I guess the IAF’s conundrum is that it wants to support indigenous programs, but at the same time, has to stay aware of what capabilities it needs to maintain superiority in the neighbourhood.
If the Tejas is to be the backbone of the IAF alongwith the MRCA and the Su-30MKI, then it needs to be a very capable fighter, considering that IAF’s threats are a lot greater than most other Asian and European Air Forces. no offence meant, but India has had 4 major wars in its history with Pakistan alone, the most recent one being in 1999, where air support was crucial and has a belligerant China making claims on its territory all the time, as well as occupying territory.
that thinking is what probably makes IAF feel that it can’t accept anything less than a fully multirole 4th gen fighter, although it would make sense to induct it faster with less capabilities.
but then, apart from that, testing has’nt been very quick, due to the sheer learning curve that Indian engineers have to master, and in part due to the fear that if a single LCA crashes, the entire program could be held ransom.
Wing Cmdr Rajiv Kothiyal had recieved the prestigious Ivan C. Kincheloe award for test pilots when he had presented a paper on the test flight program for the Tejas, and had surprised the world test pilots community on how complex it was- they just did’nt expect that India would be taking up such a challenging task with no prior experience.
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A LCA test pilot was picked up for this award at a time when leading air forces of the world are propelling ahead with combat programmes such as the Joint Stirke Fighter ( JSF ),F-22 Raptor , F-28E Super Hornet of HTE US ,the Europe and the SU -37 Berkut programme of Russia.
IAF sources said Kothiyal along with Wing Commander Banerjee presented a paper on the first flight of LCA at the SETP annual symposium held at Los Angeles, USA,prior to the announcement oof the awards.
“The presentation was well received by the world community because the LCA was a programme after the Marut ( HF-24 ) flew in 1961,” sources said.
those who understand the difficulty in flight testing a 4th gen all digital FBW equipped fighter do appreciate how difficult the task is.
so its likely that even if the IAF had said ok to a pure air to air role Tejas, it would’nt necessarily have entered service much faster.
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