which include p8, m777, romeo etc, but brought additional ah64 for IA, mountain/cold gears, rifles etc which comes under urgency.
There is no follow on order for Chinook, i guess.

 

[jai jaganath]

BJP, NDA not good with US & its allies, and prefer Russian, Israel, French etc.
Majority the US weapons ordered under current gov were cleared by UPA which include p8, m777, romeo etc, but brought additional ah64 for IA, mountain/cold gears, rifles etc which comes under urgency.
There is no follow on order for Chinook, i guess.

Even 72000 sig 716 pending

 

[iNorthernerOn9]

BJP, NDA not good with US & its allies, and prefer Russian, Israel, French etc.
Majority the US weapons ordered under current gov were cleared by UPA which include p8, m777, romeo etc, but brought additional ah64 for IA, mountain/cold gears, rifles etc which comes under urgency.
There is no follow on order for Chinook, i guess.

US & it's allies are trying hard for a regime change in India... & recently they have appointed a Governor General for India in garb of an ambassador.

 

[Lonewarrior]

A 1000kg class bomb that flies upto 70-100km in range when released from higher altitudes. Do we have other pics other than this, this looks like the very early prototype, so maybe this issue was resolved. I understand it's not optimal but is that really a point for dooming when several variables to make judgements are missing, even if they are bending in production variant, it's still just ok if they don't reduce range and capability.

Otoh, if this filmsy wing provides that range capability, shouldn't it have produced some problems.

Otherwise better write an email to Adani ji, he is the production partner.

Someone right away telling me that how can I know something that only scientist at DRDO can know. Someone telling to write an e-mail to Adani. Hahahaha

Anyways, the joke's on you mate.
I've been writing e-mails way before you're here at DFI. I've been writing e-mails way before there was any test launch of SMART. And perhaps I've been writing e-mails since there was any such program.