I am going to reply to this tweet. @bheemmz please don’t be offended. Nothing against you. Here “you/yours” refers to a 3rd person. This tweet just contains some often-repeated misconceptions which need to be clarified. My discussion today is going to be limited to fixed wings.
@bheemmz 1. This tweet conflates design and manufacturing expertise and where these expertise lie within the Indian aerospace ecosystem. Also the idea that canards on fighter are some super-duper technology needs some debunking.
2. First, design & manufacturing expertise are completely different. Designing a complex system is difficult. But designing a system that can be built and operated with ease is more difficult. Indian aero-community is currently learning to overcome this second level of difficulty
3.Let me give you other examples. Russia and China know have viable 5th gen aircrafts. But when it comes to building and delivering 100s of F35s per year, the US is decades ahead of them. Europe, India, Japan, S. Korea and Turkey trail even China and Russia.
4.Another example would be Boeing, Embraer and Airbus when it comes to airliners. The Chinese COMAC, Japanese Mitsubishi and Russian Sukhoi are bridging that gap now. BAE, Antonov, Dornier and Ilyushin never managed to do so.
5.Let’s return to India & understand where these expertise lie in the Indian ecosystem. Around late 1970s/ early 1980s, India had struggled & failed to fit a good afterburning engine into the Marut. Numerous follow on fighter proposals from HAL were shot down.
6. At that time, it was (debatably) adjudged that HAL’s design bureau won’t be able to deliver India’s next fighter aircraft. India’s only bet was to gather “best” from all over India into one place. Success in the nuclear and space domain also bolstered this reasoning.
7.ADA was created and it was given the mandate to form the team that can design and build India’s next fighter. It recruited from everywhere, but it was no surprise that HAL’s fixed wing design team got gutted and absorbed.
8.This was a serious blow to HAL’s own fixed wing design capability. This would not be revived till IJT and HTT-40 efforts. As the rebuild continues today, there is some competition between ADA and HAL. They are part collaborators and part competitors today.
9.Obviously, there are pros and cons of this situation. In my humble opinion, the time is fast approaching where a relook into this structure must be re-evaluated given today’s ground realities.
10.But as it stands today, ADA is far ahead of HAL in designing modern fighter aircrafts. The core of this strength lies in their control-law team. Make no mistake, that team is absolutely world-class. It is central to Tejas’s incidence-free testing and deployment.
11. New modes that have gone into Tejas like the Automatic Low Speed Recovery, Assisted take off and recovery (for NLCA) etc. are truly world-class. They learn and build on existing methods, and then refine on their bird. E.g. watch @JA_Maolankar sir’s lectures on NLCA.
12.Tejas's ALSR is fully automatic. Not only does it provide carefree handling, it can recover the aircraft when the pilot is incapacitated. Also it uses simpler maneuvers for recovery. These has been validated through many ground-simulation (by real pilots) & in-flight testing.
13.And because it uses simpler maneuvers it can even be deployed on less aerobatic aircrafts like trainers and transports (with auto-pilots). So believing that ADA’s control team cannot modified Tejas with canards on their own is baseless. More on this later.
15.Without doubt, HAL is the biggest aerospace manufacturing house in India. Being a public company and somewhat of a monopoly, HAL has a captive customer in IAF. On the other hand, it is burdened with the inefficiency of India decision making and procurement mechanisms.
16.When you are in the field, you know who can deliver a quality product on time. But your hands are tied with public tendering-L1 circus. HAL managers helplessly watch the competition catch up and go past while they are waiting for tenders to be finalized.
17.And then you find that some unrealistic player coming up as L1. It is an art to work with this setup. I know I don’t have the patience, capability and capacity.
If HAL is expected to compete with the private sector, this aspect must be relooked.
If HAL is expected to compete with the private sector, this aspect must be relooked.
18.Having said that, HAL is leagues ahead of anybody else in India with respect to systems integration. There is nothing in the private domain which can compete the the DARIN, Mig-27 UPG, LCA Mk1A project or the integration of various weapon systems on Su-30 and LCA.
19.However, the speed at which the private sector has come up in manufacturing capability is truly heartening. What is even more heartening is their success in the free-market. In some other fields, there are becoming tier-1 providers.
20. In the aerospace industry, this is starting to happen with rockets and UAVs. I only wish that some private entity takes the next step with fixed wing aircrafts.
21.Fighter aircrafts are a tough nut to crack in the first step. But general aviation aircrafts are possible. Taneja’s and Mahindra’s foray into this field weren’t successful. But I hope that changes with Mesco.
22.Tata probably can do it with experience gained from manufacturing large aerostructures for PC-12, DO-228 and now the C-295. But will they bite the bullet? And if they don’t, Indian decision makers need to relook why it is not lucrative enough for even such a large player?
24.LCA Mk1A reflect India’s efforts to bridge the latter, i.e. a design that can be built and manufactured easily. LCA Mk2, TEDBF, AMCA will reflect whether we have truly acquired that second capability.
25.Finally, I come to debunking that unfounded worry: canards!!! Canards seem fancy to people because they are not common. But did France require foreign help going from Mirage-2000 to Mirage-4000. How about US, China, Russia? Then why would India?
27. And NLCA? How is such an unstable aircraft taking off and landing on aircraft carriers with active LEVCONs. When an aircraft takes off (from a ski jump) or lands on an aircraft carrier going full-speed into the wind, it is through a lot of turbulence.
28. Yet Mao sir says the actual operations on the Vikramaditya was an anti-climax. How?
And how about the in-flight refueling?
And how about the in-flight refueling?
29. By design, Tejas is aerodynamically highly unstable. Without the control-logic, if the nose bobs up by 1 cm (because of turbulence) then within a second the aircraft’s nose will be bobbing up & down by 32 cms. In another 0.5 seconds, the aircraft will become uncontrollable!
30.The control logic needs to stop this from happening. But to do this, it needs to be fully aware of the state of the aircraft using sensor-inputs located all over the aircraft. But the airflow over the aircraft is asymmetric.
31. One side of the aircraft is flying in the wake of the IFR probe, the fuel pipe and basket which is trailing behind a huge heavy tanker.
32.Of course it is not a trivial task. But ADA’s control-law team did it. They built the system. The test pilots flew it and gave their inputs. Refinements followed and very soon Tejas will be fully cleared for all IFR engagements.
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