LCA TEJAS MK1 & MK1A: News and Discussion

Trololo

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No good program on Indian defence industry, new products, army, navy, iaf, etc. AKM has again started with his antakshari, youngster youngster, inspiration, motivation wala drama. Aroor is busy with other shows. :(
 

Rajaraja Chola

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How do you know?

HAL has to maintain these engines at it's facilities. And if something was holding up this deal so far, it must've been related to offsets and some ToT related to maintaining the engines and doing overhauls.
When HAL initially quoted high price it included some part of engine assembling. With IAF requesting low prices , that equation was taken out to reduce costs. I think we are ending up with 6.5m per engine.
 

CentralPoint

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Its interesting to note that most are worried about engine spares and availability during war/ in case of sanctions.
1 . The GE404-IN20 contract just wont include the engines - but also will include spares.
2 . We are ordering 100 engines for an order of 83 aircraft (considering we already had about 50 engines available) that means we have about one spare engine per aircraft
3. The MTBO for this engine should be in the order of 3000 hours (MTBF - 6000 hrs?) - that means for a 2 hour sortie, at least 1000 sorties before a full overhaul. 1000 sorties, considering that the aircraft can do lets say 5 sorties a day (typically 2-3 sorties) - will take 200 days of intense war!!
So, even if we do get sanctioned - this is well enough to take care of our workload for the near future!.
So geo-politics aside, this is some simple (ok - over simplifying things) - we should have enough to keep the fleet flying for quite some time.
 

Rajaraja Chola

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Its interesting to note that most are worried about engine spares and availability during war/ in case of sanctions.
1 . The GE404-IN20 contract just wont include the engines - but also will include spares.
2 . We are ordering 100 engines for an order of 83 aircraft (considering we already had about 50 engines available) that means we have about one spare engine per aircraft
3. The MTBO for this engine should be in the order of 3000 hours (MTBF - 6000 hrs?) - that means for a 2 hour sortie, at least 1000 sorties before a full overhaul. 1000 sorties, considering that the aircraft can do lets say 5 sorties a day (typically 2-3 sorties) - will take 200 days of intense war!!
So, even if we do get sanctioned - this is well enough to take care of our workload for the near future!.
So geo-politics aside, this is some simple (ok - over simplifying things) - we should have enough to keep the fleet flying for quite some time.
Actually the OEM responsibility is to build aircrafts. Not order spares for IAF operational readiness. It's the IAF which needs to order spares for future maintenance.
 

Mantospace

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Wat abt dat plan where drdo will integrate kaveri with tejas. They said they will comeup with prototype in 2021 defence expo.
 

cannonfodder

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Its interesting to note that most are worried about engine spares and availability during war/ in case of sanctions.
1 . The GE404-IN20 contract just wont include the engines - but also will include spares.
2 . We are ordering 100 engines for an order of 83 aircraft (considering we already had about 50 engines available) that means we have about one spare engine per aircraft
3. The MTBO for this engine should be in the order of 3000 hours (MTBF - 6000 hrs?) - that means for a 2 hour sortie, at least 1000 sorties before a full overhaul. 1000 sorties, considering that the aircraft can do lets say 5 sorties a day (typically 2-3 sorties) - will take 200 days of intense war!!
So, even if we do get sanctioned - this is well enough to take care of our workload for the near future!.
So geo-politics aside, this is some simple (ok - over simplifying things) - we should have enough to keep the fleet flying for quite some time.
Also trust GE exec to take pay an visit to WH to clear engine orders in case of monkey business by adversaries. It affects there bottom line/revenue projections etc. when stakes are big.
 

lixun

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Its interesting to note that most are worried about engine spares and availability during war/ in case of sanctions.
1 . The GE404-IN20 contract just wont include the engines - but also will include spares.
2 . We are ordering 100 engines for an order of 83 aircraft (considering we already had about 50 engines available) that means we have about one spare engine per aircraft
3. The MTBO for this engine should be in the order of 3000 hours (MTBF - 6000 hrs?) - that means for a 2 hour sortie, at least 1000 sorties before a full overhaul. 1000 sorties, considering that the aircraft can do lets say 5 sorties a day (typically 2-3 sorties) - will take 200 days of intense war!!
So, even if we do get sanctioned - this is well enough to take care of our workload for the near future!.
So geo-politics aside, this is some simple (ok - over simplifying things) - we should have enough to keep the fleet flying for quite some time.
PD radar, fly-by-wire flight control, F404 engine, delta wing layout, the level of early fourth-generation fighters,
 

lixun

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1- Mk1A has AESA radar.
2- Gripen, Rafale, Eurofighter, Tejas all have delta wing and fly by wire and are 4++ gen fighters.
1. The LCA currently entering the Indian Air Force are all PD radars.
2. They are canard wings, LCA is delta wings, the aerodynamic performance and the difficulty of flight control programming are not the same level
 

Tang

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1. The LCA currently entering the Indian Air Force are all PD radars.
2. They are canard wings, LCA is delta wings, the aerodynamic performance and the difficulty of flight control programming are not the same level
MK1a is all Aesa and MK1 are MMR like J10 variants,
LCA is not simple delta but cranked delta, a far better design than J10 and jf17
 

MirageBlue

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That is called assistance, not the ToT. HAL is competent enough to maintain small issues but if any critical parts fail then HAL has to go to GE or have to buy parts off the shelf.
That is not called assistance. That is ToT for maintenance. They transfer "know-how" on how to maintain the engine, the parts and equipment needed to test engines on benches and then in chambers and then on the aircraft. And don't take that for granted, it is a BIG part of any engine deal for HAL, which as the Tejas OEM has to be able to service the engines that develop faults at IAF bases or their own facilities.

GE will also provide tools to allow NDT inspection, training and equipment for doing overhauls at HAL facilities for the engines. But question is whether HAL also gets some level of assembly for the F404-IN20 engines or are they going to be completely assembled in the US and only tested at HAL prior to fitment on Tejas Mk1As.

I'm not expecting them to give critical "know-why" details on hot section technologies that are definitely ITAR controlled. Engine technology is not going to be shared. If it was then we wouldn't need it since we have been assembling and manufacturing Russian AL-31F engines from raw material stage itself. In that case the Russians provided the "know-how" on how to assemble the AL-31F from scratch and raw material stage, but not the "know-why" of why certain design choices were made.
 

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