HAL Tejas | Updates, News & Discussions
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Ministry of Defence08-August, 2011 18:11 IST
Kaveri Engine Project
The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has made no agreement with a French firm to develop the Kaveria aero engine to be used for the Light Combat Aircraft, Tejas. However, DRDO is negotiating with M/s Snecma, France for co-development and co-production of Kaveri aero engine for the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas MK-II. The project proposal will be put up for Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) approval after the completion of price negotiation.
Indian Air Force (IAF) has been consulted at every stage and is part of negotiation. IAF has cleared the Kaveri engine co-development proposal with M/s Snecma, France. The draft engine technical specification has been examined and cleared by IAF. IAF has further suggested that the engine design should have minimal impact on the LCA Tejas airframe for future retrofitment.
This information was given by Defence Minister Shri A.K. Antony in a written reply to Shri Francisco Sardinha in Lok Sabha today.
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Kaveri Engine Project
The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has made no agreement with a French firm to develop the Kaveria aero engine to be used for the Light Combat Aircraft, Tejas. However, DRDO is negotiating with M/s Snecma, France for co-development and co-production of Kaveri aero engine for the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas MK-II. The project proposal will be put up for Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) approval after the completion of price negotiation.
Indian Air Force (IAF) has been consulted at every stage and is part of negotiation. IAF has cleared the Kaveri engine co-development proposal with M/s Snecma, France. The draft engine technical specification has been examined and cleared by IAF. IAF has further suggested that the engine design should have minimal impact on the LCA Tejas airframe for future retrofitment.
This information was given by Defence Minister Shri A.K. Antony in a written reply to Shri Francisco Sardinha in Lok Sabha today.
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SpArK
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DRDO-Snecma Tie-up On Kaveri Still In Talks
The Indian MoD made the following statement in Parliament today about the Kaveri turbofan engine programme: "The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has made no agreement with a French firm to develop the Kaveri aero engine to be used for the Light Combat Aircraft, Tejas. However, DRDO is negotiating with M/s Snecma, France for co-development and co-production of Kaveri aero engine for the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas Mk.2. The project proposal will be put up for Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) approval after the completion of price negotiation. Indian Air Force (IAF) has been consulted at every stage and is part of negotiation. IAF has cleared the Kaveri engine co-development proposal with M/s Snecma, France. The draft engine technical specification has been examined and cleared by IAF. IAF has further suggested that the engine design should have minimal impact on the LCA Tejas airframe for future retrofitment."
In September last year, the DRDO/ADA officially announced that they had chosen the GE F414 engine to power the Tejas Mk.2. GE later announced that they would be supplying 99 engines to the Mk.2 effort. In January this year, the IAF revealed that it had projected a need for 83 Tejas fighters in the Mk.2 configuration. As things stand, the Kaveri is officially de-linked from the Tejas programme, and is aimed at the AMCA effort and India's classified AURA stealth UCAV programme.
Livefist: DRDO-Snecma Tie-up On Kaveri Still In Talks
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'The Tejas Story' is not an easy read - Books - Book Reviews - ibnlive
This is a three year old book - but I got my hands on it quite recently. So please pardon the delay, if you're already familiar with the title. Personally, I was fascinated simply because it's about India's very own Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) project. Today, it goes by the name Tejas.
It's not an easy read. It's a very slim volume but took me a week to complete. Mainly because there's so much technical detail. Abbreviation after abbreviation on page after page - so by the time you reach the middle of the book, you're flipping back to check what the earlier abbreviations really stood for. Somehow, I got the feeling the book could have been simplified a lot.
It's an account of the plane's development project through one man's eyes. Air Marshal Rajkumar was head of the plane's flight test programme for over nine years, from 1994 to 2003.
His team of pilots took the plane into the air, when no one was sure it wouldn't crash right back. When it was a bundle of nuts and bolts, made by a country that hadn't even designed an automobile on its own, much less a fighter plane.
So yes, his department was vital, crucial, to the success of the plane. But leafing through the pages I was first surprised, then hugely disappointed that there's very little mention of Dr Kota Harinarayan, the man who designed the plane and spearheaded the project.
For a book about a machine so iconic, so crucial to India's future success in military avionics, I'd have expected it to give me a bird's eye view, the entire history of the project. "The Tejas Story" doesn't do that. It's the story through Rajkumar's eyes. About how he and his team contributed to the project, not about how everyone built the plane together, with blood, sweat and tears.
Nevertheless, the book is still a treasure trove of data. For folks like us, whose only experience of flight is city hopping on a jumbo jet, it's an eye opener into the myriad tools and procedures that go into making a plane what it is.
The number of companies that collaborate on a new project. The number of people in whose hands the life of a pilot rests. The amount of bureaucracy and layers of authority all permissions have to go through. The unimaginable number of years it takes to get a new plane of the ground (The LCA project was first conceived in 1974, yet it first flew only in 2001!)
You learn about pitch and yaw, about flight dynamics that make a plane fly the way it does. About decisions that seem inordinately simple but which completely alter the design of a plane and the amount of money, research and time it needs to fly.
You learn about politics - how Lockheed Martin kicked out our engineers and shut down access to the flight software we'd built for the Tejas, as soon as the US announced sanctions against India for the Pokhran nuclear tests.
There's also the drama, the incomprehensible tension. Apparently, during the first flight of the very first prototype of the Tejas, control rooms on the ground received highly abnormal signals seconds after the plane took off.
The pilot insisted his craft was ok and managed a picture perfect landing. Later, they found that a local software technology park in Bangalore was broadcasting commercial signals on the very frequency that the LCA's sensors used to talk to the control room. An innocent mistake perhaps, but one that almost doomed India's most ambitious military programme.
There's also mention about ego clashes, organisational differences. Hindustan Aeronautics Limited or HAL, the country's main aircraft development agency, had serious differences with the Aeronautical Development Agency or ADA, that was specially set up to design the Light combat aircraft.
"The problem was the attitude of the corporate management of HAL. Under Chairman RN Sharma, the LCA programme was given step-motherly treatment. Till he retired (in 1997), things did not change," the book says.
Another setback for the programme was when the government gave the go ahead for developing an Intermediate Jet Trainer (IJT). The same group of 100 odd people working on the LCA project had to work for the IJT also. There was a division of labour.
Inspite of all these setbacks the Light Combat Aircraft or the Tejas as it is now called, has taken to the air. The world now knows India can make a cutting edge fighter plane. Read this book, to get a taste of how complicated, how uncertain the journey was.
Don't read it for the writing. A professional editor would probably have raised its quality by many notches. But read it for the adventure, for a peek into a world most of us never see.
Title: The Tejas Story; Author: Philip Rajkumar; Publisher: Manohar Publishers And Distributors; Price: Rs 525
This is a three year old book - but I got my hands on it quite recently. So please pardon the delay, if you're already familiar with the title. Personally, I was fascinated simply because it's about India's very own Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) project. Today, it goes by the name Tejas.
It's not an easy read. It's a very slim volume but took me a week to complete. Mainly because there's so much technical detail. Abbreviation after abbreviation on page after page - so by the time you reach the middle of the book, you're flipping back to check what the earlier abbreviations really stood for. Somehow, I got the feeling the book could have been simplified a lot.
It's an account of the plane's development project through one man's eyes. Air Marshal Rajkumar was head of the plane's flight test programme for over nine years, from 1994 to 2003.
His team of pilots took the plane into the air, when no one was sure it wouldn't crash right back. When it was a bundle of nuts and bolts, made by a country that hadn't even designed an automobile on its own, much less a fighter plane.
So yes, his department was vital, crucial, to the success of the plane. But leafing through the pages I was first surprised, then hugely disappointed that there's very little mention of Dr Kota Harinarayan, the man who designed the plane and spearheaded the project.
For a book about a machine so iconic, so crucial to India's future success in military avionics, I'd have expected it to give me a bird's eye view, the entire history of the project. "The Tejas Story" doesn't do that. It's the story through Rajkumar's eyes. About how he and his team contributed to the project, not about how everyone built the plane together, with blood, sweat and tears.
Nevertheless, the book is still a treasure trove of data. For folks like us, whose only experience of flight is city hopping on a jumbo jet, it's an eye opener into the myriad tools and procedures that go into making a plane what it is.
The number of companies that collaborate on a new project. The number of people in whose hands the life of a pilot rests. The amount of bureaucracy and layers of authority all permissions have to go through. The unimaginable number of years it takes to get a new plane of the ground (The LCA project was first conceived in 1974, yet it first flew only in 2001!)
You learn about pitch and yaw, about flight dynamics that make a plane fly the way it does. About decisions that seem inordinately simple but which completely alter the design of a plane and the amount of money, research and time it needs to fly.
You learn about politics - how Lockheed Martin kicked out our engineers and shut down access to the flight software we'd built for the Tejas, as soon as the US announced sanctions against India for the Pokhran nuclear tests.
There's also the drama, the incomprehensible tension. Apparently, during the first flight of the very first prototype of the Tejas, control rooms on the ground received highly abnormal signals seconds after the plane took off.
The pilot insisted his craft was ok and managed a picture perfect landing. Later, they found that a local software technology park in Bangalore was broadcasting commercial signals on the very frequency that the LCA's sensors used to talk to the control room. An innocent mistake perhaps, but one that almost doomed India's most ambitious military programme.
There's also mention about ego clashes, organisational differences. Hindustan Aeronautics Limited or HAL, the country's main aircraft development agency, had serious differences with the Aeronautical Development Agency or ADA, that was specially set up to design the Light combat aircraft.
"The problem was the attitude of the corporate management of HAL. Under Chairman RN Sharma, the LCA programme was given step-motherly treatment. Till he retired (in 1997), things did not change," the book says.
Another setback for the programme was when the government gave the go ahead for developing an Intermediate Jet Trainer (IJT). The same group of 100 odd people working on the LCA project had to work for the IJT also. There was a division of labour.
Inspite of all these setbacks the Light Combat Aircraft or the Tejas as it is now called, has taken to the air. The world now knows India can make a cutting edge fighter plane. Read this book, to get a taste of how complicated, how uncertain the journey was.
Don't read it for the writing. A professional editor would probably have raised its quality by many notches. But read it for the adventure, for a peek into a world most of us never see.
Title: The Tejas Story; Author: Philip Rajkumar; Publisher: Manohar Publishers And Distributors; Price: Rs 525
sancho
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Yes, as I expected the GE 414 was just procured as a stop gap solution, which can be integrated and produced easily and at low costs. The long term perspective is Kaveri - Snecma engine, for additional LCA MK2s be it for IAF, IN, or exports, also for the MK1 and early MK2 that might get it during MLU. A freaking mess caused by the mistakes and failures in the LCA project, bad planing and overestimation of indigenous developmed radar and engines!
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atleast this deal should have been done on time.. why so late ?
There were reports that IAF would have prefered an improved Kaveri engine, without foreign participation, but by the fact that even GTRE favoured the co-development should make clear where we are in the engine (or radar) development field. They totally overestimated our capabilities in these fields and now LCA suffers more and more delays, which makes it kind of questionable on what basis they want to start AMCA development now.
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'The Tejas Story' is not an easy read - Books - Book Reviews - ibnlive
This is a three year old book - but I got my hands on it quite recently. So please pardon the delay, if you're already familiar with the title. Personally, I was fascinated simply because it's about India's very own Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) project. Today, it goes by the name Tejas.
It's not an easy read. It's a very slim volume but took me a week to complete. Mainly because there's so much technical detail. Abbreviation after abbreviation on page after page - so by the time you reach the middle of the book, you're flipping back to check what the earlier abbreviations really stood for. Somehow, I got the feeling the book could have been simplified a lot.
It's an account of the plane's development project through one man's eyes. Air Marshal Rajkumar was head of the plane's flight test programme for over nine years, from 1994 to 2003.
His team of pilots took the plane into the air, when no one was sure it wouldn't crash right back. When it was a bundle of nuts and bolts, made by a country that hadn't even designed an automobile on its own, much less a fighter plane.
So yes, his department was vital, crucial, to the success of the plane. But leafing through the pages I was first surprised, then hugely disappointed that there's very little mention of Dr Kota Harinarayan, the man who designed the plane and spearheaded the project.
For a book about a machine so iconic, so crucial to India's future success in military avionics, I'd have expected it to give me a bird's eye view, the entire history of the project. "The Tejas Story" doesn't do that. It's the story through Rajkumar's eyes. About how he and his team contributed to the project, not about how everyone built the plane together, with blood, sweat and tears.
Nevertheless, the book is still a treasure trove of data. For folks like us, whose only experience of flight is city hopping on a jumbo jet, it's an eye opener into the myriad tools and procedures that go into making a plane what it is.
The number of companies that collaborate on a new project. The number of people in whose hands the life of a pilot rests. The amount of bureaucracy and layers of authority all permissions have to go through. The unimaginable number of years it takes to get a new plane of the ground (The LCA project was first conceived in 1974, yet it first flew only in 2001!)
You learn about pitch and yaw, about flight dynamics that make a plane fly the way it does. About decisions that seem inordinately simple but which completely alter the design of a plane and the amount of money, research and time it needs to fly.
You learn about politics - how Lockheed Martin kicked out our engineers and shut down access to the flight software we'd built for the Tejas, as soon as the US announced sanctions against India for the Pokhran nuclear tests.
There's also the drama, the incomprehensible tension. Apparently, during the first flight of the very first prototype of the Tejas, control rooms on the ground received highly abnormal signals seconds after the plane took off.
The pilot insisted his craft was ok and managed a picture perfect landing. Later, they found that a local software technology park in Bangalore was broadcasting commercial signals on the very frequency that the LCA's sensors used to talk to the control room. An innocent mistake perhaps, but one that almost doomed India's most ambitious military programme.
There's also mention about ego clashes, organisational differences. Hindustan Aeronautics Limited or HAL, the country's main aircraft development agency, had serious differences with the Aeronautical Development Agency or ADA, that was specially set up to design the Light combat aircraft.
"The problem was the attitude of the corporate management of HAL. Under Chairman RN Sharma, the LCA programme was given step-motherly treatment. Till he retired (in 1997), things did not change," the book says.
Another setback for the programme was when the government gave the go ahead for developing an Intermediate Jet Trainer (IJT). The same group of 100 odd people working on the LCA project had to work for the IJT also. There was a division of labour.
Inspite of all these setbacks the Light Combat Aircraft or the Tejas as it is now called, has taken to the air. The world now knows India can make a cutting edge fighter plane. Read this book, to get a taste of how complicated, how uncertain the journey was.
Don't read it for the writing. A professional editor would probably have raised its quality by many notches. But read it for the adventure, for a peek into a world most of us never see.
Title: The Tejas Story; Author: Philip Rajkumar; Publisher: Manohar Publishers And Distributors; Price: Rs 525
Try Famous Russian aircraft Su 27 by Yefim Gordon. It will make you an aviation expert by the time you finish the book. And will also show you how radical the design of the Su 27 really is.
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DIAT system soon to monitor in-flight health of Tejas Mk-II.
Posted: Sat Aug 13 2011, 02:03 hrs Pune:
Scientist at the Defence Institute of Advance Technology (DIA), Khadakwasla, are working on a system to monitor the health of DRDO’s Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), Tejas Mk-II.
Replying to a question on the backdrop of the recent Jaguar and Mig-21 aircrashes, Dr Prahlada, newly-appointed Vice-Chancellor of DIAT, said the deemed university has been working on designing health monitoring and transmission system for the aircraft that may be deployed in the Mk- II varient of LCA Tejas. “The system continuously monitors the health of the aircraft while in flight and keeps sending the data to ground. Thus, the ground staff is aware of the condition of the aircraft even before it lands. The system has been designed and we will be submitting the project to Aeronautical Development Agency . The software and the system would be submitted once they give a nod. It will take us about a year to give the complete solution,” he said. Dr Prahlada was addressing reporters after taking charge recently. “In the next two years, DIAT will be developed into a military centre on the lines of Naval Postgraduate School , US,” he said.
Posted: Sat Aug 13 2011, 02:03 hrs Pune:
Scientist at the Defence Institute of Advance Technology (DIA), Khadakwasla, are working on a system to monitor the health of DRDO’s Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), Tejas Mk-II.
Replying to a question on the backdrop of the recent Jaguar and Mig-21 aircrashes, Dr Prahlada, newly-appointed Vice-Chancellor of DIAT, said the deemed university has been working on designing health monitoring and transmission system for the aircraft that may be deployed in the Mk- II varient of LCA Tejas. “The system continuously monitors the health of the aircraft while in flight and keeps sending the data to ground. Thus, the ground staff is aware of the condition of the aircraft even before it lands. The system has been designed and we will be submitting the project to Aeronautical Development Agency . The software and the system would be submitted once they give a nod. It will take us about a year to give the complete solution,” he said. Dr Prahlada was addressing reporters after taking charge recently. “In the next two years, DIAT will be developed into a military centre on the lines of Naval Postgraduate School , US,” he said.
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