You are daydreaming my poor man! The LCA is nowhere near the Gripen on all counts!
But do read on to see why it doesn't matter ...
No, absolutely not!
The Tejas has to be fixed in-house; it's imperative for India's future.
Let's be brutally honest and refer to my above answer to MULUBJA
in saying that the LCA is not a great success. But whatever the true
level of the achievement, it was an Indian venture and should be fi-
nished by India for two reasons.
First, there is already so much foreign in it that if you add SAAB tech
it won't be a local product anymore once fixed!
Second, one can learn even from abject failure ( and Tejas is still above that ).
The realization of one's errors allows for changes in direction to refine
a heading or process in general. That is already at work in the revision
of DRDO and the proposition of a private line alongside HAL's own for
either Mk1A or Mk2.
You want to Make In India? Well then, that includes Making Mistakes
In India. Deal with it ( both meanings )!
At worst, Tejas will never be all that great, more like reasonably useful.
Fine! Have it do minimal duty as a replacement to the foreign planes &
retire it a bit early by modern standards. There's no shame in that as long
as the lessons are learned and correctives applied.
Here the correctives should be found in the following local project : AMCA.
That's why the ToT from the Rafale deal is, apparently so, based on helping
the next projects.
If you must have SAAB know-how, get it for LCA's successor! ( Like LSA thinghie )
Because getting it for Tejas would be like sub-contracting your homework!!!
A bit less dreams & feelings and a bit more pride and hard work, please!
Yes, you can! Just do it! ... all the motivational slogans you want but go!!!
Tay.
Lets be brutally honest !!!
India tried its first indegenous fighter plane as MARUT for Ground attack combat Plane. Though MARUT was the excellent design, and one of the Cleanest Airframe of its Time, the project was hit by the west by denying the Engine it was designed and required, and Soviet didn't have the required engine. This hit the project, and the Marut remains underpower, till it was retired, and IAF goes for the Anglo-french Jaguar. The blow was tremendous and the whole effort and the tech. gains made were wasted, and the team of HAL consiquently retired. This makes India very cautious with the LCA, and remove the engine dependency, national turbofan engine project Kaveri was linked with the LCA project.
LCA project though is the project of ADA, but for that for that hundred of state labortory have to created for various technologies, validation, certifications which was not in the country earlier.
If we compare the SAAB Gripen NG, they already had the experience of the Draken, and Gripen A/B/C with an active experience of various projects in European, and the technologies and LRU's developed by various European and U.S OEMs. SAAB had access to world class global labs, for testing and technical help.
The original plan for LCA was simple, build a plane for the replacement of MIG-21MF, MIG-21Bis, with low cost, tailess Delta plane, with the modular design concept powered with indegenous Kaveri Engine, and with Erriscon PS-05/A I/J-band multi-function radar.
But then, PAF started equip themself with the top fighter plane in the whole South Asia, the F-16 A/B. So IAF was forced to change its ISQR, which increases the LRU counts which increases the wt, and consequently increases the thrust requirement.
ADA was created and took the help from the Dassalt for the design of the LCA
Thus Kaveri was forced to be delinked from the LCA project.
For the Indegenisation percentage, lets be honest, no country makes 100% fighter of its own. For the diffrent electronics and lrus check this indegenous soulution being developed with LCA.
Two critical technology was lagging for the LCA, which was Powerplant, a engine, and the MMR. For the engine the GE 404 engine have selected for the initial order, it dosen't means that Kaveri have been Scrapped, infact even today, ADA could fly the LCA with the Kaveri prototype, offcorse suboptimally like the Chinese did with their J-10 B.
With MMR, India was working on the AESA Radar from 90's secretely and yes till now it failed from developing any Radar which could be put inside the nose of the fighter plane.
What is the problem ??
Problem, is that DRDO/ADA makes the Bite too big, they can chew and the subsystem, would soon becomes obsolutes, and the process of higher model, and development should be continued. The reason for why they took the whole route of doing everything them self was explained above, but now we should leave the past behind and look forward.
My Suggestion
- We should think what is attainable and what is not, and go for subsequently upgrades now.
- All the Labs should be Decentrallized and expertize based, e.g One OEM developing Electronics should only focus on that part will full report of performance given to the RM anually.
- HAL should be the Integrator, and all the Fuss ADA made with the IOC and FOC wouldn't have been there on the first hand, and ADA should be limited to only the desing and development agency.
- National effort and project should be delared for the Turbo fan Tech (Chinese are investing 60 Billion in Fighter plane development and a big chunk going on the Engine)
- A national Agency like DARPA in U.S to stop the situation when IAF looking at the ADA face, to tell them what they should buy or what they offer, and ADA looking at the IAF pls don't take 5 years to formulate the ASQR reading the Brouchers of various OEMs and didn't knew whethere it is achievable in one fighter plane.
Just google the number I gave.
And take note of this: And this bit is not in the open domain completely...
Then how do you know if not in Open Domain ??
You See I had seen
Osama Bin Laden alive roaming in Mumbai yesterday buying tomatoes and this bit is not in the open Domain.
Baki lage raho with your LSA and Jockey with beating the Drum. There is one more Prasut Das a professor and Mtech in Mechanical Engineer, even he had a design of the future IAF plane with MIG-21 wings, go to its blogs and plans and projects, and even diagram and detailed design concept and pls don't forgot to invite him.
Do you know LCA was not the alone project which stated in 80's arround Dassault, there is a Romanian project with one prototype IAR-95 which was planned with the French Engine, and designed by Dassault
There was Indonesian Plan to build the plane with Dassault Design, and French Engine and not to forgot French Rafale. May be more.
How many survives.
And name one PVT OEM which have the experience and expertise to build the fighter plane in India, which you claim would start building the LCA in the 2nd Line, without having to train its staff nd technicians and invested to build a line and that too with the order of mere 100.
And do you know how many LRUs and subsystem does the HAL produced and have the IPRs, then you would know what's remains with the ADA,
How about that HAL, just give the subcontracts to the PVT contractors to provide the worksforce and subsystem manufacturing, so what's the big deal. HAL is the biggest OEM in India as far as Aerospace is concerned, and it is only capable of building the LCA as quickly as possible, only needed is to build the Tier 1 and Tier-3 subcontrators for the subsystems.
all the other jets out.
