LCA TEJAS MK1 & MK1A: News and Discussion

Spitfire9

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I know you have an agenda to make HAL and Tejas look bad. But it's becoming too obvious now.
While I think that the management of the Tejas project has been dire, I have actually championed the Tejas for the last fifteen years. I will be delighted to see the Mk1A project finally deliver a result. I would be even more delighted to see a radical shake up in the way in which procurement and development of Indian fighters is managed. Without that, why should other programmes managed as Tejas has been fare differently to Tejas?

What I find frustrating is that India has the potential to become a major player in military aerospace but, it seems, will not take the steps required to move towards realising that potential.
 

MiG-29SMT

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Good looking aircraft, I think in Asia the nicest looking aircraft is Tejas, Ching Kuo I like it but its radome I find it too long, Korean aircraft I do not like them Chinese aircraft well the JH-7 is kind of good looking but I still prefer F-111 or SU-24.

Tejas is like a Mirage 2000. a nice looking aircraft.
 

kamaal

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LCA is not designed to fight everything PAF or PLAAF has. Every jet has it's job, lca is a multirole jet designed as point defense. Don't make it rafale or su30, or even mirage 2000. Currently F16 can only be tackled by rafales, even su30 will have to wait for Astra mk2 & mk3 to have a fight.
 

MirageBlue

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While I think that the management of the Tejas project has been dire, I have actually championed the Tejas for the last fifteen years. I will be delighted to see the Mk1A project finally deliver a result. I would be even more delighted to see a radical shake up in the way in which procurement and development of Indian fighters is managed. Without that, why should other programmes managed as Tejas has been fare differently to Tejas?

What I find frustrating is that India has the potential to become a major player in military aerospace but, it seems, will not take the steps required to move towards realising that potential.
Criticism must be fair, else your motives will be questioned.

Regarding the Tejas Mk1A it is already delivering on it's promises, else you wouldn't have seen a production Tejas Mk1A fly. A few months here or there is trivial in the bigger scheme of things, which is to have a certified Tejas Mk1A that meets the customer's requirements fully before it takes on squadron service. The timelines for the Tejas Mk1A versus Tejas Mk1 itself should give a fair idea as to how much things have changed. HAL signed up for first flight in 36 months after contract signature and actually flew a production standard Tejas Mk1A 37 months after contract signature. In aerospace that would be considered a well managed program.

There are technical challenges that are not minor with each fighter program. Every where else we look there are delays galore (except for the KF-21 Boramae which is an exception).

I find it amusing that when F-16V has technical and software related delays that are running into multiple years, no one questions how come so many countries have opted for it?

Or when F-15X is still to enter service with the USAF, despite the prototypes having flown couple of years ago, why is no one asking how come they're offering F-15EX for the MRFA? I mean the F-15X is not a clean sheet design! It's a development of the F-15QA which itself is an evolutionary increment of the F-15SA and that is an iteration of the F-15E!

Private sector behemoths have also been hesitant to take up a big role even though they have been offered that with the AMCA Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) which intended to have a private sector company form a JV with HAL/ADA/DRDO for producing the AMCA. So what does that say about risk taking?

No private sector company is ready to invest the thousands of crores of rupees (hundreds of millions of $) required to become an OEM. They are all happy to get orders for parts, sub-assemblies and assemblies, even entire fuselage sections, but not to take on the role that HAL is playing in the Tejas program, which is to be the OEM.

India will eventually become a player in military aerospace, big or not time will tell, but it is not going to be easy to break into a market that is dominated by the US and some EU firms. Even China is mostly only able to export to some nations like Pakistan that don't have any other realistic options. Politics, established reputation, ability to offer credit lines, experience in running campaigns, etc. all of that matter.

South Korea with all it's success in exporting the T-50, F-50 and FA-50 to Asian countries, is only of late able to export the FA-50 to an EU nation and trust me the FA-50 that Poland selected is less capable than the Tejas Mk1A.

Exports will take time. Till India doesn't build up a reputation for it's military products, other countries will opt for the safer route of going with established players who have had their products in service for a longish time.
 

Spitfire9

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Private sector behemoths have also been hesitant to take up a big role even though they have been offered that with the AMCA Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) which intended to have a private sector company form a JV with HAL/ADA/DRDO for producing the AMCA. So what does that say about risk taking?

No private sector company is ready to invest the thousands of crores of rupees (hundreds of millions of $) required to become an OEM. They are all happy to get orders for parts, sub-assemblies and assemblies, even entire fuselage sections, but not to take on the role that HAL is playing in the Tejas program, which is to be the OEM.
You don't think that the virtual monopoly enjoyed by HAL has adversely affected other players entering the fray?

About the proposed SPV, what virtue is there in creating a company where the bureaucracies of HAL/ADA/DRDO are all brought together in one nightmare entity to be joined by a private company as a junior partner? Unsurprisingly no commercial company has been tempted to invest in such a misconceived endeavour. No doubt HAL will be able to build AMCA.

With respect to creating a competitive assembly industry, why doesn't GOI take a strategic decision to do so? It could start by transferring assembly of some Tejas Mk1A to a different company (with the help of HAL). If there were 2 companies able to assemble fighters, they could bid for the contract to assemble AMCA. If the state-owned bidder is more competitive, it gets the deal. If the private company bidder is more competitive, it gets the deal.
 

MirageBlue

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You don't think that the virtual monopoly enjoyed by HAL has adversely affected other players entering the fray?

About the proposed SPV, what virtue is there in creating a company where the bureaucracies of HAL/ADA/DRDO are all brought together in one nightmare entity to be joined by a private company as a junior partner? Unsurprisingly no commercial company has been tempted to invest in such a misconceived endeavour. No doubt HAL will be able to build AMCA.

With respect to creating a competitive assembly industry, why doesn't GOI take a strategic decision to do so? It could start by transferring assembly of some Tejas Mk1A to a different company (with the help of HAL). If there were 2 companies able to assemble fighters, they could bid for the contract to assemble AMCA. If the state-owned bidder is more competitive, it gets the deal. If the private company bidder is more competitive, it gets the deal.
There is a monopoly and the govt is trying to break it. HAL itself states that they are fine with other private sector companies taking up share in lead integration and assembly activities. Beyond that what do you want the Govt and HAL to do? Share their knowhow, their R&D, their manpower, their projects, all for free??

If no private sector company is willing to invest then it's clear that they're just complaining without being ready to take risks. That's the big problem with analysts in India as well. Just keep cribbing about HAL being a PSU and not being efficient enough, when it's clear to see that the private sector lacks experience and spends next to nothing on R&D.

Aerospace is a risky business and in many cases HAL is putting up it's own funds for R&D as well as development. Case in point - the HAL LUH and HAL LCH. Even HAL HTT-40. Would any private sector company be willing to invest hundreds of crores of rupees into a project that the IAF has not directly asked for, which the Govt and MoD are not funding?? Will their shareholders approve of such a thing? HAL's shareholders approve it time and again. Even going forward, the HLFT-42 prototype development will be funded on HAL's internal funds till they get CCS sanction and the MoD releases funds.

BTW, they will have to be junior partners in any JV. No private sector company has even an iota of the level of experience that HAL has in aerospace. All the rest are build to spec types including even the Tatas who are just now setting up the assembly line for the Airbus C-295 in Vadodara. So basically even the vaunted Tata's are doing what HAL did in the mid-1980s when it obtained the license to build Do-228 in India. Tata-Airbus JV may well do a splendid job but they are being hand-held by Airbus.

Name one original design that the Tatas, Mahindras, L&T, Bharat Forge, Alpha Tocol, Dynamatics Ltd, VEM Tech, etc. have come up with in any airplane class except for drones. They're all suppliers in some form or the other but have very little R&D work going on and are in no shape or form comparable in experience to HAL. They don't even have a club twin seat trainer to their name as far as original design goes.
 

mist_consecutive

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LCA is not designed to fight everything PAF or PLAAF has. Every jet has it's job, lca is a multirole jet designed as point defense. Don't make it rafale or su30, or even mirage 2000. Currently F16 can only be tackled by rafales, even su30 will have to wait for Astra mk2 & mk3 to have a fight.
Mig-29 UPG, Su-30MKI and Mirage-2000H all three can take on F-16s Blk 52+ in different scenarios and emerge victorious.

Same for Tejas Mk1A.

A2A combat doesn't work in absolutes. A Mig-21 Bison shot down an F-16A because of element of surprise and reckless tactics.

Each aircraft has its own advantages/disadvantages which the pilots try to capitalize in an A2A scenario.
 

Blood+

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LCA is not designed to fight everything PAF or PLAAF has. Every jet has it's job, lca is a multirole jet designed as point defense. Don't make it rafale or su30, or even mirage 2000. Currently F16 can only be tackled by rafales, even su30 will have to wait for Astra mk2 & mk3 to have a fight.
Change your flag, please.
 

Corvus Splendens

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LCA is not designed to fight everything PAF or PLAAF has. Every jet has it's job, lca is a multirole jet designed as point defense. Don't make it rafale or su30, or even mirage 2000. Currently F16 can only be tackled by rafales, even su30 will have to wait for Astra mk2 & mk3 to have a fight.
The Mk1A Tejas is superior to paki F-16s in every way, except combat range. And no, Su-30s don't need to wait for Mk2 Astra to fight with old export C5 AMRAAMs, they never needed to. Even the MiG-29 UPG with pylon mounted jammer pods is a match for old block 20 F-16s.
 

MirageBlue

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LCA is not designed to fight everything PAF or PLAAF has. Every jet has it's job, lca is a multirole jet designed as point defense. Don't make it rafale or su30, or even mirage 2000. Currently F16 can only be tackled by rafales, even su30 will have to wait for Astra mk2 & mk3 to have a fight.
What a load of crock.

The PAF has different variants of the F-16. It even has 1 squadron of very old F-16A Blk 15s that were bought second hand from Jordan with the older gen radars. Technologically they're not even as good as the Tejas Mk1, let alone the Tejas Mk1A.

In fact, most of the PAF's F-16 A/Bs are pretty old, dating back to the 1980s and have seen some upgrades to the F-16 AM/BM standard with APG-66V2 radars. Their only truly modern F-16s are the batch of 18 F-16 Blk 52s that they bought in the 2000s using the excuse of the War On Terror. Those use the more modern APG-68 radar.

So this nonsense that LCA is not designed to fight falana dhikna fighter needs to be thrown out the window. In a war, or even a limited operation like 27th Feb, the Tejas Mk1 and Mk1A squadrons may have to face anything from JF-17 Blk 1/2/3 to J-10CE to F-16 A/B/C/D.

The IAF won't offer excuses that ohh our Tejas Mk1s were not designed to fight F-16s so we didn't have them scramble in response to any intrusion or we waited till Su-30MKIs/MiG-29UPGs/Mirage-2000s or Rafales were available.

The Tejas Mk1 armed with the Elta 2032 MMR with Astra Mk1 and HMDS/R-73/ASRAAM/Python V is capable of taking on anything the PAF can throw at it. Especially so when it is also supported by AWACS/AEW&C, has good situational awareness and if the pilot uses the right tactics, the result can go in the Tejas Mk1's favor.

Air combat is not a simple trump card game where you just compare specifications and then declare one candidate a winner based on simply having more thrust/payload/range/weapons, etc.

That is what DACT is for within the IAF, to train pilots against potential aggressors who can use effective weapons and whose pure kinematic performance may be superior. Given what you've written, I don't think you'll even know what DACT is, so I'll explain - Dissimilar Air Combat Training. Tejas pilots have flown with and against every fighter in the IAF and even F-16s in international exercises.

Tejas Mk1 pilots participate in every IAF exercise as well as now have been to international exercises. They are assigned missions and it is for the pilots to extract the most from their jets and fulfill their missions. When it becomes clear that the Tejas Mk1 lacks certain capabilities that it needs to fulfill certain missions, the IAF will raise requests for DRDO/HAL/ADA to develop those capabilities for them. Case in point- the EW suite.

That day, the PAF came in with multiple packages from different vectors and importantly, with EW support. Their EW jet resorted to jamming which helped them to jam comms with lack of SDR being one of the biggest drawbacks.

Where were the vaunted F-16s when the dozen IAF Mirage-2000s ingressed into PoK and dropped their weapons and returned without any interception? What were they able to do that night? Nothing.
 

MiG-29SMT

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What a load of crock.

The PAF has different variants of the F-16. It even has 1 squadron of very old F-16A Blk 15s that were bought second hand from Jordan with the older gen radars. Technologically they're not even as good as the Tejas Mk1, let alone the Tejas Mk1A.

In fact, most of the PAF's F-16 A/Bs are pretty old, dating back to the 1980s and have seen some upgrades to the F-16 AM/BM standard with APG-66V2 radars. Their only truly modern F-16s are the batch of 18 F-16 Blk 52s that they bought in the 2000s using the excuse of the War On Terror. Those use the more modern APG-68 radar.

So this nonsense that LCA is not designed to fight falana dhikna fighter needs to be thrown out the window. In a war, or even a limited operation like 27th Feb, the Tejas Mk1 and Mk1A squadrons may have to face anything from JF-17 Blk 1/2/3 to J-10CE to F-16 A/B/C/D.

The IAF won't offer excuses that ohh our Tejas Mk1s were not designed to fight F-16s so we didn't have them scramble in response to any intrusion or we waited till Su-30MKIs/MiG-29UPGs/Mirage-2000s or Rafales were available.

The Tejas Mk1 armed with the Elta 2032 MMR with Astra Mk1 and HMDS/R-73/ASRAAM/Python V is capable of taking on anything the PAF can throw at it. Especially so when it is also supported by AWACS/AEW&C, has good situational awareness and if the pilot uses the right tactics, the result can go in the Tejas Mk1's favor.

Air combat is not a simple trump card game where you just compare specifications and then declare one candidate a winner based on simply having more thrust/payload/range/weapons, etc.

That is what DACT is for within the IAF, to train pilots against potential aggressors who can use effective weapons and whose pure kinematic performance may be superior. Given what you've written, I don't think you'll even know what DACT is, so I'll explain - Dissimilar Air Combat Training. Tejas pilots have flown with and against every fighter in the IAF and even F-16s in international exercises.

Tejas Mk1 pilots participate in every IAF exercise as well as now have been to international exercises. They are assigned missions and it is for the pilots to extract the most from their jets and fulfill their missions. When it becomes clear that the Tejas Mk1 lacks certain capabilities that it needs to fulfill certain missions, the IAF will raise requests for DRDO/HAL/ADA to develop those capabilities for them. Case in point- the EW suite.

That day, the PAF came in with multiple packages from different vectors and importantly, with EW support. Their EW jet resorted to jamming which helped them to jam comms with lack of SDR being one of the biggest drawbacks.

Where were the vaunted F-16s when the dozen IAF Mirage-2000s ingressed into PoK and dropped their weapons and returned without any interception? What were they able to do that night? Nothing.
well combat aircraft need to face whatever the situation puts them, but India is a nuclear power, LCA while a cute and capable aircraft I think what assures Indian independence is nukes.
 

Bleh

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The Mk1A Tejas is superior to paki F-16s in every way, except combat range. And no, Su-30s don't need to wait for Mk2 Astra to fight with old export C5 AMRAAMs, they never needed to. Even the MiG-29 UPG with pylon mounted jammer pods is a match for old block 20 F-16s.
Actually i think combat range with only internal fuel is higher for Tejas than F-16
 

MirageBlue

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I know this news is not related to the Tejas, but posting it here so that certain people who only know how to criticize the Tejas program for some delays, get some perspective. But I still suspect that the perspective won't come because their motives are to be critical, no matter what.

So many years since the F-35 has been in production for various nations and still various technical and software challenges including those related to the engine are leading to delays.

Next time that any chap talks about how the Tejas Mk1A or something else is delayed by a few months and hence HAL is useless, throw this in his face!

Even Lockheed Martin and Pratt & Whitney, the world's largest fighter manufacturer and engine manufacturers face issues and have a difficult time sticking to schedule.

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The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that problems with F-35 hardware and software have led to delays and cost overruns, the agency said in a report released on 16 May.
In 2023 most Lockheed Martin F-35s and the Pratt & Whitney (P&W) F135 engines that power them were delivered late, with the risk of delays to future deliveries.
“The engine contractor – Pratt & Whitney – did not deliver any engines on time in 2023,” noted the GAO. “Furthermore, in 2023, engines were delivered more than 2 months late, on average, compared with 1 month late in 2022.”

Engine deliveries were suspended following a December 2022 crash of an F-35B during a Department of Defense (DoD) acceptance evaluation flight. The cause was traced to harmonic vibrations in an engine fuel delivery tube, which cracked under the strain. Deliveries resumed in February 2023 following the development of a fix to prevent such resonance.
P&W has delivered a majority of engines late since 2018, with delays worsening each year. The impacts have been limited, the GAO said, because the DoD took delivery of unused engines until they were needed for operational or newly manufactured jets.
The GAO credited P&W for implementing a self-funded USD100 million quality improvement programme, which cut reported quality defects on each engine from an average of 1,443 in 2021 to 647 in 2023.
Nor is Lockheed Martin delivering completed F-35s on time, which the GAO ascribed to a variety of causes, the engine delays following the December 2022 grounding being only one of them.

Just look at the cause of that latest F-35 accident..freaking harmonic vibrations in an engine fuel delivery tube that caused it to break! This is the kind of level of details that need to be taken care of when dealing with aerospace!
 

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