LCA INDIA

 

LCA-Saagaa

In 1982, Harinarayan was working as the chief designer at HAL’s Nasik division when he was selected by Arunachalam as the Director of DRDO’s Aeronautical Development Agency. At that time, there simply wasn’t enough aeronautical talent in DRDO. 

So, his first step was to bring together the country’s best talent in the field of aerospace engineering. For this purpose, he recruited engineers, scientists and professionals from twenty educational institutions like the IITs and forty Research and Development (R&D) laboratories like HAL and CSIR. In a year, ADA had a team of about 400 engineers and scientists.

Now the team was in place but another problem cropped up — it did not have the right computer for designing. So Rajiv Gandhi, then prime minister, stepped in. During his visit to the United States soon after, he convinced President Ronald Reagan to give the IBM 390 computer for the design work of the Tejas.

ADA next bought CATIA (computer-aided three-dimensional interactive application), the computer-aided design software developed by Dassault, in the early ’90s. However, when ADA started its work, it had a tough time buying electronic components since several embargoes and sanctions had been imposed on India by Western nations in reaction to the Pokhran tests.

This, however, made the team more determined to accomplish their difficult task of designing each element of the design, each raw material for the plane, from scratch.

Since the Tejas was meant to be a light aircraft, the designers had to use carbon composite materials which were still under development.

The next step was to identify companies that could produce the components. Furth India, a small Nagpur company, produced the steel while another small outfit in Kanpur made rubber seals used to close the fuel tank. Gradually, ADA developed all the electrical components that were earlier imported and helped local companies manufacture them. To make production commercially viable, the rights to the intellectual property were handed over to the companies.

For the design, the team chose a compound tail-less delta wing configuration, different from other aircraft of this class. Advanced features like Relaxed Static Stability were added to enhance manoeuvrability. Cutting-edge digital technology was used to design the cockpit’s system, the utility system and the weapon management system. All these core technologies were designed, developed and built in India itself.

The Tejas project also became a cementing force between industry and research institutes. For example, instead of importing the multi-functional display for the cockpit, ADA approached Bharat Electronics to manufacture it. Though BEL was interested, it did not have adequate knowledge about the liquid crystal display (LCD) used in the product.

So ADA asked the Raman Research Institute, one of the pioneers in liquid crystals, to help out.

In January 2001, the small tail-less delta wing prototype was finally completed and ready for testing.  Wing commander Rajiv Kothiyal successfully flew the first flight of the prototype named Technology Demonstrator TD-1.

It was a historic day – Indian skies were seeing an indigenous aircraft after almost 40 years.

From 2001 to 2009, Tejas improved itself gradually in its speed and target accuracy. It went through a lot of changes and updates both in technology and weapon systems. After several tests and multiple prototype vehicles making successful flights, the Tejas received its certification for release to service in 2011, 28 long years after its conception. On January 10, 2011, it was certified and cleared for combat service.