Ravi Sharma
Worried over the pace of the indigenous Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas programme, the Indian Air Force has suggested that the deadline for the fighter’s initial operational clearance (IOC) be postponed. According to the latest schedules, the IOC is December 2010. But with a number of issues dogging the design and development of the fighter, the postponement was suggested during last week’s ‘monthly review meeting.’ Senior officials from the designers, the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA), the IAF (including the newly appointed Deputy Chief of Air Staff Air Marshal N.V. Tyagi) and the manufacturer, Hindustan Aeronautics, were present. Highly placed sources told The Hindu that the software integration of crucial equipment like the Israeli-built multimode radar (MMR) with the aircraft was yet to be completed. The lack of a radar meant that crucial points on the flight envelope were yet to be tested.The ADA has still not provided HAL with the digital flight control computer and air data computers which have to be integrated into the LCA programme’s Limited Series Production 3 (LSP3) aircraft. The new LSP3, which was scheduled to make its first flight in June 2008, is now expected to do so only in September. Both the IAF and the ADA have bemoaned the low sortie generation by HAL. Just 11 sorties were undertaken in April, 24 in May and 23 in June. Officials claim that a minimum run rate of 30 sorties a month is required to meet the present IOC deadline. With this in mind, a plan to prepare two aircraft for flying in the forenoon and one in the afternoon was worked out. But this has not fructified.HAL officials, however, deny that sortie generation is the primary reason behind the delays. “With two aircraft withdrawn from the flight test programme, we have just five aircraft to generate sorties,” said an official. “And even the available aircraft are not fully fitted to undertake the flights that are required. We have even painted LSP3 in its new colour [grey] and are ready. LSP4 will have its ground run before the end of July and the fuselages for LSP5 and LSP6 are ready. On six occasions in June while the aircraft was prepared and the weather good, there were no pilots.” Officials said the IAF was aware of the shortage of test pilots at the National Flight Test Centre (the LCA is flown exclusively by these pilots) and was looking to increase their number.
10 comments:
LCA is useless and taking too long to be developed and why radar and other systems have not been integrated and if ADA engineers can't do it alnoe go with foreign firm rather than doing it alone which is obviously unsure when lca will be completed
jf17 has been developed much faster
The complexity lies in quadruplex FBW of LCA.
JF-17 uses conventional controls with stability augmentation in the yaw and roll axis and a digital FBW system in the pitch axis. This makes much easier to open up the flight envelop just as HAL has been able to open HJT-36 flight envelop much more quickly.
The more software dependent an aircraft is the longer it takes. JSF flight testing is also going as slow as that of LCA and it is also slipping on its revised schedule despite the vast experience Lockheed Martin has.
List is endless:
+ Current american engine under powered
+Home grown engine pretty much abandoned
+Indian radar is still under development
+Foreign radar is not integrated yet
+According to above poster FBW is not totally developed and tested?
+Overweight
+Indian BVR is still under development
Can you put this on Discussionsforum too?
http://www.eurasiaforum.de/forum-38.html
Its a Forum about Turkish Military , Language is German
Link like this:
"Eurasiaforum-Turkish Military (German)"
The long development time of LCA can ultimately be explained by the following links:
TopCoder: 705 Indians attended but no one in the 70 finalists.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=development&articleId=9134122&taxonomyId=11&intsrc=kc_top
ACM_ICPC: No IITians in the first 49.
http://cm.baylor.edu/ICPCWiki/Wiki.jsp?page=Results World Finals 2009
IOI: The best rank for India is 88
http://www.ioi2008.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=39&Itemid=54
IMO: Consistently bad year after year after year
http://www.imo-official.org/results.aspx
In other words, India does not have enough brain power to undertake such a project.
^^Is that a racist remark.
guys in LCA project no one is from IIT except those who joind DRDO,HAL,ADA 20-30 years ago
in last 15 years no one from IIT joined drdo,hal,ada
and those who are recruited by DRDO,HAL,ADA on merit base all india is never true,candidates are hired on reference not on their capability
this is the truth.
although its called all india merit based selection so that best person go in, but people are already get selected in these selection by reference
and this is also the truth about armed force ,all come on reference despite its called merit based except pilots.
so in india merit system is just fake,may it be IAS,IPS or any other test in the end people are selected by reference
^^dont make unsubstantiated alligations. In over 30 years of my service I have never seen anyone being recruited into the Armed Forces on the basis of reference. You have perhaps never appeared before a national level selection board be it SSB, IAS, Engineering Service Exam etc.
To Anonymous post @July 14, 2009 5:36 PM
Put a lid on it, Will you?
Winning tournaments gives only bragging rights, nothing else. Most of those who excel in those programming competitions may not be able to competitively do a full end-to-end application. Real world programming is much more than just algorithms. It is the same difference between winning Olympic sharp shooting content and being a Wild West gun slinger.
Few years back CA announced a $1M cash prize for coders to come up with best tools for migration from Oracle to Ingres. It was an open contest for coders thru out the world. Guess who won?! Prize was shared by 3 teams, 2 from India and 1 from US. Even the US team was mostly ethnic Indian.
^^dont make unsubstantiated alligations. In over 30 years of my service I have never seen anyone being recruited into the Armed Forces on the basis of reference. You have perhaps never appeared before a national level selection board be it SSB, IAS, Engineering Service Exam etc.
------------------------------------
i have studied in the army school and soldier and officers there themselves told me this.
and yes let alone SSB(how many seats are there and how many aspirants) even IAS,IPS are selected on reference and those who are IAS/IPS even their childern get selected even if they are not worthy of only few come on thier own and many on top positions were recruited by reference.
Post a Comment