Induction of LCA Tejas Mk 1A and history of India’s quest to have its Indigenous Fighter Aircraft

Government of India cleared the Rs 48,000-crore deal for 83 LCA (Light Combat Aircraft) Tejas aircraft on 15 January 2021.This will see a greater collaboration between state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) and private firms as part of ‘Make in India’. Of these 83 aircraft, HAL will deliver 73 Tejas Mk 1A and 10 Tejas Mk 1 trainers by 2026. Tejas will only be the second indigenously built fighter aircraft in India’s history.

Tejas’ history

Government of India cleared a project to build a new Light Combat Aircraft as a replacement for MiG 21s in 1983. The first prototype of Tejas flew in 2001, 18 years after the project started. In the 1970s and 80s, especially after the 1974 Pokhran nuclear tests, India was caught in a terrible environment of technology denial. The West, particularly America, denied India access to any ‘sensitive technology.

While India’s strengths included the inherent ability in composite materials, design, math, and metallurgy, India lacked the know-how when it came to complex electronics, especially the engine. India’s project to build the engine ‘Kaveri’ for a Light Combat Aircraft had also failed.

After India improved relations with the US and became a strategic partner of USA, the “technology apartheid” slowly ended and this helped India put together a complex fighter aircraft. Today, Tejas is 50 per cent indigenous. It has a GE American engine, an Israeli Elta radar, and British aerospace, avionics, and other engines.

The first prototype of Tejas flew in 2001. In December 2013, the first stages got Initial Operational Clearance. In 2019, the IAF was given the first aircraft with Final Operational Clearance.

The Indian Airforce is currently in possession of 20 Tejas Mk1 aircraft, which have got the Initial Operational Clearance. Some have got the final Final Operational clearance. When Tejas Mark1A becomes fully operational, IAF will have about three squadrons of Tejas Mk1 aircraft.

India’s misadventures with fighter aircraft (HF-24 Marut and C119 Fairchild Packet)

By the mid-1950s, as India’s relationship with Pakistan was going bad, Nehru sought advanced technologies to fight the Pakistanis. India employed Dr Kurt Tank, a leading German aeronautical engineer who built the Luftwaffe aircraft in World War II. This aircraft was copied 20,000 times during the war.

In India, Tank was made the director of Madras Institute of Technology. He and his team built HAL HF-24 Marut, an indigenously built fighter-bomber aircraft.

Marut was supposed to be of supersonic speed but could never surpass the speed of sound. This, is largely because of the ‘technology denial’ era. Nobody would sell India a decent engine.

India then started fitting two Orpheus engines into one Marut. So the aircraft had two subsonic engines and always remained underpowered. As many as 147 Maruts were produced and they played an essential ground support role in the 1971 war with Pakistan.

By 1975, however, this programme was suspended, and the Maruts were sold for scrap.

Another example of “jugaad” that the Indian Air Force had to endure was the Canada-made Fairchild Packet Aircraft that could go to high altitudes and land at very short landing grounds. However, this was found to be inadequate for higher Himalayas. So the Indian Airforce put a jetpack, which was an Orpheus engine, on the aircraft’s two piston engines to allow flying at higher altitudes.