After thoughts on the LCA

The more I read about the fighter project, about what India is trying to achieve with this, the more I can say, “hats off” to them. In fact, the LCA interests me a lot more than let’s say, the SU30MKI, and is a lot more important to India than that Flanker variant.

To start with, in spirit, it is truly indigenous, at least for a large degree. Compare it to other projects—the Japanese F2 is a hybrid and an F16 derivative. The Chinese J10 is a derivative of an Israeli project which in turn was an F16 derivative, all currently fitted with Russian avionics and engine. How much “indigenous” are these? The national pride on these projects is sort of diluted when they see all the foreign content on these.

For all the delays and problems, the LCA team has maintained and kept sight of being indigenous. The main components of the airplane—airframe, avionics and engine—will be from India. Despite rumors to the contrary, HAL will be supplying the avionics and radar set. The locally designed engine, the Kavieri, is not a GE 404 clone (it’s actually more powerful, with over 20,000lbs of reheat thrust vs. 17-18,000lbs from the GE engine.)

Light truly describes the plane, with an empty weight of around 5,500kg. That’s only slightly heavier than an F20 Tigershark, which also has a GE404 engine. With a 20,000lbs thrust engine, that’s going to give some truly sprightly performance.

Some of the delays have been political. As the engine is not ready, the prototypes must use GE 404 engines. When India did nuclear tests, the US imposed an embargo on any US technology transfers to India, including the GE404 engine and the software code for the FBW system for the LCA from Lockheed-Martin.

The last indigenous fighter India had was way back in the early sixties, in the HL24 Marut (incidentally, designed by Kurt Tank, and if you don’t know who Kurt Tank is, and what’s his other famous creation, you got no business in this forum). The Marut died from the lack of the right engines (it had an engine, but underpowered). That lesson impressed the Indians that the crux of every new fighter project is the engine.

Since nothing can start from scratch, India turned to the US for some help, at least to get the project off the ground. Hence the GE404 engines. But as the embargo showed, the reliability of US technology transfers depends so much on the US view of your politics and the mood swings of the current US administration. If anything the embargo only underlined the need for an indigenous engine development.

Years late, the first prototype finally flew on January 2001, and the project made its official announcement on November.

In a way, the LCA is like a thesis to pass a college course to the Indian aeronautics industry. Its very execution would test its engineers and industry infrastructure, and in the course of making it, would provide invaluable experience. This is one of those projects where the journey itself is as much of importance as the final goal. It may be late, but when it inevitably comes, they can say they did it “My Way” in the tune of Frank Sinatra’s song.