such a beautiful fighter !

I think that we all remember those happy heady days, indeed if I remember correctly the LCA was at one point voted the best fighter aircraft in the world.:D Of course nobody was allowed to argue otherwise, if they did they were immediately pounced upon by a vast group of individuals (who at the time seemed immune from moderation) who would produce a plethora of articles declaring the absolute superiority of everything Indian to everything else in the world. Simultaneously they savaged the credibility of any source that dared break the party line. Fortunately many of those posters have now moved elsewhere.

would you be so kind as to try arguing about the J-10 or FC-1 or J-11B or whatever, on the Chinese threads, telling them that from line drawings you can tell how bad its supersonic drag is going to be ?? you’d have at least half a dozen individuals pouncing on you who WOULD NOT produce any articles whatsoever, and yet would claim the absolute superiority of everything Chinese. Simultaneously they’d savage the credibility of any source that dared break the party line. Unfortunately many of those posters have not yet moved elsewhere.

this is not related to Indians alone, which is what you’re trying to make it out to be..if one particular nation is represented here in larger numbers, they will become defensive when someone says something that is believed to be disparaging to their nation’s product. you forget how the French posters react to anything not so complimentary about the Rafale on its thread ?? 😡

EDITED

Tejas moves one step closer to A2G weaponisation. Just about a month ago, the R-73 was test fired from the Tejas, so the pace of weaponisation is picking up very fast.

Litening pod tested on LCA Tejas
Written on December 11, 2007 – 6:49 pm | by FIDSNS |

The Tejas LCA programme received a major fillip with the first successful flight test using the ‘Litening’ pod which can provide the pilot with day and night pictures of terrain, laser ranging and laser spot seeking (LDP). In a flawless flight on 10 Dec 07, Prototype Vehicle-2 took off with the LDP at around 1630 hrs and completed a landmark flight in which all test objectives were achieved.

Wg Cdr N Tiwari of the National Flight Test centre flew the flight. Wg Cdr M Prabhu as the Test Director, Mr RS Rao, Project Direct (Systems) and Mr JJ Jhadhav, Deputy Project Director were present at the telemetry station to monitor the performance. The performance is as per the design.

The LCA Team consisting members from IAF, HAL-ARDC ADA, CEMILAC and DG-AQA have together worked for several months to make this success in the first attempt. Carriage of the LDP confers a significant precision strike capability to the Tejas in conjunction with laser guided bombs or what are commonly referred to as “smart bombs”.

http://frontierindia.net/litening-pod-tested-on-lca-tejas/

exactly my point Victor..its incredible that a guy, with no real knowledge of the Tejas, on an internet forum just prances along and looks at a line diagram of the Tejas and can point out that its not got “classic aerodynamic shaping”..he could just have tweaked that line diagram a bit, given it a bit more of a sexy waist and voila ! the Tejas would have had all of its so called aerodynamic problems sorted..if only India’s aerospace engineers had more aesthetic sense..:mad:

anyhow, to just give a tiny idea of how much work has been done on CFD before the design of the Tejas was frozen, here is a link of ADA (Aeronautical Development Agency), the nodal agency for the Tejas.

http://www.ada.gov.in/Activities/Designanalysis/designanalysis.html

Highly adapted wing design with carefully blended wing-body and area ruled fuselage form the basis for unbeatable performance of LCA. Built-in aerodynamic instability improves ability and maneuverability. Wind tunnel tests on scale models and Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD)analyses have successfully been used to design and freeze the complex aerodynamic configuration of the LCA, and further to generate comprehensive aerodynamic data for Control Law design, flight simulation, performance prediction and structural design.

http://www.ada.gov.in/Activities/Software/cfd/cfd.html

Utilisation of CFD Codes at ADA

Wing design

Fuselage shape optimization

Evaluation of incremental changes in configuration

Pylon reshaping for reducing interference drag

Estimation of optimal deflection of leading edge devices.

Prediction of Aerodynamic loads

Calibration of Air data sensors

Trajectory prediction of external stores

Evaluation of performance of intake duct

The Gripen does have “coke-bottle” shaped fuselage, but with a long relatively thin tail. The area ruling on the Gripen is pretty much at the theoretical optimum.

The Tejas is not very much shorter compared to a Gripen, but it is stubbier, hardly beneficial when it comes to low drag. And the Tejas wingspan is pretty much the same as that of the Gripen, they differ ~20 cm.

And canards can help lower drag as well, for example during maneuvers.

Edit: A comparison http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v486/robban75/LCAJAS390-1.jpg?t=1197311374.

area ruling is such a fundamental concept that any fighter designed in the 70s, 80s or 90s will not have issues related to that.

the whole weight issue is pure bs written by Ravi Sharma, whose credibility is pretty low. they shaved off 760 kg on the PV-1, as compared to the TDs. and PV-1 was the production standard airframe, so the weight required was already achieved. i know a couple of people consulting on the Tejas program and I’ve confirmed that there are NO weight issues. already the Tejas has higher composite content that most contemporary fighters and this is both by weight as well as surface area.

as for the thrust issues, the most interesting part will be when a PV flies with the F-404 IN20 in place of the F2J3. I’ve repeatedly said before as well, that the higher installed thrust of the IN20 should definitely improve the Tejas’ performance. besides that, if the Gripen, which is heavier, can fly without any thrust complaints, with essentially a F-404 variant, that too with lower thrust than an IN20, then there should be no major issues with the Tejas.

Also, one of the more reliable posters on BR said that he’d heard that there is a likely 40 Tejas order coming up sometime.

While the selling price of the Russian aircraft is low compared to Western aircraft, the reality is they have a short aircraft frame life and the reliability is also low.
So while the SMT has a extended the operational life to 6,000 hours. This is a long way from the F/A-18 (for landbase operations) of 8,500 hours. This is the life of the all the F/A-18A/F’s for its entire life.
The French also provide a better training programs! The first I heard about this was after the 1989 incident between F-14A’s and Libyian MiG-23’s. Among other articles was one in which a couple of US Navy pilots stated that they could to Libyian could always tell if a pilot was trained by the Soviet system or the French system as they approached the intercept. The piloting skills of the French trained pilots were high and they were better at avoiding being intercepted.

The Soviet Union designed it aircraft to operate from primitive runways and be involved in high attrition/high tempo aerial combat. The West tends to design its aircraft to operate from modern and clean runways, to have good ground support and, extremely important to be economical during peace time operations!

God for the French, they have a good airplane in the Rafale.

Adrian

Airframe fatigue is not limited to Russian aircraft. both the F-15 (with its longeron aft of canopy having cracks, and the recent crash) and European F-16 operators are facing major issues with airframe and wing structure fatigue.
With an average usage of 270 hours per year, by the early 1990s the F-15C fleet was approaching its service-design-life limit of 4,000 flight hours. Following successful airframe structural testing, the F-15C was extended to an 8,000-hour service life limit.

On the other hand, Bulgaria just recently recieved its first MiG-29 upgraded structurally to last 4000 hrs, giving them an additional decade and half to operate it. the same is true for IAF MiG-29s when they’ll be upgraded, as with IAF MiG-21Bis whose service life was extended by 2000 hrs to a total of 4000 hours.