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HAL Tejas | Updates, News & Discussions-[Thread 2]

For the first time Tejas to be deployed on Pakistani Border:


DZmCwF7VwAENfL6.jpg:large


@Taygibay

See what Indians are doing with their failed fighter.

Failed??
Still better than the joint venture fighter having 58% share in painting the plane
 
I don't understand everything here (see link) but I'm happy they are presenting their research papers in reputable conferences.

For short, they reduced "bad" vibrations from
within the blades but the important part is how.

We've learned during Président Macron's visit
that a lot of help will come in the form of testing
sessions on UHQuality benches available only in
France [ versus in Bharat ].

Then you want to specify for some people that
work has begun but is hard to identify because
it is after all secret and done in sequences.

When the deal was cleared, Safran engineers
came to India and were given needs by DRDO.
Areas of exchange were defined by time & scope.
Small and urgent started then or soon after.

These projects are bundled by value until 1B€ is
reached and offsets/ToT is completed.

We literally can't know until some clue like that
link you gave comes our way.

See what Indians are doing with their failed fighter.

Image headline : "... Tejas in operational role will
be a big boost to Make In India programme ..."
Yeah, they're using it to promote the government's
image! Usually, one picks successes for that purpose though.

So Tejas got declared operational a little too fast
as was the F-35. Your defence clowning, not my
circus?
The important thing is that you can compare your
so-so fighter to theirs and see which is "modern".

Both took way too many years and way too much
money to get to FOC so it's a fair comparison? :angel:

Good day both, Tay.
 
NEW DELHI: The Indian Air Force’s pan-India exercise Gagan Shakti-2018, for practising war-time drills witnessed the IAF pushing the limits of its every fighter aircraft, including the Tejas, which entailed conducting six sorties per day on all of them, totalling to about 9,000 sorties. For the Tejas, this is a good development as the IAF usually sticks to around three sorties per day on every Tejas.

However, the Tejas was not without problems and had developed snags during the exercise, top IAF officials said on Tuesday.

Nevertheless, the IAF has expressed happiness with the performance of the Tejas Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) and is looking towards faster production of them, explained the officials. This is significant as according to the reports, IAF has been critical of the operational capability of the Tejas, which also has several significant shortfalls.

The IAF, earlier this month, had issued a Request for Information, stating its intent to procure 110 new fighters. Officials added that the high serviceability (80%) of the aircraft was possible during the exercise due to a dedicated maintenance team. “The Air Headquarters was also monitoring the situation and we had people checking from where spares can be made available. So we ensured that the aircraft serviceability didn’t go down,” explained an official. “The logistics stamina of the IAF and ..




https://economictimes.indiatimes.co...er-gagan-shakti-2018/articleshow/63905916.cms
 
IAF pushes for faster production of Tejas after Gagan Shakti-2018
By Shaurya Karanbir Gurung, ET Bureau | Updated: Apr 25, 2018, 12.02 PM IST
tejas-bccl.jpg

The Tejas was used during the exercise to check its efficiency in operations such as ground attack and other strike missions.

NEW DELHI: The Indian Air Force’s pan-India exercise Gagan Shakti-2018, for practising war-time drills witnessed the IAF pushing the limits of its every fighter aircraft, including the Tejas, which entailed conducting six sorties per day on all of them, totalling to about 9,000 sorties. For the Tejas, this is a good development as the IAF usually sticks to around three sorties per day on every Tejas.

However, the Tejas was not without problems and had developed snags during the exercise, top IAF officials said on Tuesday.

Nevertheless, the IAF has expressed happiness with the performance of the Tejas Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) and is looking towards faster production of them, explained the officials. This is significant as according to the reports, IAF has been critical of the operational capability of the Tejas, which also has several significant shortfalls.

A senior IAF official dealing with Gagan Shakti, which was conducted between April 8 and 22, explained that fighter aircraft, including the Tejas, Sukhoi-30 and MiG-29, undertook ‘surge operations’. These operations mean generating maximum number of sorties in a 24-hours cycle. “We have carried out our trials and we will be able to generate six sorties per Tejas per day for all the eight Tejas,” said the official, adding that these number of sorties were conducted on every Tejas during the exercise. The six sorties per day for the fighters was done on days when it didn’t have missions such as long distance.

The Tejas was used during the exercise to check its efficiency in operations such as ground attack and other strike missions. “We are happy with the performance of the Tejas and are looking forward to the faster production of them,” said another senior official.

tejasgraphic.jpg


The Tejas, however, also faced different types of snags during the exercise. “These were routine snags. But we were able to recover from the snags we encountered. They didn’t affect the operation of the Tejas,” said an officia,l adding that the snags were not a nagging problem.
The exercise was a major employment of the Tejas by the IAF, which conducted more than 11,000 sorties on over 1100 aircraft, including combat, transport and helicopters. Out of this, 9,000 sorties were conducted by fighter aircraft. “This was a peacetime exercise and we generated large number of sorties. During war, we will generate higher number of sorties than what we did during the exercise,” said an official.

This is the state despite the IAF having only 31fighter squadrons when it needs 42 to tackle the collusive threat of Pakistan and China. It conducted offensive and defensive operations along both the western and eastern fronts. “We tried to maximise what we can do with our current capability,” said an official, adding that with more number of fighters the IAF’s capabilities will rise.
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The IAF, earlier this month, had issued a Request for Information, stating its intent to procure 110 new fighters. Officials added that the high serviceability (80%) of the aircraft was possible during the exercise due to a dedicated maintenance team. “The Air Headquarters was also monitoring the situation and we had people checking from where spares can be made available. So we ensured that the aircraft serviceability didn’t go down,” explained an official. “The logistics stamina of the IAF and the ability to sustain continuous operations through day and night was put through a rigorous assessment,” said another official.

https://m.economictimes.com/news/de...er-gagan-shakti-2018/articleshow/63905916.cms
 
Press Information Bureau
Government of India
Ministry of Defence
28-April-2018 12:40 IST

LCA Tejas Achieves Yet Another Milestone Towards FOC Certification

Tejas, the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) successfully fired Derby Air-to-Air Beyond Visual Range Missile to expand the firing envelope as well as to demonstrate safe operation of the aircraft during missile plume ingestion into the aircraft engine under worst case scenarios. The missile was launched from LCATejas piloted by Wg Cdr Siddharth Singh on 27 April 2018 from the firing range off the Goa coast after exhaustive study of the missile separation characteristics and plume envelope. LCATejas has been designed & developed by DRDO’s autonomous society – Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA).

Integration of Derby, a BVR class missile is one of the major objectives of Final Operational Clearance (FOC) of LCATejas.

The aircraft was tracked by two other Tejas aircraft in close formation to capture the firing event in the specially instrumented high speed cameras for detailed analysis and comparison with the simulation model for validation. The entire planning, practice sorties and final firing was carried out by ADA and it’s National Flight Test Centre (NFTC) officials Cmde JA Maolankar and GpCapt A Kabadwal, IAF, DG(AQA), HAL & INS HANSA.

Based on the successful integration and demonstration, Regional Centre for Military Airworthiness (RCMA), a unit of DRDO has cleared the series production aircraft of Squadron 45, to be equipped with Derby operational capability. LCATejas has successfully completed a series of captive flight trials to clear Derby for the full operational capability in the entire FOC envelope. In the past, Tejas has qualified for the armaments and missile release related trials.

Raksha Mantri Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman has complimented DRDO and other agencies involved for making LCATejas fighter jet, a world class aircraft platform.

Chairman DRDO& Secretary Department of Defence R&D Dr. S Christopher, congratulated and said that with this firing, LCATejas achieved another major milestone towards FOC certification.

image001SYRG.jpg




NAo/Rajib
 
GTRE to fly Kaveri in a test aircraft again next year before Aero India 2019 after instituting necessary changes outlined by Snecma.
__________________________________________

Foreign expertise key to fire up India's jets
While India has managed to create a fourth-generation jet fighter, it is yet to perfect a low-bypass turbofan (LBTF) engine that can power an aircraft of this class. Indeed, without mastering contemporary jet engine technology, India’s objective of becoming a true aerospace power will remain unfulfilled.

As such, after years of domestic effort by the Defence Research and Development Organisation’s (DRDO) Gas Turbine Research Establishment (GTRE) to develop the Kaveri LBTF engine on its own, India is now turning towards foreign handholding to modify the existing design in order to make it flightworthy.

While the current collaborative effort is limited in scope, a much bigger programme is needed to bring India up to speed in jet engine technology. It must be noted that China is investing very heavily in this domain and will likely steal a march over India if the latter does not do the same.

After some Rs 2,133 crores in expenditure and a couple of decades of development, GTRE’s Kaveri has not yet met its design goals in their entirety. As opposed to a targeted wet thrust level of 81 kilo newtons (KN), the current standard of preparation (SoP) prototypes manage 7-8% less than that figure.

SoP prototypes have achieved dry thrust goals though having demonstrated about 52 KN without afterburner. However, current Kaveri SoP prototypes are not flight capable given their tendency to stall in certain regimes, besides other reliability issues. It has been clear for a while now that foreign expertise is needed to modify the existing SoP level design to make it flightworthy.

This is precisely why the DRDO has engaged France’s Safran Aircraft Engines (Snecma) to perform a design audit on the Kaveri. At the moment, Snecma is preparing a detailed report outlining the design changes needed to create flightworthy Kaveri prototypes.

Once Snecma’s report is ready, GTRE expects to get the go-ahead for the next phase of work that will involve modifying existing SoP prototypes and testing them, with a view to creating new prototypes that can be integrated with an actual flight capable airframe. Snecma will also be a consultant for aircraft integration activities.

As it turns out, GTRE is yet to access some Rs 500 crore in funds that were approved years ago by New Delhi for aircraft integration work as part of the overall outlay for the Kaveri programme. Now that GTRE is looking to actually fly a Tejas test vehicle using a Kaveri engine, it is likely to write to the Centre to disburse this sum.

It seems GTRE will first incorporate Snecma’s recommended design changes onto three existing SoP Kaveri prototypes called K6, K8 and K9. These will be tested both on GTRE’s testbed and on a flying testbed at the Gromov Flight Research Institute in Russia.

After which, a few refined prototypes will be built that are likely to meet the Centre for Military Airworthiness and Certification’s (CEMILAC) reliability standards and receive certification for a limited number of flights on board a Tejas class aircraft.

One of these engines post-CEMILAC clearance will be integrated with a Tejas prototype and some 30-40 sorties will be conducted to demonstrate India’s ability to build a LBTF in the 70-80 KN class. GTRE expects to accomplish all this by Aero India 2019.

Greater thrust needed

However, an engine with this level of thrust is inadequate to power even current combat capable Tejas variants, not to mention future ones. Indeed, the Tejas MK-2 design, given its much greater maximum take-off weight will need a jet engine in the 90 KN wet thrust class.

It is felt that the work done on the Kaveri programme should be taken forward by enlisting Snecma’s help to create a Kaveri-derived engine in the 90 KN category that would be compatible with the Tejas. To be compatible with the Tejas, this engine would have to retain the dimensions of the existing Kaveri design with compressor and turbine sizes remaining unchanged.

So, the chief way in which a similar sized derivative can be uprated to 90 KN would be by having an engine core that can withstand much higher turbine entry temperatures. This, in turn, would require the core to be made up of different materials, such as next generation titanium alloys, from what make up the current Kaveri engine core called Kabini.

This undertaking will not prove cheap though. Dr K Tamilmani, former Director General of DRDO’s Aeronautics cluster, estimates that this effort may cost Rs 10,000 crores and take a decade to complete if work began now.

However, given that India is likely to import engines worth several multiples of that figure in the next 15 years or so, the expense could well be worth it, since the expertise gained could allow India to indigenise several classes of jet engines, besides delivering an indigenous LBTF for the Indian Air Force’s Tejas fleet.

Incidentally, the Chinese have already understood the critical importance of being able to design and build modern jet engines and have apparently engaged thousands of technical personnel in a multi-billion dollar effort to achieve the same.

https://www.deccanherald.com/amp?params=LzIwMTcvMDQvMTkvNTg0NTIz
 
GTRE to fly Kaveri in a test aircraft again next year before Aero India 2019 after instituting necessary changes outlined by Snecma.
__________________________________________

Foreign expertise key to fire up India's jets
While India has managed to create a fourth-generation jet fighter, it is yet to perfect a low-bypass turbofan (LBTF) engine that can power an aircraft of this class. Indeed, without mastering contemporary jet engine technology, India’s objective of becoming a true aerospace power will remain unfulfilled.

As such, after years of domestic effort by the Defence Research and Development Organisation’s (DRDO) Gas Turbine Research Establishment (GTRE) to develop the Kaveri LBTF engine on its own, India is now turning towards foreign handholding to modify the existing design in order to make it flightworthy.

While the current collaborative effort is limited in scope, a much bigger programme is needed to bring India up to speed in jet engine technology. It must be noted that China is investing very heavily in this domain and will likely steal a march over India if the latter does not do the same.

After some Rs 2,133 crores in expenditure and a couple of decades of development, GTRE’s Kaveri has not yet met its design goals in their entirety. As opposed to a targeted wet thrust level of 81 kilo newtons (KN), the current standard of preparation (SoP) prototypes manage 7-8% less than that figure.

SoP prototypes have achieved dry thrust goals though having demonstrated about 52 KN without afterburner. However, current Kaveri SoP prototypes are not flight capable given their tendency to stall in certain regimes, besides other reliability issues. It has been clear for a while now that foreign expertise is needed to modify the existing SoP level design to make it flightworthy.

This is precisely why the DRDO has engaged France’s Safran Aircraft Engines (Snecma) to perform a design audit on the Kaveri. At the moment, Snecma is preparing a detailed report outlining the design changes needed to create flightworthy Kaveri prototypes.

Once Snecma’s report is ready, GTRE expects to get the go-ahead for the next phase of work that will involve modifying existing SoP prototypes and testing them, with a view to creating new prototypes that can be integrated with an actual flight capable airframe. Snecma will also be a consultant for aircraft integration activities.

As it turns out, GTRE is yet to access some Rs 500 crore in funds that were approved years ago by New Delhi for aircraft integration work as part of the overall outlay for the Kaveri programme. Now that GTRE is looking to actually fly a Tejas test vehicle using a Kaveri engine, it is likely to write to the Centre to disburse this sum.

It seems GTRE will first incorporate Snecma’s recommended design changes onto three existing SoP Kaveri prototypes called K6, K8 and K9. These will be tested both on GTRE’s testbed and on a flying testbed at the Gromov Flight Research Institute in Russia.

After which, a few refined prototypes will be built that are likely to meet the Centre for Military Airworthiness and Certification’s (CEMILAC) reliability standards and receive certification for a limited number of flights on board a Tejas class aircraft.

One of these engines post-CEMILAC clearance will be integrated with a Tejas prototype and some 30-40 sorties will be conducted to demonstrate India’s ability to build a LBTF in the 70-80 KN class. GTRE expects to accomplish all this by Aero India 2019.

Greater thrust needed

However, an engine with this level of thrust is inadequate to power even current combat capable Tejas variants, not to mention future ones. Indeed, the Tejas MK-2 design, given its much greater maximum take-off weight will need a jet engine in the 90 KN wet thrust class.

It is felt that the work done on the Kaveri programme should be taken forward by enlisting Snecma’s help to create a Kaveri-derived engine in the 90 KN category that would be compatible with the Tejas. To be compatible with the Tejas, this engine would have to retain the dimensions of the existing Kaveri design with compressor and turbine sizes remaining unchanged.

So, the chief way in which a similar sized derivative can be uprated to 90 KN would be by having an engine core that can withstand much higher turbine entry temperatures. This, in turn, would require the core to be made up of different materials, such as next generation titanium alloys, from what make up the current Kaveri engine core called Kabini.

This undertaking will not prove cheap though. Dr K Tamilmani, former Director General of DRDO’s Aeronautics cluster, estimates that this effort may cost Rs 10,000 crores and take a decade to complete if work began now.

However, given that India is likely to import engines worth several multiples of that figure in the next 15 years or so, the expense could well be worth it, since the expertise gained could allow India to indigenise several classes of jet engines, besides delivering an indigenous LBTF for the Indian Air Force’s Tejas fleet.

Incidentally, the Chinese have already understood the critical importance of being able to design and build modern jet engines and have apparently engaged thousands of technical personnel in a multi-billion dollar effort to achieve the same.

https://www.deccanherald.com/amp?params=LzIwMTcvMDQvMTkvNTg0NTIz
frankly why do we really expect french to help us build the engine which will deny them a future market for their products?
If we look at the amount spent Rs2333 crores ( around $500 million) for a decade is peanuts. Any big big MNC would spend that amount in a year. Giving access to foreign agency will only end in monetary exploitation or sabotage.

Problem is that one agency is leading/involved in the effort which cuts down the probability of break through. Instead we should have several agencies partnering with private companies which should compete with each other to build the product.
 
frankly why do we really expect french to help us build the engine which will deny them a future market for their products?
If we look at the amount spent Rs2333 crores ( around $500 million) for a decade is peanuts. Any big big MNC would spend that amount in a year. Giving access to foreign agency will only end in monetary exploitation or sabotage.

Problem is that one agency is leading/involved in the effort which cuts down the probability of break through. Instead we should have several agencies partnering with private companies which should compete with each other to build the product.

Do you think the French is helping for free? They are not providing any TOT, just conducting a thorough audit of the engine for a fees. They will give there suggestions as to which parts needs to be replaced, they wont tell how to make those parts.
 
The French help runs into billions of dollars in offsets.

I at least want the dry thrust Kaveri certified and ready for Ghatak as soon as possible.
 
Do you think the French is helping for free? They are not providing any TOT, just conducting a thorough audit of the engine for a fees. They will give there suggestions as to which parts needs to be replaced, they wont tell how to make those parts.
They are getting money to know where we are in development stage and most importantly to BS us bigtime.
 
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