It is now official. The much hyped, much delayed and under performing fighter jet engine Kaveri’s further development is to be abandoned. In reality to save some face, the ‘fighter’ jet engine Kaveri is to be used in drones.
:-P
So the indigenous Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) christened ‘Tejas’, meaning Radiant will be powered by the General Electric GE-414 engines in its Mark-2 avatar. The Mark-1s will continue to be powered by the General Electric GE-404 engines. Hopefully we would get to see the Tejas Mk-1 actually flying by 2014, when they’re scheduled to be operational with the IAF - 15 years behind the schedule.
No doubt there would be defenders of the basic blunders while the 2 projects - the LCA Tejas and the Jet Engine Kaveri - were envisaged. No doubt the defence forums would be ringing for the next few days with arm chair military strategists and big talkers crowing about the ‘knowledge’ gained in trying to put together the LCA and its Jet Engine.
I suspect that if any blame or laments are expressed in such forums it would be mainly against the now certifiable incompetence of the DRDO scientists and perhaps some secondary pot shots at the ‘bureaucratic’ controls over the Defence sector in India. There might be several calls for engaging the private sector too.
But what almost everyone will miss are the basic facts:
IAF and HAL even though the 3rd largest users of the MiG-21 after Soviet/Russia and China, could not reverse engineer it and perhaps refine it like what the Chinese did with their Chengdu J-7;
Instead of an LCA program, if the present ‘Tejas’ was developed as an Advanced Jet Trainer (AJT), like the Korean T-50 Golden Eagle program, it would have saved us huge amount of money and time;
Just take time to remember that the Koreans at the same time, were using the same engine to build and make operational their own trainer. We because of the short sightedness of our political masters and blind-sided by the incompetent so called scientists of the DRDO, neither have a Jet Trainer nor have a true multi-role fighter of our own.
After procuring the AJT from the British, we are now shopping around for a multi-role fighter, under a fancy acronym MMRCA, while the Koreans proudly claim their almost in hand FA-60 Golden Eagle multi-role fighters will be equivalent to the KF-16s.
No wonder the powers that be shot down the F-16IN Super Vipers at first opportunity in the MMRCA competition. It wouldn’t have needed a mad.madrasi take to connect the missing dots between the Tejas, the Super Vipers and the Golden Eagles.
Okay! here is a ‘spot 6 differences’ between the Golden Eagle and the Hawk quiz -
My Wicked half whispers, ‘Seeing that the LCA Tejas is jimmied in between the ‘Viper’ and ‘Eagle’, perhaps we should rechristen it as ‘Beagle’
ROFL!
:-P
So the indigenous Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) christened ‘Tejas’, meaning Radiant will be powered by the General Electric GE-414 engines in its Mark-2 avatar. The Mark-1s will continue to be powered by the General Electric GE-404 engines. Hopefully we would get to see the Tejas Mk-1 actually flying by 2014, when they’re scheduled to be operational with the IAF - 15 years behind the schedule.
No doubt there would be defenders of the basic blunders while the 2 projects - the LCA Tejas and the Jet Engine Kaveri - were envisaged. No doubt the defence forums would be ringing for the next few days with arm chair military strategists and big talkers crowing about the ‘knowledge’ gained in trying to put together the LCA and its Jet Engine.
I suspect that if any blame or laments are expressed in such forums it would be mainly against the now certifiable incompetence of the DRDO scientists and perhaps some secondary pot shots at the ‘bureaucratic’ controls over the Defence sector in India. There might be several calls for engaging the private sector too.
But what almost everyone will miss are the basic facts:
IAF and HAL even though the 3rd largest users of the MiG-21 after Soviet/Russia and China, could not reverse engineer it and perhaps refine it like what the Chinese did with their Chengdu J-7;
Instead of an LCA program, if the present ‘Tejas’ was developed as an Advanced Jet Trainer (AJT), like the Korean T-50 Golden Eagle program, it would have saved us huge amount of money and time;
- both the Tejas and Golden Eagle use the same power plant - the GE F404 engines, and the Golden Eagle jet trainers have been operational since 2005;
- both the Tejas Mark-2 and the multi-role fighter variant of Golden Eagle FA-50 will use the same GE F414 engines;
- a light attack variant of Golden Eagle the TA-50 is operational for an year now;
- a multi-role fighter variant of Golden Eagle the FA-50 will be operational in an year now (while even Tejas Mark-1 will not be operational for an year beyond that);
Just take time to remember that the Koreans at the same time, were using the same engine to build and make operational their own trainer. We because of the short sightedness of our political masters and blind-sided by the incompetent so called scientists of the DRDO, neither have a Jet Trainer nor have a true multi-role fighter of our own.
After procuring the AJT from the British, we are now shopping around for a multi-role fighter, under a fancy acronym MMRCA, while the Koreans proudly claim their almost in hand FA-60 Golden Eagle multi-role fighters will be equivalent to the KF-16s.
No wonder the powers that be shot down the F-16IN Super Vipers at first opportunity in the MMRCA competition. It wouldn’t have needed a mad.madrasi take to connect the missing dots between the Tejas, the Super Vipers and the Golden Eagles.
Okay! here is a ‘spot 6 differences’ between the Golden Eagle and the Hawk quiz -
My Wicked half whispers, ‘Seeing that the LCA Tejas is jimmied in between the ‘Viper’ and ‘Eagle’, perhaps we should rechristen it as ‘Beagle’
ROFL!
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