A note on India's Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) project
Saturday , December 27, 2014 at 12 : 12
The Chinese today are flying two fifth generation fighter prototypes, at least one of which will enter series production sometime in the next decade. It of course remains to be seen whether the Chinese J-20 design will ultimately be powered by a Chinese low bypass turbofan engine or not. India meanwhile is still haggling with Russia on work share and tech share issues before it inks the final development contract for the Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA) that will be based on the Sukhoi T-50 PAK-FA baseline.
Regardless, it has been clear for some time now that India will have to mount a serious fifth generation effort of its own in order to both free itself from dependency on any other country as well build its aerospace sector on the foundation created through the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) program. For that purpose the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) that oversees the LCA program has now increased the pace of activity with respect to the Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) program. However for the AMCA to reach fruition in a timely manner, the government of the day would do well to invest more in creating deeper aerospace development infrastructure.
The LCA program has taken the time it has to mature precisely because there was a hiatus in domestic fighter aircraft development post the HAL HF-24 Marut that was India's first homegrown jet fighter. No timely follow on programme to the Marut meant that both human and capital resources had to be built up concurrently even as the LCA program progressed contributing to delays. Today however via the LCA program India has a National Flight Test Centre to carry out flight testing with mobile telemetry stations, system design & evaluation facility for model based evaluations, a virtual reality facility to study assembly, accessibility and other related aspects, a lightning test facility and an explosive atmosphere test facility. However all this is not nearly enough for India to scale up its aerospace sector and take it to the next level.
For one, India is woefully short of wind tunnel facilities at the moment.
Internal ADA projections reveal that as opposed to an emerging requirement of 8000 load outs a year, India has the capability to service only 1500 load outs annually through existing facilities. This lack of capacity is one of the reasons why the AMCA has had to undergo wind tunnel testing at the Calspan Wind Tunnel in the United States of America, before its final aerodynamic layout was frozen. Also, the dimensions of the current wind tunnel facilities at the National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL), Bangalore, can accommodate only rather smallish models. Calspan's dimensions allowed larger models of the AMCA to be tested than what could be done at home it seems.
The AMCA is obviously larger than the LCA and is in the 'medium' category with a max take off weight (MTOW) of 25 tons. The fighter will have the usual roster of what is typically considered 'fifth generation' including obviously stealth, supercruising ability, an active electronically scanned array (AESA) fire control radar, thrust vectoring for super manoeuvrability, networked data fusion etc. and will allow modular construction.
The state of technology in what goes into making a fifth generation fighter is unevenly developed in India at the moment. Take stealth for instance, while Indian designers certainly know how to build a stealthy airframe in terms of pure aerodynamic shaping, Dr K Tamilmani, Director General (Aero),
DRDO says that much work remains to be done in areas such as radar absorbent materials, conformal antennae and flush air data sensors etc. in order to achieve near all aspect stealth. In domains such as coatings that reduce exhaust exit temperatures, India has some experience having developed the same for the Advanced Light Helicopter program and more work is underway at IIT Mumbai.
Moreover, even as various aspects of stealth technology are being worked upon, the fact remains that the AMCA test vehicles will be powered by imported low bypass turbofan engines. According to Dr Tamilmani, an engine selection process is not just underway, but is actually being hastened. Six engine original equipment makers (OEMs) have been sounded out for what is essentially an upgraded & up-rated version of an existing engine that could provide 110 kilo newton (KN) of wet thrust. "The RFPs will be sent out by April 2015, and in another eight months we will firm up our choice of engine to power the AMCA," says Dr Tamilmani. "We however have to do a lot work on our own to develop thrust vectoring for the AMCA," he adds.
At the moment,
the greatest hypothetical weight configuration of the AMCA design (with fuel and a certain weapons mix) has been calculated to be around 24.2 tons and ADA designers are confident that even with 105 KN engines, the AMCA would be able to meet design aerodynamic parameters. However given the experience with the LCA program, ADA this time really wants that 5 KN margin in order to be safe rather than sorry. It seems that the AMCA will also have an unusually large internal weapons bay that will have the capacity to accommodate around three tons worth of weapons. The AMCA will also feature six underwing pylons for externally carried weapons.
The total spend on the programme so far has been under Rs 100 crore. The project has been taken up on the basis of a preliminary staff qualitative requirement from the Indian Air Force (IAF) and is currently in the project definition phase. Dr Tamilmani believes that for around Rs 4000 crore it would be possible to build 3 or 4 flying prototypes, the first of which should take to the skies by 2020-21.
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Saurav Jha's Blog : A note on India's Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) project
You have to look beyond the promises, since they are trying to sell the development to the MoD and IAF, without having any base to start such a development.
