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It was an event which should have made any self-respecting nation proud. The maiden flight of the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) early this month was not a mean achievement nor was it merely a military affair.
It was a triumph of technological excellence, of human perseverance and determination. But tell me am I mistaken in my notion that there was hardly any jubilation at all.
I have seen our venerable newspapers going to town over a damsel who won some beauty crown mumbling something about Mother Teresa. Reams and reams were spent on this silicon beauty. Then there was this case of an editor, a respectable one, going on the front page explaining why his newspaper missed out on the exclusivity of the Prime Minister's musings. Not one editor thought it fit to write a small tribute to our scientists and aeronautical engineers for pulling off this achievement.
Instead, our media pundits ran stories with lots of question marks on the project asking whether the LCA will ever become operational. There are two reasons for such cynical articles on the LCA project. One, ignorance and two, deliberate distortion of facts. The very basic ignorance displayed by our writers is shown by the presumption that a highly complex product like a fighter aircraft ought to become operational within a year or two of its first prototype flight. In the last few days, I have come across a number of articles, all quoting authoritative sources either in the Ministry of Defence or the Indian Air Force, all concluding with a smug sneer that okay, so what if the aircraft did manage to fly, it has an American engine and you know, it will be obsolete by the time it is inducted into the air force.
I do not hold any brief either for the Defence Research and Development Organisation or for Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd or for the Aeronautical Development Agency. But I am appalled and pained at the magnitude of ignorance which many of our writers on matters of defence and security have displayed. I am sure it is common knowledge that an equipment like a fighter aircraft has no less than a million pieces configured in such a way that a frame made of different metals can take to the skies and not only remain airborne for a given number of years but also perform tasks which are complex and require extreme agility both on the part of man and machine.
All I want to say is that it is grossly unfair to ridicule or belittle our scientists and engineers who are pursuing a dream of giving this country a fighter aircraft of its own. It is, I assume, beyond any debate that any equipment requires a series of tests before it is put to use, be it a sewing machine or a pressure cooker. An aircraft, a more complex equipment, will certainly requires a few years of testing and fine tuning before it is cleared for production and operational missions. There are millions of tests to be carried out before the aircraft can be considered worthy of operations. There are innumerable factors which play a pivotal role in the success and failure of a project which is so ambitious in nature as the LCA project, especially when it is punctuated at regular intervals by lack of funds, sanctions by western nations, indifference at higher levels of government and a hostile press.
I would like to make a few points here. One, there are only handful of countries in the world which make fighter aircraft. In Asia, there are only two China and Japan. The Chinese have masterfully reverse-engineered whatever they bought from the Russians the MiG series of fighter aircraft. The Japanese aircraft project is based on a US fighter jet project. As for Pakistan, it is currently negotiating with China on a joint development and production of a trainer-cum-fighter aircraft.
The Indian LCA is neither a stolen product nor a marvel of reverse engineering. It is as much home grown as the Basmati rice. Two, no aircraft producing country in the world has been able to put together a fighter aircraft for a mission role within two or three years of its first experimental flight. Three, no fighter or civilian aircraft can claim to be wholly indigenous various parts, including the engine and avionics, are often outsourced for economic and technological reasons. Four, no aircraft in the world is perfect. Look at our own air force squadrons MiG-21s keep falling out of the skies now and then even after decades of being operational. MiG-29s had a design flaw which had to be corrected after it was bought by India. Sukhoi-30s, bought two years ago by India, are yet to be operationally ready for various reasons, primarily absence of avionics. And for record's sake, two Mirage-2000-5s, one of the most hi-tech fighter aircraft in the world, crashed soon after Taiwan bought a few squadrons from the French last year.
There is another reason why I take strong objection to the negative slant given to the stories on the LCA. Please remember one thing, the aircraft which flew on January 4 was the first prototype. There will be at least two more before design parameters are frozen. And even after that, the aircraft will continue to be modified in terms of design and technology as the project enters the production stage. It is a continuous process. Second, the two key elements of a fighter aircraft are its engine and its avionics system. The indigenous engine, Kaveri, is being developed and will incorporate some of the latest innovations and designs in aircraft engine technology. The first of the Kaveri prototypes will do a piggy-back ride on a Russian transport plane for a test flight soon.
The design parameters of the engine incorporate some of the latest innovations and technologies like thrust vectoring and afterburners. There are already plans to develop an engine minus the afterburners for a medium combat aircraft which will have stealth characteristics. Afterburners leave tell-tale signs of an aircraft's presence but are essential for critical thrust during air combat missions. As for avionics, some of our scientists' achievements are praiseworthy. Like the multi-mode pulse doppler radar. It has multi-target search, track-while-scan and ground mapping capabilities. It has built-in electronic warfare capabilities and is useful in delivering various types of weapons. The digital fly-by-wire flight control system is another feature which deserves special mention.
In the beginning I had talked of two reasons for the negative attitude towards the LCA. The second reason is far more dangerous than the first one. I suspect, quite strongly, that some of the media stories are inspired by vested interests in this case all those who stand to gain from importing military hardware. If India were to produce fighter aircraft, it would mean no business, most of all, for the Russian aircraft industry and various other manufacturers of aircraft components in Europe. No business simply means no commission. The Russian lobby is quite strong in India. So are the ones supporting the European firms. The ones with a US slant have a different axe to grind: they cannot accept the fact that we could develop and fly an aircraft without their help and that too after they unilaterally broke off a contract to help us build the digital flight control system and the engine. It is appropriate to point out that whenever the Indian defence scientists come out with a new product, these interests leave no opportunity to run it down, sadly not on the basis of facts but on presumptions and hearsay.
The fact is, and the whole world
saw it, the LCA prototype no 1 flew majestically on its maiden flight and
will log millions of flying hours in its operational mission of keeping
the Indian skies free of enemy in the next decade.
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