A Radiance in the Indian skies The Tejas Saga                                     A review by Prof. Prodyut Das

by Air Marshal (Retd) Phillip Rajkumar & BR Srikanth       

DRDO Monographs Special Publication Series © 2021                     DRDO New Delhi 110011

ISBN 978-81-86514-78-8                              PP194

 

 

Several years ago, Air Marshal Rajkumar (PR) and Mr. Srikanth (BRS) had written a smaller book with a similar sounding name. I say similar because I do not have the book with me now. I made the, unusual for me, mistake of lending the book and it has since roamed! As far as I therefore remember the book was a more personal one detailing PR’s experiences as a combat and a very well- known Test Pilot. His participation in the famous Sargodha 2^nd strike – third strike going by Pushpindar Singh Chopra exactitude- was the most successful of all the strikes with the PAF losing about six aircraft on the Sargodha tarmac though the PAF grudgingly admitted to only one, was detailed with many careful observations. 

Though the book is authored by PR and BRS’s, this present avatar of the book is purged of the earlier chapters and personal anecdotes and seems to be an effort by DRDO to explain the Tejas project its achievement and its delays. Just for that, the book is welcome. The criticism of severely delayed projects is inevitable and if nothing criticism acts as a goad; the Tejas project deserves to be criticized. In the US where engineering development is professional, criticism is jackass raucous.

The book is reasonably well produced if you go by PWD standards. The format is 280mmx280mm square being not quite coffee table nor A4. The printing is on glossy paper but some of the pictures are blurred. I initially thought it had something to do with the process of changing of 90’s era contact prints to photo offset or perhaps for reasons of secrecy but the identical picture heading chapters 6 and 10 one is quite sharp and the other is blurred! The other irritation is that the number of contradictions in the narrative which speaks of lack of editing and careful proof reading. The first flight date of the NLCA NP1 is given variously as November 26 2009 and as April 27 2012- on the same page! This may sound like carping but I believe from my own development experience Quality is a culture and it walks on a slippery slope; it must be seen in any and every “product” and activity by the group. e.g for a machine fabricator not only is the machinery being shipped must be of high quality but it must be packed in a crate made from machine planed wood and not rough planks of mango wood as is usually the case. Contrary to conventional wisdom the customer is willing to pay for the assurance of trouble-free quality. I am sure that the Chinese and the Americans aviation and military people will be reading this book with more than usual interest. Unless it was to confuse the Chinese and the Yanks, they will find the quality of the book somewhat reassuring that we are not quite “there” yet.

 The other irritants are that gross distortions of facts such as a Secretary level official claiming the Tejas was developed in fourteen years i. e. from 1998 when the sanction was imposed to IOC. This is not only an insult to the intelligence of all those aviation people who have been eagerly following the Tejas ab initio but it is precisely this kind of stubborn self-justification that delays correction. Honest confession expedites absolution and correction.

In discussing the Tejas which was an attempt to develop a fourth- generation fighter it is inevitable that comparison must arise with the F 16 which was the aeroplane to beat- particularly for India since the PAF had F 16s. The core “Fighter Mafia”-did I not say that the US critics are raucous- that created the F 16 comprised of Harry Hillaker, Pierre Sprey, Everest Riccione and Maj. Boyd. Two were engineers and two were the “Customers” being Air Force pilots which means that to engineering experience was blended customer knowledge and wisdom acting in trust.  I do not have the details of the others but Hillaker, the Chief Designer, was just a BS in Engineering from Michigan- no Ph.Ds.- but he had worked on Convair GD for forty years including the gigantic B 36, the supersonic B 58 Hustler and that ultimate “folly” the F 111 which convinced him that official specifications were often wrong. He found, for example, that the on an average the Hustler designed for supersonic dash to target had a total eight hours supersonic flight over its entire life time which questions the specifications itself because supersonic capability compromised the design so much   that the B 58 had a particularly short service life. Digressing this present craze for “super cruise” will go the same way when people “discover” that even without A/B super cruise @ M 1.6 burns four or five times the fuel burn at M 0.8 i.e. it slashes range! These anomalies in specifications set him dreaming-for ten years- about the F 16 whose fly off against the YF 17 took place in 1974. It is interesting that for the first project studies Hillaker received $ 147,000 in 1969 the equivalent of Rs 1.47 lakhs going by the astounding claim in this present book that at PPP $1=Rs.1!  I would put it at $1= Rs7-10 i.e. 7-10 lakhs by PPP, which is still not a lot but it is enough if you know your job. There were a lot of informed argument even within the group, an illustration being whether the F 5s small radar the APQ 153 would be good enough for the F 16. It was much later that Hillaker conceded that the bigger APG 66 radar prolonged the marketability of the product but the point to note was that the design team had both the comparable depth knowledge and the courage of conviction to argue out various options with the customer. It is only when the designer can convince the Customer that the designer is also an expert with almost equal knowledge on many aspects of operations and better knowledge in design does a feeling of mutual respect and kinship grow and the customer feels that he has come to the right place- an advantage enjoyed by our foreign vendors. ADA and HAL must rise to that level of competence where instead of dourly going about trying to meet an often a “cut and paste” specification.

 It must be pointed out that during the course of development of the F 16 the wing area was increased from 280 to 300 sq. ft (320 sq ft. was demanded but shot down!), the weight went up by a thousand pounds, chaff and flare had to be added and the tail plane grew in size-all in the course of five years. It was taken as all in a day’s work. The aggrievedness that was vented when a specified missile had to be changed needs no repeating here. With its DRDO lab siring, ADA is too steeped in the “we are scientists” culture which is why even now ADA puts the blame on delayed production on HAL. No engineer will walk away from the fascination of “his” or “her” brainchild. “Let’s have a look at that bloody clock” was the reaction of the Rolls Royce engineers when a David Ogilvy ad claimed that sixty m.p.h. the loudest noise inside the RR Silver Wraith was the clock! That fierce ownership of anything done was not cultivated.

The book in its present form is a government publication and being Government, it tells the truth but again because it is a government publication it does not tell the whole truth. For instance, it rightly maintains that MSD Wollen Chairman HAL transferred 300 hundred engineers to ADA within a few hours. What it does not mention is that an earlier Chairman, BK Kapur, was summarily removed from his post precisely, so the story goes, because he refused to allow the cannibalization of HAL Aircraft Design Bureau personnel to ADA. The merits of the decision are not important but the reader is cautioned that the story told has dark corners not illuminated.

 In this review I will confine myself to what was stated in the book which aroused my interest or curiosity or what I thought were anomalous – senior officials often contradict each other when they don’t contradict themselves.

Was the Project a success? This is where my earlier caution of senior people usually contradicting each other comes along. By the book VS Arunachalam, Kota Harinaryana quite firmly think the project is done and is a success though legally being the founding fathers of ADA it can be said that they have are a  party with an interest in the matter but it Air Chief Marshal SK Kaul at the rollout in 1995 said with prescience of a sage and the precision of a Lawyer that whilst he was happy to be present at the roll out, the LCA project would be considered a success only when it could be found flying regularly over all parts of the country and in large numbers. That unfortunately is yet far to be fulfilled. The reader however has a liberal choice- supported by eminent opinion- regarding whether the project was a success or failure!

Justifying the removal of the country’s most experienced aircraft designer at that time it is mentioned early in the book that a MP raised questions in Parliament about the nationality of our “Hillaker”, Raj Mahindra, who had about forty years’ experience on the HT 2, HJT 16 and the Marut aircraft. It was Raj Mahindra (RM) who was “Chief Designer” designate when the project went up for sanctioning. Though RM had worked for forty years in HAL without any nationality problems and was defended in the Parliament by the then Defence Minister R Venkataraman, Arunachalam asked Valluri to ease his Chief Designer out. Valluri who probably saw where things were heading resigned along with RM. It is interesting after Raj Mahindra’s dismissal the “Oh- so- concerned” MP apparently lost all interest and did not raise any questions on the repeated delays and slippage of dates of the project nor did he, ex-IAF, support the IAF’s strong objections to the many technical & design deficiencies in the ADA proposals review in 1989 in terms of Aerodynamics. Equipment space and performance. The same gentleman was later involved in a scam involving Commonwealth Games funds as a cabinet minister. There are people who believe that the RM/MP episode was timed to ensure that after the project was granted, the “show piece” Chief Designer was removed and it was given to a DRDO nominee who may not have passed muster in the first instance. If indeed it was so it was unethical. The loss of RM was a grievous blow and de facto a victory for the import lobby. It is reasonable to expect that with his forty years of experience working for the customer the project would not have suffered many of the mis- management problems arising from “on the job training” of the subsequent incumbent.

  Around 1990 Arunachalam himself was attacked in Parliament for delay and threatened with an enquiry for misuse of National funds but strong support by Sharad Pawar (Now Chief of NCP) as Defence Minister had him exonerated. Dr. Arunachalam was later involved in an enquiry about an “American mole” in the cabinet but he was again exonerated. He lives now in the US as a tenured Professor. Recording his above tribulations Arunachalam describes himself as “a poor Engineer”. I have a bee in my bonnet about people with engineering degrees calling themselves engineers. A degree is merely a license to walk the shop floor. I beg to differ to his self-description only because it has a bearing to the LCA story. Highly Qualified, Eminent, Great Organizer, great networker, very able fixer- whatever praise we say is not enough -, but engineer no. To be called an Engineer one needs to walk “the works” in an Industry or a service for decades. The LCA programme’s abiding handicap was that there was, after Raj Mahindra’s ouster, not one engineer at the top and it made all the difference. At that time forty years ago, we had a fascination for Eminent Personalities who had no idea of urgency the industry has. No one complained that the Dhawan Committee report on the Avro took years when the Indian Airlines was bleeding daily.

 The Soviets who had offered to collaborate in the LCA project were as skeptical as the IAF about the proposal but they were blunter and scathing in their remarks.  Paint “LCA” on a kite and fly it” was their brusque, typically Slavic, summary of their assessment. The book also says what they thought of the proposer VS Arunachalam but that is irrelevant here.  They were, of course, intolerant of delays. Though by the 1980s they had stopped the practice of shooting defaulting designers they had sacked Tikhomirov in 1960s who was to Soviet radar technology what Zhukovsky was for aeronautics or Korolev was in rocketry for a mere (by our standards) two years delay in the KUB radar programme. Mind you Tikhomirov had accurately predicted this delay and his “chela” (disciple/protégé) finished the project two years after his dismissal. Tikhomirov was posthumously honoured with a Research Institute named after him for his life time contribution in Soviet Radar Technology but he was never above censure.

 Viewed in the context of the above Soviet seriousness the chapter on “Last chance for Aatre” or “Last chance for Arunachalam” (as it used to be when I started following this benighted project!)  causes a sense of astonishment. The surreal development structure of ADA as created could happen only because there was NO risk to life or honour let alone to pension and perks. No harm done had they still delivered nor were they solely responsible but the country surely deserved better. Perhaps LCA was not “Last Chance for A…. but Limitless Chances for A…”.

To understand why it happened this way is the fact is at the genesis of the LCA 1983-1991 India was in a period of political instability. It was a time of five prime Ministers and ten Defence Ministers. It was a time when there were many groups thinking about the next generation fighter with each group, as per the book, in disagreement on how to proceed. The guiding lights of the successful claimants were a top nuclear physicist, a metallurgical scientist from a Defence Laboratory- both at the level of Cabinet Secretaries, a cabinet minister with a degree in Law and an IISc Professor of fluid mechanics. Whilst eminent and powerful and obviously “having the king’s ear” the sum total of Industrial experience of the four persons combined was three years that too part time. Had they succeeded it would have been an epic in the scale of Operation Flood or the Green revolution- a liberation of India from Foreign dependence.  Unsurprisingly that did not happen; Domain Experience or more correctly lack of it in this case was the reason.  When Kurien was asked to lead “Operation Flood” he had by 1964 over twenty-four years’ experience, had established AMUL as agoing concern and  what he had forgotten about Dairying Industry was more than most Dairy Scientists would ever learn. Our LCA team, eminent though it was, would not have cut much ice with General Dynamics Fort Worth had they applied for a mentorship of the F 16 project.

If the book was an attempt by DRDO to exonerate ADA’s shortcomings then I am afraid DRDO has scored several self-goals. Sample these:

The book states that the roll out was in November 1995 and the taxi trials began in February 1998 i. e. after over three years. The sanctions, blamed for so many of the delays, came into effect only in mid- 1998 so it means that despite a 1995 roll out the aircraft was unfit to taxi under its own power for over three years thereafter; a few months may be ok but over three years is unheard of. Sanctions cannot be the reason; interestingly the aircraft started taxy trials within months of the sanction being imposed! The clever “roll out” event along with events like IOC 1 and IOC 2 and the repeated promises and dates missed when the organization must have known they were unrealistic have done much to erode the present credibility of ADA to zero.  

There is mention of Rs. 3 crores spent for a wind tunnel model fabricated in Bangalore in 1991.  I know, having worked for three years on the project, that all the MiG 21 accessories was indigenized for 79 lakhs by 1977. Similarly, the T 72 and BMP hull electricals (over 9000 parts/kit) and the Westinghouse Wabco Charmilles Loco and Wagon air brake systems (7000 parts/kit) that I developed in 1985-1989 to Military/ UIC International standards cost 1.2 crores and that included 8 Wasino/ Mitsui Seiki /HMT CNC machines. This was a period when a complete aircraft would have a stencil near the nose stating “this aircraft costs 97 lakhs “(no, I don’t know who had that bright idea) etc. To spend 3 crores on a 2.2 mts by 1.4 mts by 0.7 mts scale model fabricated in Bangalore in 1991 meant that the thing’s cost was several times its weight in gold. If not a misprint, prima facie, the sum would be difficult to justify in an audit. One recalls that the CAG reports of accounts not being kept properly in this period. Well managed, the Rs.560 crores initial should have been enough to achieve what was stated at the outset to land the project- a flying prototype by April 1990. Interestingly the Americans spent just $25,000 i.e. 3 lakhs in 1975 for two scale models of the same size as the LCA model -one for aerodynamics and the other for RCS. Ref Lockheed's Black World ,Skunk Works, Osprey Aviation,2000 ISBN1 84176059 5 pp82. I mention this to emphasize that our aircraft development costs and costs can be slashed to a fraction by better management both technical and fiscal..  

Another very senior official of ADA again in an attempted justification of the delays in the Tejas programme being quite comparable to foreign programmes cites that since the FBW system was first tested on a Jaguar in 1977 the development time of the Eurofighter should be taken to be from that year (sic!). Actually, by that logic, he should use 1957 because it was in 1957 that FBW was first flown as the aileron control on a Hunter. 1977 or 1957 does not matter; this very senior Official has missed the woods for the trees. The real point is that no engineer would use unproven technology as the LCA team did. In the case of the Typhoon,  FBW was thirty years proved before being used. It is Tenth class simple probabilities: the uncertainties of the new platform multiply the uncertainties of the new technology reducing testing time availability data generation and data confidence. In the Tejas we used composites and FBW directly instead of trying out these technologies in real “Technology Demonstrators”, may be a disarmed and gutted HF 24, Ajeet or a Mig 21 just to test, separately, the technologies- composite wings, FBW, glass cockpit etc.  We are again going to use new fifth generation technologies directly on the AMCA.  Don’t expect AMCA to run on schedule because ADA has again unnecessarily courted trouble.

One could carry on there being other examples but there are brighter aspects also.

 Reading the book was something like reading the Henderson Brooks report (still not available to the Indian “hoi polloi”). There was great heroism at the “paltan” level; it was lack of requisite domain knowledge at the Chief Designer level that caused delays. Every technological challenge was met and within reasonable time be it in electronics, materials, manufacturing or planning for the flight testing which was meticulous and the NFTC must take a lot of credit for the crash free programme that is often mentioned. The contribution of the Navy team deserves particular mention. Started in 1993 the first prototype was delivered in 2009/2012 (as above) but once they had the prototype the Navy/NFTC got the system going and by 2020 we were almost there which is not at all bad. The Navy spirit is admirable. They feel the LCA is unsuitable for carrier operations for several reasons but they have mastered many technicalities using the imperfect means. Talk about “if life hands you a Lemon… make lemonade”.  The same goes for Test Flying. Heartwarming was the fact that when the designated responsible official balked at signing documents to release the aircraft for the first flight there was always someone who stepped in to take up the responsibility. To be noted was that the first prototype was ready for first flight in early 1990; BAC had advised ADA in June 1990 that screw up your courage and fly the Tejas yet it was not ADA officials but the then Head of NFTC-an Air Force Officer (PR) - who bit the bullet and cut through sessions of technical vapouring to announce that the prototype would be flown. He recalls the hushed silence that followed. This lack of “venture” in ADA culture is to be noted. We lost a year just deciding to fly. 

A chapter on the limited series production by Yogesh Kumar makes the very important point on the lack of cooperation between HAL and ADA something he emphasizes in bold letters. It is not that the tailless high composites FBW aircraft could not be developed within ten years and 560 crores but it required a level of design engineering experience and wisdom the team simply did not have. As if that was not enough, they interposed a “Rahu” (“head with no body” satellite in Indian astrology) as a Design organization, emasculated HAL to provide the conscripted troops which then had to detail and manufacture someone’s i.e. ADA’s design (Bad IR 101) after ensuring the only man who could have done something was removed by a parliamentary objection. What was the aim of these eminent personae? Used to dealing with Directors, Secretaries and Cabinet Ministers their contacts with the troops and ground realities were of the level of the late Gen. BM Kaul of ’62.  Results were similar.

In a strange way the book gives cause for hope and the reason can be put succinctly. Aircraft Development is not rocket science but it is a knowledge Industry where the knowledge changes rapidly. What we had attempted to do with the Tejas was that a group with zero Industrial/ service experience and no engineering maturity or domain knowledge were allowed, without political oversight, to micromanage a state-of-the-art fighter project. Delays were inevitable. Don’t do that again and we will definitely have better results. Leave the business of weapons development strictly and only to the financiers, engineers and the Services people and those who will be directly affected by the results. Scientists and Bureaucrats can be supports, not pillars and “part time multi hat” wearers are simply too busy with too many things. It is simple really.

The other question is what is to be done with ADA? Sitting at Vimanpura Post with no manufacturing facility, without a works or a prototype building capacity of of its own, it will never develop or deliver. It can’t. HAL will probably continue to resent. Either it should be developed independent of DRDO as a fully-fledged and independent competitor to ARDC HAL with its own manufacturing capabilities (the best option) or privatized.