The Tejas Twitters 2  part 1.

There has recently been a spate of comments-about 32 posts in all- by Mr. Indranil Roy on the efforts of ADA with the Tejas. The Tejas is in crisis- recent funding notwithstanding- and criticism and debate are a must given Chinese aspirations to hegemony in the neighborhood. I have never met Mr. Roy and my comments are not personal but the Tejas fiasco means that time has come to call a spade a spade. Unlike Commodore Maolankar’s comments which I could respond point wise I found a fair amount of what I believe is called “straw man” points i.e. one attributes statements which no one has made and then proceed to knock them down to one’s own satisfaction. With that as an apology for any ruffled feathers caused I present my case. As a matter of fairness I will try and give a point by point reply to Mr.Roy later.

1.      Mr.Roy’s Tweets struck me as a rather hagiographic account of ADA as a well- meaning organization that valiantly tried to give –and indeed succeeded- in giving India a top class fighter and in the bargain has been more sinned against than sinning and is a victim of misunderstanding by ill- informed natives who do not understand the intricacies of Fighter aircraft development.

 

The real victim of ADA’s inability to handle the Tejas programme has been the IAF. The IAF had 42 squadrons when this project started in 1983. Today it is down to 32 and more squadrons are going to be number plated. The PAF would have been quite proud of  such an "achievement" .The irony is –given present state- when this intended MiG 21 replacement is ready there will be no MiG 21s left to replace! On a more serious note when the Tejas started there was a fat we could eat into. That fat is gone. ANY delay in the Tejas or AMCA programmes will mean that even if aircraft become available at some future date rebuilding the air strength is going to be long and painful e.g. the expansion of the very competent Isr.A.F. from 10 to 20 squadrons after the drubbing they got in the Ramadan War took several years.

 

The Tejas programme is  the world’s longest running development programme and is unlikely to be ever exceeded. Aware of this embarrassment Tejas protagonists have resorted to rewriting history of the programme the latest being Dr.  G. Sateesh Reddy, Chairman DRDO who in the foreword to the DRDO book on the Tejas  actually tries to create the impression that the Tejas was developed in 15 years between 1998- the start of the sanctions and 2014 when the first IAF squadron was formed. The entire happenings between 1983 and 1998 are erased ,Soviet style. Others have cited start date as 1993 when FSED was given etc. In fact apart from the date of first flight which is difficult to change, every milestone on this programme has been shifted or re labelled  to present a picture of acceptable performance. The other dead horses being flogged are the sanctions and inadequate funding. These need to be ignored. A sanction was a quarter century ago and work never stopped for lack of funds.

 

ADA was formed in 1983 with sanction of 560 crores and a target to have a first flight in April 1990. I have no doubt that the very seasoned Raj Mahindra would not have made a range of “on the job training” mistakes like not watching his CG position and trying later to correct it by overloading the aircraft with 500kg( sic!) of ballast- that is almost 10% of the original empty weight or using screws and not Dzus fasteners for attaching access panels- these added decades to the “development”.

The Americans had run their entire F 117 programme including Technology Demonstrators for a paltry 470 crores at the then exchange rates and even less at PPP approximately 220 crores by my estimate so let us not talk ever about paltry funding without examining incompetent or misuse of funds- a possibility mentioned in CAG and other reports.

$ 10.5 million in 1976 for two technology demonstrators which were followed in 1 November 1978  by an additional $340 million for five aircraft and support equipment. That is approximately Rs.14 crores for Technology Demonstrators  and Rs.470 crores for The FSED at the then exchange rates and perhaps half that at PPP. Given this fact  any complaints of funds are totally baseless and smacks of desperate excuses.  ADA bought wind tunnel models in India for 3 crores for one which Lockheed in America bought for 3 lakhs i.e. $12,500  for two.  The real problem, the lack of domain knowledge- in aircraft design and project studies was the cause of ADA's laboured development. This is not surprising if the CVs of the key figures in this project are examined vis a vis successful Indian projects like ISRO as also to note that Aircraft engineering is much more dependent on soft engineering knowledge than space technology and it is this "soft" knowledge that has been lacking in ADA..

 

Given the present emergency situation we must analyse the cause of delays in the earlier programme .

 

Sl.no	Event	Time period	Delay in Years	Comments
1	Replacing  Raj Mahindra ( HAL) with DRDO nominee.	1983-1986	3	The root problem
2	The “nautanki” roll out in 1995 and first flight six years later. It is alleged the aircraft was not even fit to taxi at the time of the “roll out”.	1995-2001	6	The six year delay is unheard of in any programme any time anywhere in the history of aviation
3	The fly by wire flight validation period	2001-2011	10	It should have been done on a proven platform in the ‘80s. It took 10 yrs because a new platform will have its own problems.

 

At first approximations the above adds up to a direct loss of 19 years but the next ten years were spent on undoing the blunders of the past. Indeed the Mk1A and Mk2 are required because the  Mk1 is not quite up to it. Delays had nothing to do with funds, sanctions or new technology. A seasoned designer would have done the right things and we should have been where we are today in 2001-2002 and one did not have to be a genius or hold a Ph.D in aircraft design to do common sense things.

The future

All of the above is water under the bridge. The real danger is in the future. The Indian Air Force has no fat left. If similar delays- even if we subtract nineteen years as above-the development of the MK2 and the AMCA will take us into the 2040s.The IAF squadron strength will be so depleted that the entire  IAF will have to be re-raised. No further delays can be tolerated.

The danger signals are the following:

1.      ADA’s competence to do the job. The process of the development by ADA, as seen by several of its projects, is laboured- indeed far too laboured to succeed.. Funding is blamed in public but the slow progress of ADA to come up with fundable proposals is likely the real problem. The Aerospace development is a knowledge business where information is processed into knowledge and and knowledge is refined into wisdom. ADA is in my opinion, still  at the information stage; it has not demonstrated the required level of knowledge; wisdom is far away. 2025 I hope proves me wrong but I do not see that happening- not as things are at present. Perhaps timely production of the Mk1A will give me hope.

 

2.      The Tejas Mk1.basis aircraft for the Mk2, is itself very bad. How bad? Consider this. According to figures presented by ADA’s Dr. Praveen Ayachit’s presentation (ref: Vayu III/2019) at a conference in New Delhi the empty weight of the LCA Mk1 comes to approx. 7200kgs. The weight of the substantially larger LCA Mk2 is 7700 kilos of which 100 kilos is from the heavier engine. The worry is that empty weight difference between the so called smallest- and therefore hopefully light- fighter in the world and a MWF is a mere 7%.

 

3.      The raises two possibilities; if ADA is confident that it will maintain an empty weight of the MWF at 7800 kilos the weight of the Tejas Mk1A should be around 6300 kilos- and that is assuming the Mk1A  carry the same level of equipment  as the Mk2- and ADA must demonstrate it before the Mk2 . The Government and IAF must closely monitor this weight improvement task on a monthly basis because if ADA fails in the Mk1A weight it will also fail with the Mk2.

 

4.      The monitoring body must also takes step to investigate how and under what programme management  methods such gross weight increases could take place in the MK1- declared to be 5500 kilos even as late as 2010-and correct the design approval systems accordingly. The alternate will be that ADA will not be able to meet the weight target. This caution is because of  ADA's track record of springing surprises- usually unpleasant-and we will face an embarrassing situation in 2023 and thereafter.

 

 

5.      The Weight problem is being discussed because the information is available; unfortunately weight increases of the magnitudes discussed, is a symptom of poor quality of design and avoidable problems resulting from lack of job knowledge.

 

6.      One does not have to be an aerodynamicist to see that the canards in the Tejas Mk2 is in the most risky position vis a vis the intakes of all canard equipped fighters-Typhoon, Gripen or Rafale. Mr. Roy has tweeted CFD studies of a non critical case .There are flight regimes where the canard will block or obstruct the flow to the engines -quite apart from the drag of closely spaced plates-Whilst one admires the confidence being placed on CFD studies- a confidence I do not share-the practical thing to do would be to prioritize and rush the first Mk2 as a Technology demonstrator –a MEL equipped aircraft so that the problem can be investigated at the earliest. If we are lucky and the CFD predictions are validated it would be a big relief but if there are problems the Mk2 is in near incurable trouble.

 

7.      As a basis for the Mk 2 the Mk1A programme is top priority and a team should be formed by the non ADA/non DRDO stakeholders to critically monitor Tejas Mk1A progress. If we wait till 2025- or whatever- ADA dates are by custom just numbers- we will learn from a newly promoted Director at 2024.99 that ADA will need another three years. The trapeze act has been that a Secretary releases funds and retires and a Director makes promises outside his tenure and retires. This non accountability is to broken. ADA Directors and DRDO must be continuously monitored for meeting targets within their tenures.

 

8.      Much has been claimed about the benefits of the Tejas programme. The Customer has not seen those benefits unless an apparent serviceability rate of 45 hrs per annum is to be considered as one. The negative impacts are ADA has shown that , done the present way. Aircraft development in India is difficult, uncertain and requires lots of money- a tacit endorsement for imports. Nothing could be further than the truth. We have an organization that is perfect for delays.