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[rockstarIN]

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Means flares integrated into LCA..!!

 

[kurup]

^^^^^^

Means flares integrated into LCA..!!

There was a video of LCA circulating for quite some time which showed flare test .So it may not be a new addition.

 

[BlueDot_in_Space]

You might not like it, but the points I made are facts which you can't deny anymore. And I never said LCA is not capable, but without freeing hardpoints or adding new once, it will only able to carry the same strikeload as our 3th gen Jaguars and require dedicated escorts too. That is not the standard a 4th gen fighter should provide, even as a low end fighter and such changes would be more important to make the fighter more capable, than silly changes on the cockpit displays!

Why would I like to deny you your dream world? your harping on silly points like extra hard points when current hard points are sufficient for optimal loading and multi racks can also be used does not make them facts. Silly points like selectively arguing how 3rd gen Jaguar carries same payload weight and neglecting the fact that LCA is a far smaller plane than jaguar, but far more capable, says alot about your prejudice towards LCA And ADA.

 

[sancho]

Why would I like to deny you your dream world? your harping on silly points like extra hard points when current hard points are sufficient for optimal loading and multi racks can also be used does not make them facts.

And I am the one that is dreaming.

As I already explained, you can exchange 2 x 500lb LGBs with multi racks (which are not under development) instead of using 1 x 1000lb LGB today, but that still leaves no hardpoint for BVR missiles. We even upgrade Mig 29 and Mirage 2000s by adding more fuel capacity and HARDPOINTS (2 more for the Migs, 4 more for the Mirage), to make them more capable and you keep denying that this is important for a modern fighter.
And you still fail to understand what is important for a fighter in terms of load capability, because neither the payload nor the size of a fighter is, but the numbers of hardpoints (which your wrong payload caculations showed as well! That's why LCA carries the same ammount of weapons and fuel tanks as the Jags in strike role.

 

[BlueDot_in_Space]

And I am the one that is dreaming.

As I already explained, you can exchange 2 x 500lb LGBs with multi racks (which are not under development) instead of using 1 x 1000lb LGB today, but that still leaves no hardpoint for BVR missiles. We even upgrade Mig 29 and Mirage 2000s by adding more fuel capacity and HARDPOINTS (2 more for the Migs, 4 more for the Mirage), to make them more capable and you keep denying that this is important for a modern fighter.
And you still fail to understand what is important for a fighter in terms of load capability, because neither the payload nor the size of a fighter is, but the numbers of hardpoints (which your wrong payload caculations showed as well! That's why LCA carries the same ammount of weapons and fuel tanks as the Jags in strike role.

LCA MK2 can carry BVR on multi-racks on the mission requirements. If a LCA size fighter can carry a payload size of a much bigger Jaguar size fighter, then I think it is a far more capable fighter than what you have been projecting it to be. For the size of LCA, the current hard points are sufficient for optimal loading that even its user IAF understands.

 

[fsayed]

LCA MK2 can carry BVR on multi-racks on the mission requirements. If a LCA size fighter can carry a payload size of a much bigger Jaguar size fighter, then I think it is a far more capable fighter than what you have been projecting it to be. For the size of LCA, the current hard points are sufficient for optimal loading that even its user IAF understands.

mate this is my first post
dont u think its better to upgrade tejas in something like silent eagle f15 instead of working on amca. bcoz we r going to get fgfa aircraft from russia with full stealth tech hence we require semistealth huge number to beckbone of airforce just we need to add one more engine with big size like eurofighter

 

[Black Widow]

mate this is my first post
dont u think its better to upgrade tejas in something like silent eagle f15 instead of working on amca. bcoz we r going to get fgfa aircraft from russia with full stealth tech hence we require semistealth huge number to beckbone of airforce just we need to add one more engine with big size like eurofighter

Why not make Rajpal yadav to something like Arnold.. There are some limitation of systems, you can't stretch beyond some point.

Why AMCA: The 5th gen features and Naval features will be kept in mind during design phase (LCA lack this in design phase). AMCA will give massive knowledge/experience/confidence to India.

Why LCA: LCA will serve as filler in depreciating squadron. It will serve India to counter Pakistani FC1/MiG21 and 1000s of Chinese MiG21. .

LCA MK II and further: yes there will be MKII, MKIII and so on.

LCA will be served as testbed for many system.. Do you know which fighter plane tested SAAB Grippen subcomponent??? It was old generation SAAB Viggen. Do you know Which bird tested PAK-FA subcomponent?? It was old generation Su27 family. Similarly LCA will be used for testing subcomponent of AMCA and further developments.

 

[sudhir007]

Flight test update

From

LCA-Tejas has completed 2042 Test Flights Successfully. (17-Feb-2013).
(TD1-233,TD2-305,PV1-242,PV2-222,PV3-350,LSP1-74,LSP2-252,PV5-36,LSP3-102,LSP4-65,LSP5-133,LSP7-24,NP1-4)

to

LCA-Tejas has completed 2046 Test Flights Successfully. (20-Feb-2013).
(TD1-233,TD2-305,PV1-242,PV2-222,PV3-350,LSP1-74,LSP2-253,PV5-36,LSP3-103,LSP4-65,LSP5-134,LSP7-25,NP1-4)

 

[sudhir007]

 

[Jayanta]

Well my question is for how many years will people discuss about the LCA...aren't you guys bored now. Its like a never ending story....

 

[sudhir007]

Livefist: LCA Tejas Flight Test Chief's Candid Review Of Aircraft

This piece by the project director (flight test) on the LCA Tejas programme was presented earlier this month at the Aero India seminar. An enlightening read.

By Air Commodore K.A. Muthana, VSM

1. The Indian Light Combat aircraft (LCA) was conceived in the early eighties and is now on the threshold of entering squadron service. The legacy of this aircrafts’ development has resulted in true challenges to deployment being faced at a very late stage. There are even insinuations that this aircraft has been more of a success to the scientists in lab coats than to the war fighter in flight suits. True; this fine aircraft has been hostage to a series of systemic shortcomings. There are significant lessons here for the Indian aviation industry. It is vitally important that these lessons are imbibed in order to move forward coherently in building a strong aeronautics industry in this country.

AIM

2. Aim of this paper is to critically examine the challenges faced in transitioning the LCA from design to deployment and thus learn lessons for the future.

SYSTEMIC SHORTCOMINGS

3. Higher Defense Management. A fundamental challenge has been the structure of the Indian higher defense management. Broadly speaking, there are three verticals within the Indian Ministry of Defense that steer this program. One such vertical is headed by a war fighter, another by a bureaucrat and the third by a technocrat. In this totally State funded and State managed program, interdepartmental oversight has been lacking. It is necessary that a single political entity take charge of such projects to attribute responsibility and demand accountability. Even if private players become significant, interdepartmental co-ordination would be possible only by an informed and responsible political entity.

4. Clarity on Standards. The base document for development of LCA is a beautifully crafted Air Staff Requirement that was clearly ahead of its time and is relevant even today, nearly three decades later. This document primarily restricted itself to stating performance requirements. It is very interesting to note that the country in which aviation is widely accepted to have been born, the USA, (I say widely accepted because I have heard Russians say otherwise), through a document generally referred to as the Perry Document adopted a similar procedure in 1994! The ASR document however, mandated the use of US military specifications and standards of the day as the guiding document for design. The relevant standards and specifications were to have been culled out by D Aero at DRDO HQ. Any concessions were to be sought from IAF HQ. There is no evidence to show that a comprehensive process was followed. This apparent lapse has lead to a number of challenges in design that we face today; so close to deployment.

5. Clarity on Path to Certification. In many ways this is the first fighter aircraft design and development program in India, after a gap of about four decades. Design expertise from the old program of HF-24 was not available, and moreover, the LCA envisaged a quantum leap in technology. To the Indian certification agency also therefore, this was ‘learning in progress’. The path to certification is evolving along with the aircraft. The extent of analyses and testing required tended to be a little open ended. Comprehensive documentation of the path to certification in this program will hugely benefit future programs.

6. Agencies for Design, Development and Support. If the process of design itself is to be accomplished by two design houses working under two different verticals mentioned in Para 2 above, there would be a price to pay. While ADA had a single point focus, clearly HAL ARDC had multiple foci. HALs indigenous programs clearly have priority within that organization and therefore so do resource allocation. The aircraft would continue to develop during its lifetime and all round support would be necessary. The responsibility for, post deployment maintenance of documentation, software and their periodic up gradation remains open ended. Unless resolved, this story of an inconvenient marriage would be continuing saga and have adverse effects on the product during its entire lifetime.

7. Customer Involvement. During the design and development process itself, it is vital that comprehensive knowledge of aviation in general and military aviation in particular is made available to the program. Scientists and design engineers do not have that knowledge. The Indian Air Force is the only repository of comprehensive military aviation knowledge in this country. Either its expertise was not sought or it was denied. Also we probably have the only aviation companies in the world that do not have aviators embedded into design teams. As a result, while the designers concentrated on getting the technology airborne, the design necessities of turning the aircraft into a maintainable, deployable and employable weapon platform were missed to a large extent. Originally a reluctant customer, the Indian Air Force involved itself sufficiently only after contracting for supply of the aircraft in 2006. It was late in the program and hundreds of ‘Requests for Action’ had to be raised in order to retrieve the situation to some extent, but this lead to time and cost overruns.

8. Evaluation of Prototypes. In the process of transitioning from design and development to series production, limited or otherwise, an essential step is to undertake a formal comprehensive evaluation of the prototype vehicles. It is in this process that the platforms testability and therefore maintainability, and its suitability for deployment can be assessed and recommendations made for the required standard of preparation (SOP) for series production (SP) aircraft. Having neglected to undertake this step, limited series production aircraft are worthy of remaining test aircraft only and SOP of series production aircraft continues to evolve!

9. Development of Avionics Package. No customer would be willing to accept obsolescent equipment at induction. Slow progress of the program coupled with rapid development in the field of electronics played its part in inefficient development of the avionics package on the aircraft. The initial focus on airframe and basic platform issues led to a delay in requirement generation and creation of mission specific software modules. Staggered integration of various mission systems also precluded comprehensive global software development, and allowed development effort to be frittered away in development of patches and modules catering only for immediate needs of the hour. Lack of operational requirements expertise in design teams led to replicating Mirage cockpit logic on the aircraft without exploiting the significantly advanced hardware architecture of this aircraft.

A major course correction had to be effected when the IAF finally got into the program. Lack of realistic evaluation and simulation tools meant that evaluation in most cases was carried out in the air for the first time leading to delays due to the requirement of even small fixes having to go through the complete clearance cycle.

10. Process of Transitioning from Design to Manufacture. There are many challenges that we face in transitioning from design to manufacture. One is the necessity to convert frozen design drawings into production drawings. Purportedly an elaborate process that has to be undertaken by dedicated integration teams. These have then to be cleared by the certification agency and followed diligently by the manufacturing and quality control agencies. Other shortcomings are; inability to meet manufacturing tolerances; non availability of correct jigs, fixtures and tooling to meet DAL requirements; non availability of suitable calibrating equipment; and, lack of trained manpower. These challenges directly affect the quality of manufacture.

11. Concurrent Development of Support Systems. The necessity to concurrently design and develop support equipment like tools, testers and ground equipment (TTGE) must not be underestimated. Designers have to understand that the testers that they develop to enable the design process would be unsuitable for use by the war fighter. What is required are simple testers ruggedized to be deployable and employable in the field, by young air warriors with limited education, in order to establish serviceability of a platform to undertake a mission. Similarly, ground support equipment has to be suited well, be light and durable for easy employability and transportability. Such support is vital to deploy the aircraft quickly and repeatedly and thus exploit the inherent advantages of airpower. Development of mission support systems like planning & debrief systems, simulators etc have been lagging and will affect ease of deployment.

12. Flight & Maintenance Manuals. Before the LCA can be deployed, it is obviously necessary that the users are adequately trained to maintain and operate this aircraft. For training to be effective, prior generation of deliverable documentation is essential. These documents will have to be upgraded and supported through the life time of the aircraft. Generation and sustenance of flight and maintenance publications is a major activity and deserves the creation of a separate technical documentation group. Designer’s documents have to be culled down and adapted to the requirements of maintenance manuals which are suited to the not so highly qualified maintenance crew. Information further culled and adapted from these manuals, when enhanced by the addition of flight handling information, translate into a set of flight manuals which are used by the aircrew. Generation of documentation deliverable to the customer has been hampered by the absence of a cohesive and sustainable structure.

13. Simulators. It is important that maintenance and flight simulators are available to train the customer ground crew and aircrew. Based on the contract between the IAF and HAL, ADA did develop maintenance simulators. With the flight simulators, however, it was a strange story. While the ASR did envisage the requirement of a simulator before deployment, no such development was undertaken. Along with the contract for supply of aircraft, funds were allocated by the Government of India for a simulator to be built by HAL on ‘Build, Operate and Maintain’ (BOM) basis. This was a new concept and years were lost in deciding whether funding would be on the capital route or on the revenue route. As a result there would be no representative flight simulator available for use by the customer aircrew. The situation will be aggravated by the non availability of a trainer variant of the aircraft in the required time frame.

14. Operating Infrastructure. Infrastructure necessary for operating the aircraft has to be created at the intended base of operation, well in time for deployment. Although the requirement was projected well in time procedural delays have ensured that the work on ground is yet to start.

15. Professional Program Management. It is inconceivable that a program of this complexity can be run efficiently without the assistance of professional program managers who constantly advice the technocrat leadership. This would avoid a large number of issues cropping up at random, the thread being lost and the same issues cropping up again months later with little progress having been made! Critical path has to be continually identified and attended to. Cost and time overruns have to be tracked by professional program managers using powerful software. Only then can the customer be given a viable timeframe for deployment to enable his planning process. If he has to repeatedly throttle back, he will lose interest and look for alternatives. And that would be a tragedy for aeronautics in this country!

CONCLUSION

16. Tejas is a wonderful flying machine. It deserved to be in squadron service years ago. Remedial action on many of the shortcomings commented upon, if implemented even now, will favorably impact timelines for IOC and FOC of the Tejas Mk 1 aircraft. Favorable impact on Tejas Mk 2 and other future programs will be enormous.

Air Cmde KA Muthana, VSM, was commissioned in the fighter stream of Indian Air Force on 11 June 1981. He is a graduate of the Indian Air Force Test Pilots School. His on job experience as a test pilot include that of being the Jaguar Projects Pilot at Aircraft and Systems Testing Establishment in Bangalore, Chief Test Pilot at HAL's Nasik facility, Project Pilot with Sukhoi-30 MKI Project Team at Moscow, Russia and Director of Aircraft Upgrade at IAF HQ, New Delhi. He has been heading the National Flight Test Centre as Project Director (Flight Test) at ADA, Bangalore since 01 July 2011. This paper was presented at [PDF[ the 2013 Aero India Seminar earlier this month and is re-posted here.

 

[Black Widow]

Well my question is for how many years will people discuss about the LCA...aren't you guys bored now. Its like a never ending story....

LCA is ready, It can be delivered to IAF any time they ask..

LCA:
1. Can drop bomb (A2G role)
2. fire Missiles
3. Fly at night
4. Perform basic and advance manuver.
etc...

It is almost inducted, Question is how keen IAF is ...

 

[Jayanta]

LCA is ready, It can be delivered to IAF any time they ask..

LCA:
1. Can drop bomb (A2G role)
2. fire Missiles
3. Fly at night
4. Perform basic and advance manuver.
etc...

It is almost inducted, Question is how keen IAF is ...

Can somebody post some videos of the same...especially if it is of IAF Iron Fists 2013. I have seen videos of LCA dropping bomb and firing R-73.

 

[BlueDot_in_Space]

mate this is my first post
dont u think its better to upgrade tejas in something like silent eagle f15 instead of working on amca. bcoz we r going to get fgfa aircraft from russia with full stealth tech hence we require semistealth huge number to beckbone of airforce just we need to add one more engine with big size like eurofighter

Upgrading LCA into silent eagle 15 with two engines translates into developing an all new plane in the medium category, i.e., AMCA. LCA is already semi stealth due to its small size, 45% composite content, Y air ducts and RAM paint. In the future, MK3 will be stealthier with extreme composite use and further shaping. ADA may also go for thrust vectoring in future engine upgrades that will preclude need for vertical tail, thus reducing weight and RCS. This will require mastering FCS with thrust vector control

 

[Jayanta]

Some silly question: 1. Has the IAF committed for AMCA when FGFA has a bright chance of getting inducted by 2020??...Or is AMCA meant primarily for the Indian Navy?

2. If IAF is not interested in AMCA why not carry on with the LCA project...with single engine MK2, and a double engine medium sized MK3??...Is the DRDO is dubbing the MK3 as AMCA?

People with some knowledge kindly throw some light....