LCA TEJAS MK1 & MK1A: News and Discussion

Dark Sorrow

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Yes .. astra is made in india .. integration in tejas mk1 is near completion . It ll be used in tejas mk1a as well . Further dual pulse version of astra and sfdr ll be integrated later .
It will have to comply US export restriction.
Astra uses field-programmable gate array (FPGA) designed and manufactured by US company Altera (now Intel), RF sampling ADCs are designed and manufactured by US company from Analog Devices while other RF interfacing Analog Front End (AFE) from Texas Instrumentation are being used.

FPGA is where all the digital filers, all logic, the brain of the Astra missile along with system control resides in.
RF sampling ADC along with some other analog front end are used to interface with the seeker.
 

Bleh

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weseaaj kaafi dino baad aya hu yaha , wese i know delivery toh nahi hui hogi
On BRF it was said that soft deliveries are actually going on... they did not make it news because the Jets are still based in Bangalore and their going to update it as after its integrated to it.

Ultimately, deployment will be at Rajasthan & Srinagar for the 1st two squadrons.
 

destructodisc

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On BRF it was said that soft deliveries are actually going on... they did not make it news because the Jets are still based in Bangalore and their going to update it as after its integrated to it.

Ultimately, deployment will be at Rajasthan & Srinagar for the 1st two squadrons.
I hope you must be talking about the below excerpt? Please let me know if otherwise

1632678412874.png


the integrations that you were talking about are Astra, SAAW , EW integration. 'Integration of astra on Tejas' articles were doing rounds in news since 23 nov 2020 , there has be been an update in the news about a "nearing completion status" in an article in July. They must be doing the same for SAAW and Counter measure devices. These things takes time - which is totally fine, No complains.

All this has happened with sukhois which were part of a fully functional squadron. This should be causing delay to induction of Tejas.

you wont be able to use these "soft delivered" birds if a war breaks out tomorrow. I would not call this a delivery.
HAL is pitching Tejas to other countries, they should be making more noise with the progress - if there really is some.

Enjoy the C-295 promo from Airbus, I dream of HAL making one such short one when we deliver our beauty to the world.
 

Tridev123

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It will have to comply US export restriction.
Astra uses field-programmable gate array (FPGA) designed and manufactured by US company Altera (now Intel), RF sampling ADCs are designed and manufactured by US company from Analog Devices while other RF interfacing Analog Front End (AFE) from Texas Instrumentation are being used.

FPGA is where all the digital filers, all logic, the brain of the Astra missile along with system control resides in.
RF sampling ADC along with some other analog front end are used to interface with the seeker.
The information you have provided is not known to many.
I trust you have verified the content.
Many were under the impression that Russia was the chief source of technology for the initial Astra mk1 versions. Including the data link which is supposed to be the clone of the R77 BVR data link. Also the seeker was from AGAT of Russia for the initial batches of the missile.

I guess many people would be surprised to hear that Washington is allowing such technological help to India's missile programmes to take place.

What is the present status of our efforts to indigenise the imported technology.

How extensive is the cooperation in high technology between India and the US. Is the US now the primary source of high tech defense technology for our indigenously designed weapons.

There are a lot of apprehensions about the reliability of the US as a defence partner, what with news of frequent sanctions by the US Congress.

Israel has long been a source of high tech defence technology for India in the past with much of the technology having US origins. But the US was always reluctant to share high technology with us directly.

Anyway the fact is that we still have to do a lot of work in designing and developing indigenous technologies for attaining true self reliance.
 

Dark Sorrow

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The information you have provided is not known to many.
I trust you have verified the content.
Many were under the impression that Russia was the chief source of technology for the initial Astra mk1 versions. Including the data link which is supposed to be the clone of the R77 BVR data link. Also the seeker was from AGAT of Russia for the initial batches of the missile.
Seeker is provided by AGAT for initial batches of Astra BVR. They also provided support for seeker interfacing.
That being said all the control algorithm, interfacing with control surfaces, target identification and tracking, ECM and ECCM were developed by DRDO.

The FPGA is used to implement these control algorithms, interfacing logic with control surfaces via motors and actuator, target identification and tracking, ECM and ECCM along with other features like data link. This part was done by DRDO even though the seeker was from AGAT.

You need a processor (silicon) to execute algorithms for these individual sub-systems. Companies like Raytheon tend to design custom ASIC for this purpose (implementation of the above mentioned sub-systems) but this involves a lot of risk. So DRDO went ahead with FPGA route as it has lot flexibility mitigating the custom ASIC development risk and cost but has some disadvantages.

Why FPGA? Because it is practical, efficient (from project management point of view), easier, less risk and cheaper than designing your own ASIC.

Why American? Take a pick they are market leaders or the only providers of such system or convenience or economics or proven design and tooling and the list goes on.

QRSAM is currently 90% indigenous and will reach 99% incrementally guess which component will be imported.

I guess many people would be surprised to hear that Washington is allowing such technological help to India's missile programmes to take place.
Let me rephrase Washington is not helping. They are selling. Its in our interest to buy from US and its in their interest to sell us such components. By allowing others to use their product for critical sub-assembly/system they maintain their edge in the market also preventing others from establishing competing products. If tomorrow Russian come with competing FPGA no one will be interested in them. Even countries embargoed by US will try to get their hands on US products instead of going with Russians.

What is the present status of our efforts to indigenise the imported technology.
AFAIK with Mk. 2 we are trying custom ASIC but nothing is concrete. As for FPGA their is no plan to indigenous such technology.
How extensive is the cooperation in high technology between India and the US.
Let me rephrase they are not cooperating. They are selling. Its a buyer seller relation.
Is the US now the primary source of high tech defense technology for our indigenously designed weapons.
For semiconductor will be our US is our go to guy as they are market leaders.
Anyway the fact is that we still have to do a lot of work in designing and developing indigenous technologies for attaining true self reliance.
True
 

Tridev123

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Seeker is provided by AGAT for initial batches of Astra BVR. They also provided support for seeker interfacing.
That being said all the control algorithm, interfacing with control surfaces, target identification and tracking, ECM and ECCM were developed by DRDO.

The FPGA is used to implement these control algorithms, interfacing logic with control surfaces via motors and actuator, target identification and tracking, ECM and ECCM along with other features like data link. This part was done by DRDO even though the seeker was from AGAT.

You need a processor (silicon) to execute algorithms for these individual sub-systems. Companies like Raytheon tend to design custom ASIC for this purpose (implementation of the above mentioned sub-systems) but this involves a lot of risk. So DRDO went ahead with FPGA route as it has lot flexibility mitigating the custom ASIC development risk and cost but has some disadvantages.

Why FPGA? Because it is practical, efficient (from project management point of view), easier, less risk and cheaper than designing your own ASIC.

Why American? Take a pick they are market leaders or the only providers of such system or convenience or economics or proven design and tooling and the list goes on.

QRSAM is currently 90% indigenous and will reach 99% incrementally guess which component will be imported.


Let me rephrase Washington is not helping. They are selling. Its in our interest to buy from US and its in their interest to sell us such components. By allowing others to use their product for critical sub-assembly/system they maintain their edge in the market also preventing others from establishing competing products. If tomorrow Russian come with competing FPGA no one will be interested in them. Even countries embargoed by US will try to get their hands on US products instead of going with Russians.


AFAIK with Mk. 2 we are trying custom ASIC but nothing is concrete. As for FPGA their is no plan to indigenous such technology.

Let me rephrase they are not cooperating. They are selling. Its a buyer seller relation.

For semiconductor will be our US is our go to guy as they are market leaders.

True
Well, sourcing high technology components and systems from the US is OK as we are yet to develop indigenous alternatives.

The reality is that the US is still the leader in many technologies including semiconductors. I guess Europe and Russia will be taking second place.
But the current situation will not last very long. Advanced technologies are being developed in many more countries and I foresee the virtual monopoly of the US in many advanced technologies ending in the next two decades.

We have to concede that Chinese growth in developing high tech will increase in the future. Already a lot more patents are coming out of China as compared to the past.

India will not be too behind China and we will keep pace with it.

India probably presently needs the US in order to catch up with China. But I am not in full agreement with the assumption that the increased technological cooperation with the US is a simple case of economics and demand meeting supply. Not too long ago the US and NATO(Western Alliance) had many laws and treaties forbidding transfers of high technology to non NATO countries. Even if India wanted to, it could not get import licenses to acquire such products. We should remember the ban imposed on India by the US on acquiring the latest Cray Supercomputers for use in our research institutes like the IISc.

So the truth is that a policy change in the US has occurred which has opened the gates for high technology transfers. Probably the incipient threat from China has forced the US to make a U turn towards India.

Presently there is a convergence of views between India and the US regarding the Chinese threat. So accepting some amount of help from the West to build up our defence capability makes sense. As long as our vital national interests are safeguarded.

Our Colleges and Universities need to become international level centers of excellence in high quality research. This will provide the framework for achieving total self reliance. I reckon we are moving ahead in this direction.
 

samsaptaka

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Why FPGA? Because it is practical, efficient (from project management point of view), easier, less risk and cheaper than designing your own ASIC
Won't FPGA be kind of slow for a real time system like a missile ?
 

indiatester

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Won't FPGA be kind of slow for a real time system like a missile ?
FPGA's are very fast. When compared to CPU's FPGA's may fail when compared on cost... but not on speed.
When compared to on thermal, ASIC performs better than FPGA which inturn is better than intensive CPU.

Also for real time system, you don't really need a fast processor/hardware. Your system must have well defined time bounds.
 

Dark Sorrow

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Won't FPGA be kind of slow for a real time system like a missile ?
Not really.
Speed is highly relative term.
Biggest advantage of FPGA over CPU is that FPGA can achieve as much parallelism as you need. CPU are inherently sequential in nature. They execute instruction one after the other. In FPGA you can design circuit to process signal/data in parallel.
Second biggest advantage of FPGA over CPU is that you can have custom hardware instruction in FPGA that is not available in CPU.

Some disadvantages of FPGA over CPU include higher design complexity, higher power consumption and higher startup time.

Higher design complexity as you have to design all the circuit/logic in FPGA though a lot of IPs are nowadays avaiable.

Some CPU have a high clock than FPGA but that doesn't mean higher throughput.

ASIC are they best as they provide best performance, efficiency and power consumption but involve a very high NRE cost and a lot of risk.
 

THESIS THORON

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i have heard that there is problem with the computer of tejas it is failing again and again, they will replace these computer with new one (which will be installed in tejas mk2)

this current computer is pretty old.

any news on that??
SOURCE--

 

Dark Sorrow

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i have heard that there is problem with the computer of tejas it is failing again and again, they will replace these computer with new one (which will be installed in tejas mk2)

this current computer is pretty old.

any news on that??
This is normal. The mission computer was designed ages ago. Most of its components would have become obsolete by now. These obsolete components will be replaced by newer compatible components. ICs tend to be obsolete by 15-20 years of their introduction. Most of the software should work out of the box.
 

vishnugupt

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i have heard that there is problem with the computer of tejas it is failing again and again, they will replace these computer with new one (which will be installed in tejas mk2)

this current computer is pretty old.

any news on that??
Just another lie by the united nations AF. This is just an upgrade as ADA/HAL Tejas mk1A is preparing to roll out Tejas mk1a. There was not a single incident as IDRW article suggests.

United nations Armed forces are champions in changing goalposts on daily basis.

Most people are not aware here, How DGMF had been changing Ajun tank requirement every week by just reading defense-weekly magazine. Laughable but true.
 

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