LCA Tejas Mk1 & Mk1A - News and discussions

Ashwin said:

HAL plans fourth assembly line for Tejas jets at Nashik to make up for delivery delay​

The failure of United States to deliver the F-404 engines for Tejas Mk-1 is the reason for HAL not being able to start the production of home-grown combat jets for the Indian Air Force, which is struggling with depleting squadron numbers.

New Delhi: Aiming to accelerate the production of Tejas LCA, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited plans a fourth assembly line for manufacturing the home-grown fighter jet to make up for the lost time once General Electric starts supplying the engines, top sources told DH.
The failure of United States to deliver the F-404 engines for Tejas Mk-1 is the reason for HAL not being able to start the production of the combat aircraft for the Indian Air Force, which is struggling with depleting squadron numbers.

“GE currently has a backlog of 26 engines, but the company said it would deliver the first one by March and subsequently ramp up the production,” sources said here.

HAL has two LCA assembly lines in Bengaluru with a capacity of producing eight aircraft each. It also has a third facility at Nashik that also has the capacity of making eight aircrafts annually. The first LCA Tejas from the Nashik plant is likely to roll out by March.
The aviation major is now planning a second assembly line at Nashik, but it will come up only after the supply of engines from GE becomes regular. The company will need 1.5 years to establish the new facility.
The Defence Ministry in 2021 signed an agreement with the HAL to supply 83 LCA Tejas Mk-1 – 73 fighters and 10 trainers – to the IAF at a cost of Rs 45,696 crores. For these aircraft, GE was to supply 99 engines.

While the US company claims "supply-side constraints" for its failure to deliver the engines in time, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh took up the issue with his US counterpart in his last visit. Indian officials also held a number of meetings with their US counterparts to resolve the crisis.

The stalemate in LCA production comes at a time when the number of IAF fighter squadrons is going down.

As against the sanctioned 42 squadrons of fighter jets, the IAF currently has 31 squadrons, but the strength will dip further this year with the phasing out of the last two squadrons of MiG-21s. Also the two squadrons of first generation Tejas LCA are used primarily for training.

Earlier this week, Air Chief Marshal AP Singh said the IAF didn’t receive even the first batch of all the 40 Tejas LCA though the first one was inducted way back in 2016. HAL has supplied 38 aircraft so far and the last two trainers will be delivered shortly.

From the existing stock of reserve engines, HAL has produced the first LCA Mk-1A while the second one is on the assembly line. The first LCA Mk-1A is now flying for various trials and is likely to fly in the upcoming Aero India 2025.
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HAL should open 12 assembly lines so that we can get planned 24 aircrafts per year at the rate of 2 Aircrafts per assembly line per year provided GE delivers engines in time.
 
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HariPrasad said:
HAL should open 12 assembly lines so that we can get planned 24 aircrafts per year at the rate of 2 Aircrafts per assembly line per year provided GE delivers engines in time.
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HAL already has 2 Tejas assembly lines in Bangalore capable of churning out a combined 16 aircraft/year and an other one in Nashik capable of churning out another 8 aircraft/year.

You don't need 12 lines to produce 24 aircraft annually.
 
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Speedster1 said:
The MKI could use a composite radome too. If it could be made frequency-selective, even better.

btw has the IFR probe on the Mk1/A (that earlier came from Cobham UK) been indigenized too?
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MKI UPG. will have substantially lower RCS from all-aspects in loaded configuration but basically in X-Band. That shall reduce the distance in which it could be tracked/targeted and increase its survivability. All our airborne fighter programmes like MK1A, MK2, TEDBF, AMCA & MKI UPG. are interlinked and feed-off advancements from each other.

MKI UPG. would literally be a 5-minus gen plane without full on VLO stealth. But nonetheless very effective with CCAs and other advancements.
 
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Rajput Lion said:
This shall decrease its frontal RCS quite a lot @HariPrasad
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Isn't this just for indigenizing the radome so we're not dependent on Cobham?

Fighter radomes are transparent to X-band, so their composition doesn't matter from a RCS perspective all that much. It does from a weight-saving perspective though.

This is why the AESA array face on most stealth jets is slanted, so that enemy X-band waves from the front get deflected upwards instead of bouncing back to his receiver. Some non-stealth jets that seek to obtain lower RCS (like F/A-18SH) also employ the technique.

f35-APG81-radar.jpg
 
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HariPrasad said:
I think earlier composite radome was tried but it was found restrict radar waves and hence quartz radome was sourced from Chobham if I am right. Are we trying same again?
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This is apparently for MK2. However, once we're successful, implementing the same for MK1A won't be difficult.

@Parthu
If a radome is made of particular composites, it may very well absorb some particular RF bands completely. FSS Radomes are next step of evolution which we're developing for AMCA. Yeah, won't be too effective for X-band but even if the aforementioned can just deflect/absorb other RF bands, RCS in those specific bands could be theoretically reduced significantly.
 
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Rajput Lion said:
MKI UPG. would literally be a 5-minus gen plane without full on VLO stealth. But nonetheless very effective with CCAs and other advancements.
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Not possible so far as stealth aspect is concern. No matter how hard you try, you can not reduce RCS of this plane beyond certain level and it will be visible to a good AESA radar from atleast 150 k.m. It is far from being a 5- generation plane. You can have everything of 5th generation like electronics and Weapons but certainly not RCS. Rafale is as good as any fifth-generation plane in other aspects except RCS.
 
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HariPrasad said:
Not possible so far as stealth aspect is concern. No matter how hard you try, you can not reduce RCS of this plane beyond certain level and it will be visible to a good AESA radar from atleast 150 k.m. It is far from being a 5- generation plane. You can have everything of 5th generation like electronics and Weapons but certainly not RCS. Rafale is as good as any fifth-generation plane in other aspects except RCS.
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Just wait n watch;)
 
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