IAF likely to get four more LCA by March 2016, says NAL director

C Shivakumar

Chennai:

Indian Air Force is likely to get four more light combat aircraft
Tejas between December to March from Hindustan Aeronautics Limited,
according to director of National Aerospace Laboratories Shyam Chetty.



Chetty told reporters on the sidelines of 68th CSIR-Central Leather
Research Institute Foundation Day Celebrations here that the IAF had
some concerns with Tejas end to end accuracy and we have tried to
rectify it.



“The four aircraft may adhere to international end to end accuracy and
further research is on to meet the exact parameters of what IAF
requires,” said Chetty, who was one of the 45 member team that worked
on the project for the last 22 years.



“The Indian Air Force wanted eight aircraft every year. We will be
handing then four more aircraft by the end of this financial year,” he
said. HAL had already handed over one aircraft on January 2015 this
year.



He also highlighted manufacturing issues relating to Tejas. “There are
lot of manufacturing problems and they are working on the tooling
technology to raise it to international standards,” he said.



Interestingly, 4,500 test flights is necessary to to get final
operational clearance. Interestingly, LCA underwent more than 3,000
test flights. “The aircraft handed over was ready to take off only
with restricted set of weaponry and sensors and a test with full range
of weaponry was yet to be done,” Chetty said.



Interestingly, Tejas will also have added armoury from Israel and
other countries. Currently, scientists are conducting trials for Tejas
at the sea based test facilities at INS Hamsa in Goa.



We have built a facility for the Naval version of Tejas, he said.



Chetty also said that it was Council for Scientific and Industrial
research institution that worked in developing the carbon composites
for the aircraft, which has 70 per cent of parts being indigenously
produced. He said that 13 major components of the aircraft was made in
NAL.



“We conducted 26,000 model tests for the aircraft so that the
deficiency could be corrected,” Chetty said.



However, he ruled out NAL’s role in the fifth generation aircraft.
“Most likely, we would be buying the fifth generation aircraft or it
would be developed by HAL. We are not in the project till now,” he
said.