HIGH-FLIER: The TEJAS at the Aero India show in Bangalore

The government approves the purchase of 83 Tejas MK-1A Light Combat aircraft, one of the largest deals placed with the Indian defence industry. Know why this indigenous project could be a game-changer

by Sandeep Unnithan

The Indian government finally walked the talk on supporting the indigenous defence industry when the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) on January 13 cleared the purchase of 83 indigenously designed and developed TEJAS MK-1A Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) worth Rs 48,000 crore. A formal contract, among the largest placed with the Indian defence industry, is likely to be inked between the state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) and the Indian Air Force (IAF) at the biannual Aero India air show in Bengaluru this year. The first jets will start rolling out in three years. They will be an advanced version of the TEJAS MK-1 that made its maiden flight exactly two decades ago.

Behind this long-delayed fighter aircraft project is the story of a rare political foresight that could lead to the creation of an indigenous aircraft ecosystem in the country. The IAF, too, has finally come on board to back the program. In 2017, a presentation to the government by the then IAF chief, Air Chief Marshal B.S. Dhanoa, committed the IAF to buying 18 squadrons of the TEJAS and its variants-over 300 aircraft-over the next 15 years. IAF officials say the TEJAS family fits into their plans to reduce the diversity of fighter aircraft to just four by 2035-the other three being Sukhoi, Rafale and Mirage-2000.

THE PARRIKAR PUSH

None of this would have happened without a concerted push in 2016 when the then defence minister Manohar Parrikar stepped in to rescue the TEJAS from being perpetually trapped in a development cycle. The project had begun as a concept during Indira Gandhi's rule in the early 1980s. The aircraft made its first flight in 2001, during prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's tenure. It was designed as a fourth-generation multirole fighter, one of the world's smallest and lightest supersonic aircraft with a combat radius of 500 km and eight hard points that can carry 5.3 tonnes of weapons and sensors.

The project was at a crossroads in the first term of the Narendra Modi government. The IAF did not want the jet in its existing form, but that required convincing Parrikar first. Parrikar, whose firm had once supplied for a DRDO (Defence Research and Development Organisation) project, was an enthusiastic votary of India developing indigenous defence capability. Here was a technocrat who could slip into the nuts and bolts of weapon acquisitions.

Parrikar saw in the TEJAS a ticket to India's fighter aircraft self-sufficiency. He chaired nearly 20 meetings between all stakeholders in the national effort to build a lightweight supersonic fighter that would fill the void left by the fast-depleting MiG-21 squadrons. The participants included HAL, ADA (Aeronautical Development Agency) and the IAF. The IAF felt that TEJAS MK-1 was underpowered, short-legged and lacked an effective radar and sensor suite. It wanted ADA, the DRDO's aircraft design agency, to upgrade the TEJAS to a more capable TEJAS MK-2, powered by new GE-414 engines.

But that meant extensive redesign and practically a new aircraft, which would delay the induction of the TEJAS by another decade. "Why don't you take a Mark-1A?" Parrikar suggested to the IAF during a 2016 technical meeting held at his South Block office. He added that HAL and ADA could deliver a far more capable jet with 43 improvements, including a new-generation Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar, simultaneous air-to-air and air-to-ground attack capabilities, a new sensor suite and electronic warfare capability. Parrikar's successor, Rajnath Singh, gave the TEJAS the ultimate political thumbs-up by donning flying overalls for a half-hour sortie in the jet in September 2019.

Six years on, after fierce cost negotiations between the IAF and HAL, the defence ministry is close to placing the single-largest order for an indigenously designed, developed and produced aircraft. The last time this happened was in the 1960s when the IAF bought over 140 indigenously produced HF-24 Maruts from HAL.

The first TEJAS MK-1A aircraft will fly out around 2022. HAL says the aircraft will commence production 36 months after the signing of the contract, with all 83 aircraft to be delivered by 2029-30. These are ambitious timelines for a project that has been bogged down by delays. But if both agencies stick to the deadlines, TEJAS Mark-1As could fly in as one-to-one replacements for the last batch of refurbished MiG-21s, the 'Bisons', set to be retired by the end of the decade. It could be the booster shot the IAF needs, as it is down to just 28 squadrons of fighter aircraft (each squadron has 18 warplanes) against the sanctioned strength of 40. This is the leanest it has been in nearly 50 years.

A TRENDSETTER

Delivering the 83 TEJAS aircraft will require a huge change of approach for HAL, the country's only fighter aircraft-maker. For over half a century, the organisation has mainly done licensed production, an arrangement under which Russian, French and British aircraft firms gave HAL the knowhow to assemble aircraft from knockdown kits. Now, HAL will have to master the technology of indigenous production. "In licensed production, you are told what to do. In indigenous production, you have to find out what to do," says Girish Deodhare, director of the Bengaluru-based ADA.

The biggest change in HAL has been outsourcing. From building all components in-house and then assembling them, it wisely outsourced component-building to the private sector. All five major sections of an aircraft are built by private firms spread across south India. Dynamatic Technologies builds the front fuselage, L&T builds the wings, VEM Technologies the centre fuselage and Alpha-Tocol Engineering Services the rear fuselage. The tail and rudder are built by the National Aerospace Laboratories and Tata Advanced Materials. HAL puts together these sections at its Bengaluru production line, integrates the engine and avionics and rolls out the aircraft.

In the review meetings with Parrikar, HAL had asked for an order of at least 83 more Mark-1A jets. The IAF, which had ordered 40 Mark-1 jets in the initial operation clearance standard, wanted only 40 more 1As. The IAF's anxiety was understandable. It had raised the first TEJAS squadron in 2016 with just two aircraft. It took HAL nearly four years to achieve its promised production rate of eight jets a year. The IAF agreed to order 83 more aircraft, racking up the total to 123 aircraft. The number, HAL agreed, would make a production line viable. It assured the IAF delivery of at least 16 Mark-1As every year.

The impact of the TEJAS order on the Indian economy, according to a senior HAL executive, will be phenomenal. "A Rs 48,000 crore order will have a force multiplier effect of seven-eight times on the economy," says the official. "Jobs will be created, work will be outsourced. There will be a tremendous downstream effect on Tier 2 and Tier 3 manufacturing in the high-tech defence aviation sector."

It is important to maintain this momentum. The key to sustaining this ecosystem will be to push the TEJAS internationally as a cost-effective replacement for the MiG-21. The IAF's huge vote of confidence in an Indian-made fighter aircraft goes a long way in ensuring this. The TEJAS's first squadron has completed 2,000 accident-free flying hours in Sulur near Coimbatore. Six TEJAS aircraft achieved an impressive 80 per cent availability during Gaganshakti 2018, the IAF's largest exercise in three decades. In another milestone, on January 11, 2020, an TEJAS-Navy prototype carried out the first-ever successful deck-landing on aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya.

"Now that the intellectual property is with us, integration and advancements become easy. A new display, a new armament or a new missile-it's much easier to integrate them into the aircraft," says Air Vice-Marshal N. Tiwari, former head of the National Flight Test Centre at ADA. A case in point is the Derby air-to-air missile from the navy's fleet of now-retired Sea Harrier aircraft. It would have taken at least two years and a few million dollars in consultancy fees to foreign vendors to integrate the missile into an imported aircraft. ADA says the Derby's integration into the TEJAS and test-firing in 2017 took just three months.

"TEJAS is a national program," says DRDO chief G. Satheesh Reddy. "A major role was played in it by the DRDO, CSIR (Council of Scientific and Industrial Research), HAL, BEL (Bharat Electronics Limited), a number of private industries and academic institutes. That's where the success of the project becomes vital."

ADA has switched to a bouquet of fighter aircraft programs, with the fifth-generation Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) and Twin Engine Deck-Based Fighter (TEDBF) to replace the navy's MiG-29Ks. The project closest to induction is the TEJAS MK-2, briefly called the Medium Weight Fighter (MWF). The extensive redesign and a new engine have created a far more capable aircraft in the Mirage-2000 category. The aircraft was designed in consultation with the IAF to avoid the pitfalls of the TJEAS MK-1 project, in which scientists and the IAF worked in silos. "For MWF, we sat down with the IAF every month to understand their requirements," says Deodhare.

The leap to the next generation began in 2015 when the IAF said it did not want a MiG replacement beyond the 123 TEJASs ordered-the long-term need was a replacement for the Mirage-2000. ADA did a complete design review and, in 2019, presented the MWF, a much more capable aircraft than TEJAS MK-1 despite using the same technologies. The TEJAS Mark-2 is a 4.5 generation aircraft that is considered to be bigger, faster and stronger than the TEJAS. At 17.5 tons, it is three tonnes heavier than Mark-1 and carries 900 kg more internal fuel, enabling it to fly further. It can carry six and a half tonnes of weapons and stores, nearly double the Mark-1's capability. The first MK-2 prototype will fly out in 2024. Deodhare says it's an aircraft in the class of the Rafale. The MK-2 could well be the TEJAS's biggest test yet.