The question of what airplanes the Indian Air Force will be flying in 2030 is not easy to answer. The important factor is how the Indian economy grows in the next decade which determines how much money is spent on defense. And even when there is money to spend, previous Governments had the lazy attitude that “lets just buy it from another country”. At least Narendra Modi is the first Prime Minister to push “Make in India” even for defence purchases.
The Indian Government always seems to approach defence procurement in a very sensible manner i.e. the Air Force (for example) has to convince the politicians that (a) there is a need for an aircraft (b) that there is a reason to make it in India instead of just buying it from another country (c) that it meets all the possible needs of the Air Force so that you get maximum value for your money and finally (d) it is urgent, so India has to start work on it right away. Of course, all Governments do exactly the same thing, but at least recognising a problem is the first step to solving it.
Right now the project called the MCA or Medium Combat Aircraft is not being actively pursued. Because there are purchases going on right now and because there are many other urgent priorities for HAL to work on, there appears to be no incentive to assign anyone to work on the MCA. For one thing, LCA Tejas and the LCA Mark II are urgent and so, there is no time for anything else. Yet, if you look at other countries you will see that being able to handle many projects concurrently is what makes a dense industry successful.
To get a rough idea what the MCA should look like, you can use teachings of the F-16 and the F-18 to extrapolate the single-engine LCA to the twin-engine MCA. The starting point is the LCA Mark II which is expected to have length of 47 ft, wingspan of 27 ft, and use the F-414 engine with thrust of 58/98 kN. Now using the comparison of F-18 to F-16 the expected MCA length is 54 ft, wingspan is 33 ft and required thrust is 75/126 kN. So that means if you use two GE-404 engines you will have 98/158 kN to work with which is way more than the estimated requirement. Another way to say this is that the F-18 is much heavier than the MCA is expected to be, so the MCA will have more thrust/weight to work with. Happy outcomes of the extra thrust/weight could be higher climb rate, higher top speed, super-cruise ability, higher ceiling. Of course, the shape of the LCA wings is not that of the F-16, but still, the comparison gives a rough idea of what the MCA could be and that is definitely a lovely picture.
People really believe that if you spend a few thousand crores developing a working prototype of the MCA and then do not use it in the Air Force, then the project is a waste. That is not the attitude that winner countries take. There were dozens of combat aircraft developed in the US that never made it into service, or which made it into service but in only very few numbers. Indeed research money in the US was so plentiful and the aerospace industry had so many players that the US Government gave money for pilot projects to two companies at a time to develop prototypes and then the Air Force would select the winner after flying the prototypes. That does not apply to India because (a) there is currently only one aircraft company i.e. HAL which knows how to make combat aircraft and (b) India has just barely enough money to make one working prototype, let alone making two prototypes and selecting the winner.
Everyone understands the proverb “haste makes waste” and yet time and again, India waits until it desperately needs something before the Government starts to spend money to develop it (hastily, I might add) and thereby wasting a lot of money and obtaining substandard results. So, the bottom line is, the Government should start development on the MCA before the need is urgent, otherwise, you will have all the problems that you had with the LCA. Even if the MCA is never inducted into the Indian Air Force, perhaps because India buys the Russian PAK FA in large quantities, it is still worthwhile to develop the MCA because it means that a credible backup plan is already available, and this will provide incentive to the Russians to provide better technology to India for a reasonable cost. Thus the money you spend on the backup plan, may be compensated by the improved terms of the purchase that you do eventually make. And if for any reason the purchase of the PAK FA falls through, at least you will have an alternative to fall back on.
One design concept that is taken for granted in the West, but which India has never managed to master is the ability to make a flexible design i.e. designing with more than a single supplier in mind. It seems as if India likes to cast it’s design in stone before they will actually build a prototype. Before procuring supplies you need a dozen signatures on the design document all the way to the CMD of the company. Almost any deviation from the design is unplanned and possibly catastrophic to the project. The West uses contingency planning which means that when you make your design you have have to consider the possibility that essential components may not be available in stock and that you may have to use a component from a different vendor.
In the early 190, the LCA program was progressing steadily and depended on the American vendor General Electric for the F-404 engine. However, the delivery of the engines was halted in 1998 by the US government. The Kaveri engine by the GTRE was not ready and the project halted. Meanwhile many components in the eventual prototype were overweight and the currently available LCA is considered underpowered. An upgraded F-414 engine with more thrust is being sourced from the same supplier, but it is heavier and larger, so the engine housing has to be re-designed for the Mark II version which will take a few years. So the LCA is not fully functional.
At least for the MCA then, it might be prudent to design with the possibility of using engines from different vendors. After all the willingness of Russia to sell jet engines to India is different from the willingness of the US to sell jet engines to India. The Russian Klimov RD-33 has similar performance to the GE F-404 and is slightly larger in size, so why not develop the MCA to have the capability to use either engine ? Of course naysayers will point out that if you don`t optimize the design for a specific engine, you will not get the most out of the aircraft, and that there is high overhead in designing for two engines. But this is the price you pay if you use contingency planning, and this is offset by the ability to bring the project in on time.
The other thing India can do is to be realistic and not to paint too rosy a picture of the future aircraft or its components. There is a tendency in India that design documents tend to describe what the management wants to hear, rather than the reality. If a designer is realistic about the capability of the components, management would simply replace that designer with someone else who says what the management wants to hear. And when the LCA is overweight and underpowered, it is accepted as politics as usual. At least for the MCA the design document should rely on technological prowess which has already been demonstrated, rather than an assurance thatsab teek ho jaye ga.
It took India 34 years to reach the point where the single-engine LCA is inducted into service with the IAF. The LCA is a good design, different from the competition by it’s wing design and India needs to use that knowledge to start work on the twin-engine MCA. The MCA should be a lot easier, because much has been learned from the LCA already, because with two engines the MCA will have a much high thrust/weight ratio, because improved relations with the US may mean the reliable purchase of F-404 engines, because the improved and surging Indian economy provides more money to spend wisely on defence and because India now has a PM Modi pushing “Make in India” even for defence procurement. India has come a long way in 20 years, now it is time to prove your capability.
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