HAL as a company exists under 90% ownership of the state to help armed forces nothing else. They are not incentivized for high-risk/high-reward games like a private corporation.
We should be appreciating HAL for their efforts on engine and 10+ ton helicopter design.
This is precisely why that question was posed to Milspec & not to you. If HAL thinks they're obliging the nation or the armed forces thru such innovations like the OFB both they & people who justify their actions like you need to wake up .
Why? Coz HAL is a PLC today & will be an autonomous if not totally independent of the government sooner rather than later or at least that's the aim. They owe it to themselves first & foremost as I shall skip management & investment jargon like unlocking shareholder value & lessons on innovation etc .
The ALH program, as Milspec rightly pointed out was a much less ambitious project unlike the ADA & started out small following the principles of evolutionary development as opposed to revolutionary development.
For more insight into understanding the difference between these 2 concepts pls check on why the F-35 is such a mess & this post which hits the nail bang on the head -
I mean consider doesn't mean going to do. The original idea was to replace the F-16 with the F-35 . So if they've already commissioned a study , I'd think there was definitely a rethink in the USAF otherwise the logical thing to do is place orders with LM for replacements of the F-16 & that too...
www.strategicfront.org
To come back to the issue at hand the fact that the design team was in house also helped HAL as they were in control of the entire project since the start unlike the ADA LCA project where ADA, HAL, MoD & IAF were on the 4 cardinal points of the compass.
We know enough today on how that project proceeded. A strong argument for why OEMs ought to have their own in house design & R&D teams as opposed to the Soviet model we've selected & are now stuck with.
Finally, HAL discovered the proverbial goose that laid golden eggs in hptrs. It was a niche virgin territory & before the MoD could get ideas like perhaps involving ADA or some other DRDO lab, HAL launched the ALH with due sanctions & over the years have developed a mature product line apart from gaining experience & maturing as a proper true blue OEM themselves as opposed to assemblers & system integrators which is what they were earlier with little of these experiences coming in handy when proceeding with the ALH project.
The next step ought to have been somewhere between evolutionary & revolutionary. If as
@Milspec points out HAL lacked design expertise, I'm sure consultancy from the major hptr OEMs could've been undertaken. Instead HAL decided to play safe.
I'm just hoping they show more appetite for risk taking while coming up with future iterations coz the hptrs the West or even Russia is coming up with in the same & other classes of heptrs in terms of sheer design innovation is on a different plane altogether. I'm not too familiar with Chinese developments in this field but wouldn't be surprised if they've kept up pace with the West.
