Mark Antony, the Defence Minister appointed a high level committee to look into the performance of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) laboratories. It was a timely decision. Recently a Parliamentary Committee passed strictures about the utterly unsatisfactory progress in the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) development program being managed by ADA, one of DRDO’s constituent units. It is clear that the development of the LCA leaves much to be desired.
The LCA program was approved by the government in July 1983, (i.e.) almost 25 years ago. It’s envisaged development period before series production was to start, was about 12 years, with the estimated cost of development being about Rs 1250 crores, which factored escalation due to inflation within the country and abroad. The increases due to any delays was estimated to be about Rs 150 crores per year.
Tto obtain any self reliance in aeronautics, we have to integrate the relevant institutions also under one authority, and have it headed by a professionally knowledgeable person.
A delay of a couple of years may not be unusual. But the delay of about 10 years by the time the first prototype flew in 2001, with the reported cost till then amounting to Rs 2750 crores raises serious questions.
As of date, apparently about Rs 5500 crores have been spent, with no assurance that it will be produced in sufficiently large numbers to bring down the depreciation charges per aircraft to reasonable values. The Air Force cannot be expected to buy the LCA if does not satisfy its stipulated Air Staff Requirements. From all indications it is far away from achieving these requirements.
The commercial launching of the Italian satellite by the Space department recently speaks volumes about the intrinsic capability of our aerospace community. It raises the basic question “why did the aircraft industry perform so poorly, in spite of all this intrinsic capability? ” It is worthwhile to briefly look into the matter, if only to make sure that we may not repeat the same mistakes again.
It must be first noted that the development of advanced technology fighter aircraft is an expensive business, and unless they are required in sufficiently large numbers, it would not be economically worthwhile to undertake such a project. The time, costs of development, and the number required by our Air Force, will not permit us to develop the multitude of aircraft required by them. But if we do not have demonstrable capability to develop such aircraft, in time of need, we can be held to ransom.
Tejas Light Combat AircraftIt may be an apocryphal story but it was rumoured that the 1971 war between Pakistan and India was more determined by the US and the Russians than us, as they knew to the last nut and bolt of our spares status. Under the present circumstances they can then hold us to ransom any time they wish, as they did in the past.
HF 24, an aerodynamically clean aircraft, capable of super sonic performance, was designed around an engine yet to be developed. Bristol Siddeley offered the BOR 12, a reheat variant of the Orpheus 703 as a power plant for HF 24 to us, as well as the NATO countries. When the NATO countries rejected the offer, Bristol Siddeley proposed its development at a cost of Rs 5 crores to Krishna Menon then Defence Minister who rejected it. It was a fatal error of judgment- in that HF24 never achieved its design performance. Its development violated a basic principle in aircraft design during those days: Proven engine and a new airframe. Never a new engine and a new airframe.
Efforts subsequently to obtain engines such as the RB 199 to power the HF24 failed, as by then the foreign companies wanted to sell their aircraft to us, and which they continued to do over the years. They are there for their health and not ours. AVM Roychoudhuri as the Director of GTRE took on the responsibility to develop a reheat version of the Orpheus 703, with a 20% increase in thrust to improve the performance of the HF24. While he demonstrated it on the test bed, it did not achieve this performance after installation, due to the bad design of the aft end of the HF 24 fuselage by HAL.
...the design and development of advanced technology aircraft has long gestation periods. If today the Air Force requires such an aircraft designed to meet the anticipated threat scenarios ten years from now, the R&D and academic institutions and the corporate R&D of HAL will necessarily have to anticipate such requirements...
The Air Force was not unhappy with this situation, as they were able to obtain the aircraft required by them by outright purchase from abroad or production under licence. Put plainly they were not confident of HAL’s ability to design and develop advanced technology aircraft required by them. The HAL was not unhappy either as they were having enough business through production under licence. The South Block administrators were not unhappy either, as they did not have to answer any embarrassing questions from the Parliament. The research organisations were busy, such as they were, by taking up R&D conceived by them. The academic institutions were busy publishing papers inspired by articles in foreign journals. We were no where near to the objective of obtaining even a modicum of self reliance.
The fact of the matter is that the design and development of advanced technology aircraft has long gestation periods. If today the Air Force requires such an aircraft designed to meet the anticipated threat scenarios ten years from now, the R&D and academic institutions and the corporate R&D of HAL will necessarily have to anticipate such requirements and develop the technological know – how needed to develop such an aircraft. This means that there has to be a close interaction among the academic and the R&D institutions and the corporate R&D, and a twenty year perspective to achieve such objectives. Such interaction among these various organisations just did not exist in India, although it is a common practice in the US.
In early 1976, P N Haksar, principal secretary to the then prime minister Mrs Gandhi, was visiting Bangalore. Air Marshal Dastur, then chairman of HAL, and this writer brought to his attention the prevailing unsatisfactory situation, and the need to create an agency along the lines of the Space and Atomic Energy Commissions. The result was the constitution of the Aerospace Group to look into the matter, which included us as well. Prof M G K Menon, then Scientific Advisor to the Defence Minister was the convener. The committee also included the scientific secretaries to DST and the Department of Space, apart from the secretaries to Defence and Defence Production, and the there service Chiefs Staff.
During the deliberations, it was pointed out that the successes of the Departments of Space and Atomic Energy were primarily due to the fact that the relevant R&D and design and development of the hardware, be it a nuclear power plant, or a space launch vehicle, or a satellite, were vertically integrated under one authority, and headed by a technically knowledgeable person, and not any administrator, and that if we wished to obtain any self reliance in aeronautics, we have to integrate the relevant institutions also under one authority, and have it headed by a professionally knowledgeable person. After prolonged discussions, the Secretaries in Defence Ministry reluctantly agreed that in aeronautics also such integration was needed, but that they did not agree to set any time scale for integration. The proposal was still -born due to the basic objection of the IAS administrators to share power with the scientists, even if they knew nothing about the technical complexities of aeronautics.
Dr Raja Ramanna who succeeded Prof Menon suggested that perhaps the objective of integration could be achieved indirectly at working levels, and suggested that this writer should approach the then Chief of Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Latif. I told the Air Chief that the HAL has been already manufacturing MIG 21 aircraft under licence, and that it was highly likely that approval would be given for the manufacture under licence of Jaguar, if not the Mirage, and that the ability of the Air Force to defend our skies would not be compromised, if he were to approve the indigenous development of a fighter aircraft. He fully supported the idea. The aeronautical community owes a debt of gratitude to him for his vision and consent to mount the LCA program.
All the Scientific Advisors are undoubtedly outstanding people in their own fields of professional endeavour, but time and again it was demonstrated that many of the decisions they took, did not contribute any thing to the cause of achieving self reliance in aeronautics
To help achieve coordination among the R&D institutions, Prof Menon around the same time in 1976, broadly delineated responsibilities among the Aeronautical Development Establishment, National Aerospace Laboratories and the Gas Turbine Research Establishment. ADE was asked to undertake R&D relevant to the various aeronautical systems, NAL, the R&D related to the airframe, and GTRE, the engine development.
NAL over the years developed adequate capability to handle composite materials in anticipation of potential future requirements for building airframe structures. It was also clear that the development of any future advanced technology fighter aircraft with high manoeuvrability would require knowledge of the so called, Fly By Wire (FBW) control systems. ADE did not take this assigned responsibility seriously. The matter was also raised at an HAL board meeting because of its importance in the future development of any fighter aircraft. The representative from the South Block shot it down saying that it would be infructuous expenditure if the government did not sanction such a program. The fact of the matter was that the technical people on the board knew that this technology would be essential for any future advanced technology fighter aircraft development, and that its non availability would cause avoidable delays.
HAL, ADE and NAL put up a joint proposal to the government to develop this technology. It was not approved. The result was that when the LCA was approved by the Cabinet in July 1983, we did not have this technology and had to go to the US to obtain it. When India exploded the nuclear bombs in May 1998, Clinton put an embargo, resulting in all a five year delay. Errors in judgment at these levels do not come cheap. As a matter fact, after the embargo was imposed ADE, NAL and HAL jointly developed this technology, something that was proposed at the HAL board meeting earlier and rejected ! Put plainly, a professionally ignorant person’s objection cost the nation about a five year delay and Rs 750 crores. Such mistakes are unforgiving.
Also read: ULFA's niche war
GTRE efforts to develop the gas turbine engine GTX 35, did not get the kind of support it needed. This could have helped much in understanding the technical complexities in gas turbine development. Engine design is even more complicated than airframe design. As mentioned to me by a Pratt and Whitney engineer, the engine designers are a mafia and they depend on an enormous amount of test data they generate to develop advanced technology gas turbines. This was not appreciated by the administrators in the South Block, and they denied the necessary support to GTRE to develop a suitable engine in time. In fact I had to tell the Defence Minister in 1985, that at least for the first thirty to forty LCA’s, we have to import engines, and that GTRE may well require consultants from abroad to successfully design an engine, suitable for the LCA.
If there are any lessons to be learned from the past history, we need to again bear in mind the successful functioning of the Space and Atomic Energy Commissions which demonstrated our capability to develop technologically sophisticated hardware. There is intrinsic capability in aeronautics also.
All the Scientific Advisors are undoubtedly outstanding people in their own fields of professional endeavour, but time and again it was demonstrated that many of the decisions they took, did not contribute any thing to the cause of achieving self reliance in aeronautics and in fact some of their decisions had disastrous consequences. The less said about the administrators in the South Block in this context, the better it is. Put plainly these gentlemen were out of their depth in such matters. A classic example was the decision taken by one of the scientific advisors on spurious considerations, to ease out Raj Mahindra, who had years of hands on experience in the design of aircraft in UK and here, and was then working in ADA on the LCA program, as its chief architect. Much of the conceptual design of the LCA was done by him.
Typically, after getting an engineering degree, a good designer needs years and years of hands on experience, before he can take independent responsibility to design any advanced technology aircraft. Mahindra had it, and demonstrate this capability. Such people are hard to come by. Easing out Mahindra, the architect of the LCA conceptual design, and without any trained understudies, was another disastrous mistake committed by the South Block. Furthermore, when ADA was conceived, it was expected to be a funding, managing and monitoring organization, with the primary responsibility for its development resting with HAL, and the various R&D institutions functioning in a supporting mode under the auspices of ADA. Instead, the then Scientific Advisor assigned the primary responsibility for the LCA development to ADA, and in essence set it up as a competitor to HAL. It was again an unfortunate decision resulting in avoidable delay.
If there are any lessons to be learned from the past history, we need to again bear in mind the successful functioning of the Space and Atomic Energy Commissions which demonstrated our capability to develop technologically sophisticated hardware. There is intrinsic capability in aeronautics also. If the government wishes to obtain any self reliance in aeronautics, it is essential to integrate under one authority, the Aeronautics Commission, all the relevant R&D and the manufacturing organisations and have it headed by a technically competent person who is also the secretary to the government to the depart of Aeronautics, in the Ministry of Defence.
The Commission shall have under its authority, the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA), charged with the responsibility for research, design and development of aircraft, to plan and achieve long term objectives, and the Aircraft Production Agency (APA) charged with the responsibility for the manufacture of aircraft. It is essential that ADA be headed by a Director General who is a professionally competent person, and familiar with the various aspects of research, development and design of advance technology aircraft. This shall be headed by a serving air marshal as its Director General. Without such an integration, there is no hope what so ever of achieving even a measure of self reliance in aeronautics, a crucial sector for our defence preparedness in the foreseeable future if it were to be intent of the government.
since at that point of time IAF probably thought sparing pilots for the Tejas was a waste of time