LCA: News & Discussions - October 2016

[vina]

Good post Tsarkar, but the point is that HAL has been working simultaneously with DRDO on LCA for only 35 years, hence there is no excuse for additional delay. HAL "installed" capacity is 4 LCA per annum presently and keeping in view general competence of HAL, they will not manage more than 2-3 in 2017-2018. My guess is that the first squadron of 20 IOC will not be completed before 2020-21.

This kind of stuff is not worthy of a "Gyani" . First, the LCA program had a TD stage. After the Tech Demo (TD) stage, the plane went into full scale engg design stage. The Tejas is undergoing changes as WE speak. The specs are NOT frozen. There is no way ANY manufacturer can do industrial manufacturing on a moving goal post. That is the short story.

Get the IAF to freeze the specs, sign off on the final design, THEN you will have full scale production. The LSP models were a misnomer. The SP are the true "LSP". These things have a long lead time. If the IAF froze the spec 2 years ago ,what you would be rolling out NOW from NOW is the industrially produced version. The previous ones would have had crafted "Khadi Gram Udyog" in the places where changes were getting done and the ramp up from now will happen. That is the true story!

[brar_w]

^ Correct, you need requirements stability and discipline or else you will end up with requirement creep that has ruined the best of programs across industries. One example is that the USAF F-16's currently have ROVER and are getting a multi-spectral targeting pod in a couple of years. The F-35 has neither because when its requirements were frozen none of this capability existed. It will have to wait till the early 2020's in its follow-on-development phase to get those capabilities. They could have gone in and added these things since they became the standard but that would contributed to schedule delays, and cost increases over and above what occurred due to technical difficulties. It would have been a loose-loose for everyone concerned. On the flip side, another example is the B-2, where last minute requirements change contributed immensely to the cost overrun.

[Pratyush]

Vina, your post is lost on the know it all people. This is one of the reasons why India is in such a poor place WRT, defense manufacturing.

[JayS]

There are sufficient orders - 20 IOC + 20 FOC + 80 Mk1A - to fine tune production.

I have my doubts about LCA orders. It has "intent" for 120 for sure, but it has firm orders of only 40, is what I believed until now. Recently Tejas FB page Admin stated that there are in fact only 20 orders placed so far. While "intent" in Indian context is as good as orders, one can argue, having orders still is a big deal, for reasons which are very obvious). Also, MoD is still seating on the proposal for 2nd line for LCA. Isn't it a oxymoron, that GOI/IAF intends to fill numbers fast, but does not approve 2nd assembly line for HAL?? These things indicate that, IMO, the final Technical Requirement Specifications for the rest 100 jets is still being debated.

Ideally it should have happened like this (only talking about post IOC-1) - 120 LCA MK1 FOC config ordered, production started ASAP. Later they would all be upgraded to Mk1A (AESA and external SPJ). Of coarse the upgrades would be designed with such requirement in mind. Parallel Mk2 program kick started right away which would first focus on change in Airframe and Engine config. By that time its done, Mk1A would be ready, so port the changes in new airframe and and add upgrades to it. But alas our program management is a $hit.

BTW Tsarkar Sahab, 80, or 800 or 8000 orders may not fix the currents problems for today, but they will definitely fix the problems for future, and especially while we will be getting ready for AMCA. Dassualt/LM/Boeing did not become what they are in single iteration of design-develop-produce-maintain-upgrade. It took them many iterations (and still they are far from perfect, rather only best of the lot). In 50's and 60's the iterations would be different aircrafts. Today they are the tranche of same fighter. High number of orders mean more chances to improve, as simple as that (you simply cannot have batches of 10-20 articles to make changes in process in every batch, its practically impossible due to very long lead time, not to mention un-economical). Manufacturing is all about learning from hands on experience. You cannot become good at it unless you do it enough number of times. (I will not go into details of how larger order would help set up MIC faster for LCA itself thereby jacking up production rate). Same is true for "Design for manufacturing".

As Vina has already pointed out correctly, the SPs are true LSP's since we wasted the LSPs in constant changes in the requirements and configuration. Fine tuning (especially standardization) was supposed to happen there. But it is happening now on SPs. But I suppose it will be only first 4-5 jets which will have this issue and later on they will be identical. And as such HAL has stated that those IOC config could be upgraded to Mk1A if IAF wants. So they problem of non-standard components will be taken care of eventually. And thats the way to go, rather than waiting for everything to fall in places.

[Neshant]

It used to be that Hyundai cars were absolute crap but within one or two design cycles, they began to improve dramatically in quality. Today they are giving Toyota and Honda a run for their money not just on quality but price.

Developed countries have nurtured their scientific and technological base around ambitious military, auto, consumer electronics industries without reaching for an import catalog.

Only in India is there the annoying trend of sabotaging and shutting down domestic projects that have been painstakingly worked on to import foreign planes. No large private sector company in their right minds would dare invest their own funds or resources in advancing incompetently managed govt projects with little to no production orders to show for in the end.

The LCAs scrapping will be the last straw. Here after, any attempt to spend money to launch yet another indigenous fighter project will be greeted with utter disgust & cynicism from the public and private sector.

The one sad conclusion that is hard not to draw is that Indians are incompetent managers.
The second is that the IAF does far more damage than good to overall national defence goals.

Between the hard task of developing and sourcing military wares domestically and reaching for an import catalog, the latter is always going to be far more convnient since it requires no effort.

Sorry to say but the only way this will change is when those tasked with managing the LCA project start getting sacked for incompetence.

[vina]

The one sad conclusion that is hard not to draw is that Indiansare incompetent managers.

Govt Baboons ,Mantris , IAF and IA

[JayS]

The one sad conclusion that is hard not to draw is that Indiansare incompetent managers.

Govt Baboons ,Mantris , IAF and IA

No point in pointing fingers to babus or mantris or AF or scientists only. There is a serious lack of pragmatism in our management when it comes to modern technology. I see it in private Industry as well. One reason is we don't focus on hands on experience in education and people tend to be very bookish (especially engineers) (in fact making hands dirty doing something is actively looked down - how can I do this, its beneath my level and all that crap). Of coarse some of the lot are good. I am not saying its in our genes and it will never change. But for that we need to execute large scale projects/production runs, at not just learning something from someone, but actually learning by doing it - do it, fail, observe, learn, correct mistakes and do it again. Wherever it has happened we have got good. But it never really happened in defense. Large scale production in LCA is not an option, if we want to succeed in AMCA - its a must.

LCA is very good example of shit level of program management. In any other country, LCA would have been inducted in 2010 with basic A2A mode, all issues sorted out and full MK1 version rolled out from production line in 2015. Mk2 being set for 2020. Instead we wanted it to have all the bells and whistles in one shot, kept on changing Technical req specifications and never really focused on its industrialisation until very last.

[RohitAM]

LCA is very good example of shit level of program management. In any other country, LCA would have been inducted in 2010 with basic A2A mode, all issues sorted out and full MK1 version rolled out from production line in 2015. Mk2 being set for 2020. Instead we wanted it to have all the bells and whistles in one shot, kept on changing Technical req specifications and never really focused on its industrialisation until very last.

That is perhaps a fundamental problem with how the LCA has indeed been managed - rather than going ahead with most of the basic tech requirements and factoring in qualitative improvements over multiple tranches, the IAF's constant moaning about the lack of cutting edge tech in the LCA and moving the goal posts to include the latest features right off the bat has meant that the design features never really get frozen for a serial production run numbering upto 3-4 squadrons at the very least, which would give economies of scale to all firms involved in the production run. The inability of the IAF to understand that the "best-in-the-world" tech they look at it in aircrafts around the world (F-16, F-35, Rafale, Eurofighter) has been decades in joint development between the manufacturer and the respective Air Forces, as well as the fact that these aren't the first jet fighter projects for these companies (and yet have had to go through multiple tranches), has been a major roadblock in the process of being able to bring the LCA operationally online, squadron-wise. The Army suffers from a similar myopia with regards to the Arjun - case in point for them would be their favourite T-90 (essentially a T-72 upgrade), or even the much-vaunted Leopard and Merkava programs.

But the inability of the ADA to design an aircraft which can be easily put into production (if as per Tsarkar, we are trying to ensure that internal parts are being redesigned for easy replacement, it means that the initial designs did not lend themselves well to mass production), as well as HAL's ability to assure the end users (IAF in this case) that they can bring to bear a production line which can roll out LCA's in significant numbers IF the tranche designs are frozen, are well discussed major factors afflicting the LCA which have been brought up several times on this forum.

[JayS]

But the inability of the ADA to design an aircraft which can be easily put into production (if as per Tsarkar, we are trying to ensure that internal parts are being redesigned for easy replacement, it means that the initial designs did not lend themselves well to mass production), as well as HAL's ability to assure the end users (IAF in this case) that they can bring to bear a production line which can roll out LCA's in significant numbers IF the tranche designs are frozen, are well discussed major factors afflicting the LCA which have been brought up several times on this forum.

No one would deny the gross neglect towards manufacturability, which is expected while doing ab initio development (despite being an OEM even HAL has a lot of blame to share here, they are the ones who developed most of the subsystems after all). But this is an across the spectrum phenomenon where design engineers lack awareness related to "Design for manufacturing" and too broad a topic to blame LCA's failure on. Even well established OEMs struggle over this routinely. Our guys have scant experience of designing and aircraft and manufacturing it. They only manufactured planes using screwdrivergiri which were designed by someone else and designed one aircraft so far which is not yet manufactured on significant scale The generation who did this for HF-24 was lost to inaction during 70's and early 80s.

But the issue of un-identical inner parts is not necessarily a bad design feature. It simply means the inner configuration was not fixed in time before the production started for SP1. Some parts were made with old specs. Specs changed later and next batch was of different configurations. For example moving LRUs might change plumbing layout inside. Doesn't mean design was bad for reproducibility. It simply could mean the layout and thus actual drawings were changed for plumbing related pipes for example length, number of bends, angles of bends etc. Obvisouly if you remove one pipe from SP1 it won't be a direct fit in SP2. But I do not consider it to be a very big issue. Its going to be only for first few jets and can be easily overcome by retrofitting those jets to common configuration. It will just take some time and money. Anyway I wouldn't call batch of 20 or even 120 to be mass production.

[Mihir]

100 panels and 700 pipelines indicates a major internal redesign. Its almost akin to changing the circulatory system and skin of a human being while keeping outward looks intact.

Not necessarily. It could also mean that the parts aren't being built to the tolerances necessary to attain interchangeability. You do not need to completely redesign parts when you're tightening tolerances.

But then again, given the experience with the Marut, I wouldn't be surprised if each individual aircraft had unique wiring and piping layouts.

[JayS]

100 panels and 700 pipelines indicates a major internal redesign. Its almost akin to changing the circulatory system and skin of a human being while keeping outward looks intact.

Not necessarily. It could also mean that the parts aren't being built to the tolerances necessary to attain interchangeability. You do not need to completely redesign parts when you're tightening tolerances.

But then again, given the experience with the Marut, I wouldn't be surprised if each individual aircraft had unique wiring and piping layouts.

While what you said regarding tolerances is perfectly plausible situation, in this context the more likely situation is changing internal configuration. We know that some of the LRUs are shifted due to maintainability issues - The SOP was not frozen until after some of the parts for initial SPs were already sent for manufacturing.

[shiv]

But then again, given the experience with the Marut, I wouldn't be surprised if each individual aircraft had unique wiring and piping layouts.

I just had an epiphany reading that. I recall reading that the F-22 also has similar issues - i.e. parts cannot be interchanged. Both were built in limited numbers and the line stopped

[saumitra_j]

Thank you TSarkar sir, JayS for the wonderful posts. You bring out a wonderful point which either most don't want to understand for lack of patience and attention to details or are completely unaware of: i.e. the effort and time required from design to mass production to product life cycle support.
I see the same problem in the IT industry, even though the problems are many orders of magnitude much simpler compared to making aircrafts!
To give you an analogy from IT, there are folks who called themselves Software Architects/Software Designers. Within this community, in my view there are three kinds: 1. Those who do all design architecture on PPT a.k.a. PPT Architect
2. Those who do a lot of technically interesting proof of concepts to prove their architecture but quickly step out to do something else
3. Those who actually put their systems in production and support them

I will ignore the 1st as they don't count for much albeit they are in majority . The second one is *much* more common than the third one. The reason is quite simple: To be able to put systems in production, you need to start at point 2, learn the hard lessons of life and software and do a whole lot of work before you can put you systems in production, and only after that you qualify for being called an architect of the 3rd kind that I have mentioned above. Some knowledge simply has to be gained after doing the hard work of getting feedback from the end users, support teams, solving production issues and so forth.

Coming back to ADA/HAL design as TSarkar sir has already pointed out, for the ADA designer, there is no incentive for actually seeing the aircraft work in a squadron or for that matter see it being assembled at HAL he stands to lose! Secondly, even if we fix this, whilst it is easy to say that we should cross train these designers to get manufacturing experience, the reality is that we don't actually make a lot of aircrafts in the country compared to say the US or EU where they make a lot of commercial aircrafts. Even the Russians make a their own passenger planes. What exactly does India make for us to produce an ecosystems where our designers will learn and get a lot of things right?

The LCA program is not just about making an aircraft - it is about starting an entire industry. This is where IAF has a problem as they have immediate operational needs. I think the current GOI is doing the right thing within the given constraints of developing an Indian aircraft industry, meeting the operational needs, limited money and strategic considerations. HAL clearly is overloaded, and we need another company to start manufacturing. I think this additional single engine aircraft tender is to meet that requirement and IAF's operational needs - it would have been all Rafale had it not been for the money. LCA will be manufactured in all the numbers required by the IAF and hopefully the lessons learned will be applied to the AMCA.

The best case scenario that would play out is that apart from HAL, we will have another company manufacturing aircrafts (albeit with Screwdrivergiri as we on BRF like to call it) but by the time AMCA is ready, we will have two companies in contention. Also, they will need the additional capacity for FGFA as well.

Finally, before we do all name calling on IAF, HAL and DRDO, we need to remember a simple fact: As of this day, this country has not designed a SINGLE IC Engine which is mass manufactured in the automotive industry, not even for two wheelers. You put that in context and you will realise where we are with respect to design and manufacturing ecosystem.

[Khalsa]

Hats off to Tsarkar and knocking the panic mode OFF.
Thank you sir. Thank you.

[shiv]

Lets not delude ourselves folks.

The moment the Chinese display one blurry image of an aircraft it means that it is fully ready for combat with anything the US can throw at them let alone India. On the other hand India will run a program for 30 years and then close it down if it gets anywhere near success.

How do I know? I am ahead of curve. I belong to a forum where each and everyone is ahead of everyone else, the curve and himself also.

[shiv]

As of this day, this country has not designed a SINGLE IC Engine which is mass manufactured in the automotive industry, not even for two wheelers. You put that in context and you will realise where we are with respect to design and manufacturing ecosystem.

TATAs seem to have started shipping cars with their Revotron engine

[vina]

Finally, before we do all name calling on IAF, HAL and DRDO, we need to remember a simple fact: As of this day, this country has not designed a SINGLE IC Engine which is mass manufactured in the automotive industry, not even for two wheelers. You put that in context and you will realise where we are with respect to design and manufacturing ecosystem.

Suffice to say that your facts are wrong . We have designed and produced multiple successful I.c engine s both diesel and petrol for 2 wheeler s, four wheeler, trucks and buses and marine and powerplant for nearly three decades now. Don't patriot your ignorance as gospel truth.

Yes. If you restrict yourself to govt/ PSU legs alone, what you said is probably true.

[saumitra_j]

Vina thanks for pointing to my ignorance, pray enlighten all of us where they are being used? It would be great if you could tell us which car / 2 wheeler is using an original Indian designed IC Engine.

[Rishi Verma]

When there is no profit incentive, there will be no one to champion the LCA-Tejas. A private developer would have worked hard to promote the brand Tejas and would have invested in serious sales/marketing effort.

[saumitra_j]

As of this day, this country has not designed a SINGLE IC Engine which is mass manufactured in the automotive industry, not even for two wheelers. You put that in context and you will realise where we are with respect to design and manufacturing ecosystem.

TATAs seem to have started shipping cars with their Revotron engine

Shiv sir, Revotron came in only in 2014 with consultancy from AVL, Bosch, Honeywell et al....so some design was done but crucial hand holding was done by the leaders of the industry. The crucial area of knowledge around combustion, fuel injection et al is still not with the Tata. However we have made some progress but not there yet!

[shiv]

but crucial hand holding was done by the leaders of the industry. The crucial area of knowledge around combustion, fuel injection et al is still not with the Tata. However we have made some progress but not there yet!

I would be more charitable than this. I doubt if anyone makes an engine from ground up nowadays unless it is a totally new design or a university/industry research program. Existing knowledge is always tapped, tweaked and improved.

The basic IC engine design is the same but the things that get tweaked are materials, fuel and air supply, timing, electronic responses to different conditions etc. For example the Revotron engine has taken Honeywell's help for the turbocharger as per the website. But what you seem to want is that the company should have worn blinkers, not looked anywhere else and made everything de novo to qualify as "indigenous"

[vina]

Vina thanks for pointing to my ignorance, pray enlighten all of us where they are being used? It would be great if you could tell us which car / 2 wheeler is using an original Indian designed IC Engine.

Hmm . Too lazy to even Google huh ? Well off hand, with just what is in the market TODAY.

TVS - All scoter models. All bike models except probably the Apache 175 which I think carries forward the block from the Suzuki Fiero.. Together a couple of million sales , including exports.

Bajaj - All models, including the KTM Duke (which is a Bajaj product branded as KTM.. infact I think Bajaj bought a majority stake in KTM)

Hero Motors - All scooter models . Some new bike models. This was a company that until recently was 100% Honda license manufacturer.

Tata - All truck and bus models except the variants where the Cummins engine is offered as an option. Passenger cars.. All engines except the Fiat sourced Multijet Diesel that is offered in many diesel car models as an option. SUV engines are all Tata

AL - All truck and bus engines, especially the common rail diesel powered BS III and BSIV complaint Neptune engines.. An in house clean sheet design engine. All AL marine engines BS III and BSIV std. Don't know how much of the earlier Hino engines are still in use. I would guess none with the BSIII and BSIV standards now in force.

Shiv sir, Revotron came in only in 2014 with consultancy from AVL, Bosch, Honeywell et al....so some design was done but crucial hand holding was done by the leaders of the industry. The crucial area of knowledge around combustion, fuel injection et al is still not with the Tata. However we have made some progress but not there ye

Hmm. By that standard let us examine the following.

1. Toyota , Honda, Nissan, Mitsu, Subaru, Mazda & Suzuki. NONE design and make engines (either passenger or commercial). The fuel injection the Japanese use is Denso. The turbo chargers are Garrett / Honeywell /Bosch. They probably use Ricardo and AVL for independent validation and verification aka. consultancy. Some gearboxes like the 6 speed.dual clutch in Honda cars is from a 3rd party.

2. Mercedes, BMW, Audi, Porsche & VW : NONE design and make engines (either passenger or commercial). The fuel injection the Germans use is Bosch / Siemens VDO (now rolled into bosch) . The turbo chargers are Garrett / Honeywell /Bosch. They probably use Ricardo and AVL for independent validation and verification aka. consultancy. The gearboxes they use are ZF, especially the 8 speed autos and stuff.

3. Ford, GM : Use Delphi /Visteon fuel injectors and Honeywell/Garrett turbo chargers.

4. Italians (Fiat Group) uses Magento Marelli.

So by your reckoning, NONE of the auto guys actually design and develop an engine themselves!

[Gyan]

We are confusing two issues. One whether LCA internal design is frozen, second whether HAL has set up the assembly line for manufacturing 8 LCA per annum for which funds were disbursed in 2001. HAL has not set up production line for 8 LCA per annum even after 16 years. And assembly lines are generic and flexible to handle internal and misc changes which LCA is facing.

[maitya]

TATAs seem to have started shipping cars with their Revotron engine

Shiv sir, Revotron came in only in 2014 with consultancy from AVL, Bosch, Honeywell et al....so some design was done but crucial hand holding was done by the leaders of the industry. The crucial area of knowledge around combustion, fuel injection et al is still not with the Tata. However we have made some progress but not there yet!

That's not true ... consultancy (aka hand-holding) doesn't mean "import" of pre-designed parts/assemblies etc which is what happens in CKD/SKD screw-drivergiri (a la what people are trying very hard to convince us wrt this F-16 I/J/K/L/M ... whatever crap version "manufacturing-line shifting" bizziness).

During design/prototyping stage some such assemblies can also be directly imported to validate/prove the overall system-level-design soundness and performance parameter validation etc - but when it moves to mass-production level those will be replaced (which obviously will take time - and which is what is happening in currently with LCA production*).


However, I also see, again we fall back to Auto industry example - which is imperfect!!

For example, in my (now non-existent for decades now) early 90s Maruti 800 there used to be a part called "shelf" (used for starting the car).
When that car was designed/prototyped/and even during the early production runs (and as per the old local "ustaad" who used to maint/service/repair the car, it continued to be an imported item in some later production series as well - and I's unlucky to be one of them), it was imported from Japan.

Problem was, that whole "shelf" needed to be replaced, for what seemed to be minor "starting-during-winter" issue - as the ustaad didn't have a clue the internal "layout" etc.
So it was replaced by a local part (another "shelf") made by a local company called Lucas - yes, it did issues later as well, but was always opened up and "repaired", being local-made (and thus not requiring the expensive replacement - costed me Rs1200, ok now pls don't laugh, many of you wouldn't appreciate what Rs1.2K meant in early 90s).

The point is, replace the above-mentioned "shelf" part, with say, Engine-mounted-accessories-gearbox (bad example, as it's locally produced from day one) of Kaveri/LCA, and try and get an engine-manufacturing multi-national org to pass the "low level design" of it, you will straight-away face the tech-denial regime staring at you.
So no, the above "shelf" of LCA will have to be imported from foreign during design/prototyping stage in CKD/SKD mode, but during actual production run it needs to be indigenous produced either from a foreign sourced design or an indigenous design.


Getting F-16 MII mode will, at best, result in 1st type of dependency, mentioned above - while with LCA you actually get to repair/customize/re-design-and-further-optimise-wrt-indian-conditions etc etc

But then again those type of issues comes up atleast 5+ years of operational life - which is greater than the general-election cycle, so who really cares!!!

[Rishi Verma]

The following is not a rhetorical question, can some eggsperts say roughly which would be the bottleneck issues if the gov orders 500 LCAs over 10 years on "urgent" basis.

Can GE deliver the engines, can composite be ramped up, is radome tot done, radar, etc etc

[Pratyush]

The bottle neck is because of the lack of orders. Which is preventing Pvt industry from ramping up capabilities of mass production. Once orders are placed, you will find all bottle necks disappear.

But who will tell this to the powers that be.

[maitya]

We are confusing two issues. One whether LCA internal design is frozen, second whether HAL has set up the assembly line for manufacturing 8 LCA per annum for which funds were disbursed in 2001. HAL has not set up production line for 8 LCA per annum even after 16 years. And assembly lines are generic and flexible to handle internal and misc changes which LCA is facing.

How exactly would HAL, or anybody for that matter, would "set up a production line" and that too "even after 16 years", when the SOP itself was agreed in Feb'2016 (or thereabouts)?

Or are you alluding/asking HAL (or for that matter anybody) to setup a 8LCA/year production-line for the TDs, PVs and LSPs (a total of ~10 platforms) - which incidentally, the user-community used to label, until very recently, as "khadi gramoydag", "science project" etc (to put it very very mildly)?

Pls elaborate.

[Neshant]

There is a lack of ANY (and I do mean any) national plan on how to harness the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on aviation over the next 10 years into domestic aerospace R&D.

There is no better "Make in India" opportunity with the LCA. All it requires is but a fraction of the massive amounts of funds (our own funds!) that we piss away in ad hoc purchases from foreign suppliers.

If we refuse to Make In India ourselves with our own funds choosing instead to sideline projects like the LCA, there is no sense in trying to convince foreign manufacturers to Make In India with their funds.

[saumitra_j]

That's not true ... consultancy (aka hand-holding) doesn't mean "import" of pre-designed parts/assemblies etc which is what happens in CKD/SKD screw-drivergiri (a la what people are trying very hard to convince us wrt this F-16 I/J/K/L/M ... whatever crap version "manufacturing-line shifting" bizziness).

I do not disagree with you on this point maurya sir, point I am trying to make is that even Tata motors in 2014 has to go to foreign companies to get consultancy on critical parts of an IC engine....that too in 2014! That simply shows the maturity of our industry. I agree with the rest of your post. IMHO this F16/ Gripen business is only to meet IAF needs as LCA can't be scaled up in times required by the IAF and to produce a private sector equivalent of HAL albeit doing screwdrivergiri.

[JayS]

But then again, given the experience with the Marut, I wouldn't be surprised if each individual aircraft had unique wiring and piping layouts.

I just had an epiphany reading that. I recall reading that the F-22 also has similar issues - i.e. parts cannot be interchanged. Both were built in limited numbers and the line stopped

Even F35 has faced lot of production issues. Commercial airliners also face such issues all the time. I once saw a documentary which was telling about how the ISS modules manufactured in two different EU countries wouldn't connect to each other because they both used different types of connectors a interfaces. However seasoned one might be there are always issues with manufacturing. What sets seasoned manufactures apart from a newbie is the ability to handle these situations.

As side note, there is a documentary on how botched up Boeing 737 production was, by some of the Boeing people involved in the program. But it highlighted how some parts would not fit and would be hammered into the place, holes of matching parts would not match and additional new holes on the go would be drilled to match the parts. Boeing tried to brush the matter under the carpet. Note than non-conforming parts is daily life in Aerospace. But every part is assessed for each non-conformance and then only accepted with restrictions on life if needed. Boeing seemed to have gone too far. There were three accidents also due to these faulty parts. Note that it was only a few parts by one supplier for which related people spoke up. Who knows how deep the thing went for entire program and for other programs. Do watch it sometimes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaWdEtANi-0

[vina]

I do not disagree with you on this point maurya sir, point I am trying to make is that even Tata motors in 2014 has to go to foreign companies to get consultancy on critical parts of an IC engine....that too in 2014! That simply shows the maturity of our industry. i.

Furiously back peddling now aren't we from the "We haven't designed a single IC engine until now" .. Why even the TVS Victor back in the late 80s (a very successful product) was a fully indigenous engine and basically allowed TVS to throw Suzuki out of the TVS-Suzuki partnership and to this day, Suzuki is a poor also ran in the 2 wheeler business after it re-entered by itself.

Contrast that with Maruti, where the partner was the Govt and all they could do was meekly hand over the company to Suzuki and the dominant position (which continues to this day ) to Suzuki. In fact, out of Suzuki's market cap, the overwhelming bulk of the value is from Maruti Suzuki, while the rest of the Global business is a rounding error. But look at the R&D spend of suzuki , of close to $1B per annum. The R&D Spend doesn't happen in India, but in Japan!

Classic case of revenues from India being used to spruce up R&D capability elsewhere. Same with the licensed assembly /screw driver giri happening in HAL etc traditionally. To add insult to injury, we Maruti /Suzuki India pays Royalty (around 3% to 5% of sales) to Suzuki for the "privilege" of allowing Suzuki Japan to develop models for them ! This is what the Russians do to us with the SU-30 licensed production!

Contrast that with what TVS did and showed the birdie to Suzuki. Consider what Bajaj did to Kawasaki . Consider what Hero did after the Honda tie up ended.

So unless the Baboons and Mantris realise what the stakes are involved in license manufacturing, this will continue. The IAF couldnt give a damn of course. All they want is cash to go shopping.

[Kailash]

Inviting foreign companies to set up base here and manufacturing single engine fighters is all good for job creation, politics and business. But when it comes to number, if India insists on setting up local assembly line and employing local youth, how can numbers be time bound? The way I see it, the more the Make in India component, the longer IAF has to wait.

Is it not easier and faster to micro manage HAL and its suppliers to churn up LCA numbers? Is not the LCA still the bird in hand? Another tender like MRCA could take years to ink and start if not decades. From land acquisition to clearances, to actual time to set up factories, to hiring training technicians, it could be many years from a signature to a product rolling out of their factories in India. And I don't even want to go into the timing and the impending elections in 2019.

Either ways I look at it, IAF seems to be losing the race to building squadrons. Less so with the LCA, which it will have greater control over. Hope this is not a completely political decision from GoI/MoD without a sign off from IAF.

[chola]

It all boils down to the IAF perception of immediate threat.

Personally, I think we have plenty of time to straighten out and incorporate the Tejas. We dominate the porkis with what we have now. They are more of a coin operation anyways. On the other front, we are facing a natural plateau that is more hostile to enemy aviation than the IAF could hope to be. There is nary a major base in Tibet and what tries to take off there would be severely limited in load and last, but foremost, the US, Japan and Taiwan force the concentration of their air assets on the coast furthest away from India.

But I am not the GOI or IAF, I would assume our netas and their appointed babus would know better the threats. So if they decide we need 200 gori single engine planes double quick then I want those to be from the greatest aviation industry on earth onlee.

[Kakarat]

Vina thanks for pointing to my ignorance, pray enlighten all of us where they are being used? It would be great if you could tell us which car / 2 wheeler is using an original Indian designed IC Engine.

Hmm . Too lazy to even Google huh ? Well off hand, with just what is in the market TODAY.

TVS - All scoter models. All bike models except probably the Apache 175 which I think carries forward the block from the Suzuki Fiero.. Together a couple of million sales , including exports.

Bajaj - All models, including the KTM Duke (which is a Bajaj product branded as KTM.. infact I think Bajaj bought a majority stake in KTM)

Hero Motors - All scooter models . Some new bike models. This was a company that until recently was 100% Honda license manufacturer.

Tata - All truck and bus models except the variants where the Cummins engine is offered as an option. Passenger cars.. All engines except the Fiat sourced Multijet Diesel that is offered in many diesel car models as an option. SUV engines are all Tata

AL - All truck and bus engines, especially the common rail diesel powered BS III and BSIV complaint Neptune engines.. An in house clean sheet design engine. All AL marine engines BS III and BSIV std. Don't know how much of the earlier Hino engines are still in use. I would guess none with the BSIII and BSIV standards now in force.

Shiv sir, Revotron came in only in 2014 with consultancy from AVL, Bosch, Honeywell et al....so some design was done but crucial hand holding was done by the leaders of the industry. The crucial area of knowledge around combustion, fuel injection et al is still not with the Tata. However we have made some progress but not there ye

I have been working for a major Indian company which produces engine pistons in India

TVS got its engine tech from Suzuki through its JV in earlier years and same for Hero which is still dependent in Honda tech transferred from Hero Honda days. some of there recent attempts faced problems but still investing in development and will succeed.

As far as TATA & AL are concerned they are dependent on the Mercedes and Hino engines, they just developed on the tech they got from them. TATA 497 & 697 engine is based on Mercedes OM352 and TATA 692 on OM312. they just develop these engins to meet the EURO norms. AL has just started to reverse engineering the Hino engines to improve power and TATA has started depending more and more on the Cummins engine. In LMV engine front TATA started developing engines on its own but AL again had a JV with Nissan and developed engine with their tech.

[tsarkar]

Ah. NOW we come to the crux of the problem and I had written about this earlier. The STRUCTURAL problem we have is that we developed a "Soviet" style command and control org setup . The ADE/ADA/NAL /CSIR/Univs will do "research and development" while the "manufacturing" will be done by "HAL/Shipyards/OFB" .. The IAF /IA/Navy will be the swaggering "Pshaww.." -- "Koi Hai" Harrumping throwing weight types, who cannot build a screw or change a flat tyre if their lives depended on it . Throw in Huge Organisational egos , with a layer of IAS Baboons and Mantri Mahodays.. this is a god awful mess , both in the defence side and R&D on the govt PSU side (little wonder those heroes of yesteryears are mostly dead, except the monopolistic oil marketing sector) . Such a structure CANNOT succeed, despite herculean efforts.

You're right here. What is required is a Program Office, like ATV project, where a Rear Admiral headed a joint IN (design, sourcing, final assembly at SBC), BARC (reactor), DRDO (missiles, sonar, communication), L&T (Fabrication). etc reporting to the Prime Minister. We need this kind of cross functional Program Offices. However, getting good program managers who command respect from different agencies other than their home agency is rare. APJ Abdul Kalam was such a universally accepted leader. Commodore Balaji is one such person, who coming from the Navy, was accepted by ADA rank & file as a leader.

I have written on this multiple times over the past 10 years on the exact same thing on multiple occasions on the VERY same thread. What the Tejas program is using is the traditional , "old as the pyramids" engineering methodology of the west , popularly known as the "Waterfall Method" with huge layers of Indian bureaucracy and artificial command control org driven idiocy thrown in.

This is all so 1930s. Even when I was in undergrad (I am middle aged now, RBose claims he is young, but he is not though..if I am middle aged), industry globally had moved on to Concurrent Engineering

Vina, concurrent engineering works only when there is maturity in all domains and you get everything right in the first iteration.

If you do not get some or all things right in the first iteration, then concurrency goes for a toss.

Concurrency definitely does not work when you're doing something for the first time and the chances of getting it not right is high.

Even with seasoned developers, concurrent engineering carries risks. Take the following example of cracks in F-35 bulkhead

https://www.flightglobal.com/news/artic ... ds-391647/

“During a recent inspection of the F-35B short takeoff/vertical landing ground article used for durability testing, two cracks were identified in one of the ground article’s four primary wing carry-through bulkheads,”

http://aviationweek.com/defense/more-cr ... fe-testing

Cracks on an F-35B’s primary support structure found last year are more extensive than previously thought, triggering a halt in ground-based durability testing until the fourth quarter of this year.

The initial cracks were found on section 496, a primary wing carrythrough bulkhead, last fall, prompting officials to stop the ground-based testing at hour 9,400 during the second life’s worth of use — or second 8,000 hr. of equivalent flight hours — to investigate the issue.

Since then, cracking also has been discovered on adjacent bulkheads, according to Joe Dellavedova, spokesman for the F-35 Joint Program Office. “Subsequent inspection of surrounding structures in light of this discovery found additional cracks in two of the other adjacent bulkheads,” he says.

The section 496 bulkhead is the same structure found in 2010 to have had a crack at the 1,500-hr. mark; this temporarily halted flight testing until a fix was implemented.

Now, since manufacturing commenced before testing was completed, there is a good number of aircraft flying with section 496 bulkhead. If the way section 496 bulkhead is produced is changed, only new built planes will have it. They will have to use patches that will need to be applied to all aircraft built.

Assume the problem was more serious. Then all F-35 built during concurrent engineering would need to undergo rebuild that is financially expensive & operationally time consuming. Or have to be relegated to second line duties, that is operationally unsuitable. Or scrapped, that is a complete waste of money, time & effort.

Lets take the case of NP-1 landing gear designed by HAL AR&DC. The primary function of the landing gear is to take the impact of aircraft slamming on the deck. While they achieved it, they results of the first iteration was too bulky and heavy.

https://tarmak007.blogspot.in/2011/10/l ... layed.html

“In September 2010, we observed that the undercarriage was over-sized. During traction-retraction and the undercarriage's incorporation into the fuselage, there were many surprises awaiting us. This is a very critical piece with the hitting impact on the ship going to be much higher,” an official with HAL's Aircraft Research and Design Centre (ARDC) said.

The Landing Gear for NP-2 had more weight reductions.

Now, how would concurrent engineering help here?

The engineers at AR&DC had to first solve the impact issue. Once that had been addressed, they could confidently reduce weight.

There was no other way to design the landing gear but iterative. The traditional waterfall method

If they did concurrent engineering and designed a lean landing gear, and it didnt meet its primary function of absorbing the impact, and this was discovered later, then all prototypes and production units built would need redesign and rebuild. That would've further slowed down the program.

Or built prototypes / production units with the heavy landing gear. Then the aircraft built during concurrent development would've been operationally inefficient.

Concurrent engineering doesnt work in all circumstances.

FIRST, ACCEPT responsibility of piss poor project management skills and temprament with all humility and confess that they dropped the ball in their part of program management and that their active hostility and indeed sabotaging of the project deserves condemnation. Accept with all humility that they aren't the Gods when it come to designing and building aircraft and where their input was most needed (in terms of weapons fit, capability, ownership and maintainability etc) , the simply dropped the ball.

This is an incorrect emotional rant on your part.

What can Navy do if HAL AR&DC does not get the landing gear impact strength, weight & volume optimized in the first iteration?

Water down impact load requirements? Then the plane wont be able to land on a carrier

Waive off weight requirements? Then the plane wont be able to take off from a carrier with a useful load.

By your Lockheed Logic and Martin Mathematics, IN should have ordered thousand's of NP-1 standard aircraft. That would give HAL AR&DC "incentive" to re-design the landing gear.

It would also get LCA Navy quickly in service, fulfilling H&D.

However, you forget that NP-1 is so heavy that with a full payload, it wont be able to take off from an aircraft carrier.

The landing gear was an example. Similarly, no way IAF could've helped in technical R&D issues that needed to be iteratively solved and no number of orders would've helped.

Lockheed Martin tom toms concurrent engineering because building and selling half baked planes helps it make money part of which goes to lawmakers. HAL has no such hang-ups.

Point is wherever Tejas is today, its because of everyone's hard work. It has happened with all the speed it could. 9 women conceiving wont deliver a baby in a month.

[Karan M]

Completely correct tsarkar. Another example of the pitfalls associated with concurrent engineering can be Swathi WLR, made using the CE method but frequent changes on shopfloor to built units as trials kept bringing up modifications. The big issue is, as both you and vina pointed out, the lack of a program office with full user involvement.

[arunsrinivasan]

Isnt LCA Mk2 happening as the Navy is interested in it? Are there any official / chaiwallah updates on its status?

Also, give the recent feedback from the Walk the Talk interviews by Shekhar Gupta, where they seem to indicate better performance from LCA Mk1 itself, does that mean that even the Navy might accept a Mk1A version?

[tsarkar]

Since its indirectly related to Tejas, and for the sake of continuity with my earlier post, I'm posting this here

The single engine fighter RFP could've been avoided if the MMRCA was better managed.

The IAF always wanted twin engined fighter for better reliability - which is why Jaguar was chosen over Mirage F-1 even though the latter was multi-role. Given the less than expected performance of AL-31FP, many Sukhois were saved because the second engine.

Even the IAF's technical recommendation for MMRCA was Rafale and Eurofighter and left it to MoD to negotiate the best commercial deal. Where MoD goofed up was announcing Rafale as the winner before contract was closed. That was a huge mistake. It should've kept both Eurofighter and Rafale in play until the contract was closed.

The other mistake was ordering 36 Rafales instead of scrapping the deal.

Given the state of European Economies and British & Italian Investment in F-35 and inability to maintain two fighter lines, most Eurofighter assembly lines will close this decade.

http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articl ... n-out.html

Without new orders, Eurofighter’s Spanish and German Final Assembly Lines will be the first to close, in 2018, after the delivery of the final aircraft to their national customers; the British line will follow in 2019.

Keeping Eurofighter in play would've probably got us the German or Spanish or British production lines. Its a much better aircraft than F-16 or F-18 that US is trying to dispose to India. Please note the US never offered F-15 line that is a much superior aircraft and also going out of production this decade.

Having said that, given that IAF has an average of 720 fighters, and with MiG-21M/MF/Bis/Bison, MiG-27ML, Jaguar, MiG-29 and Mirage 2000 fleets requiring replacements, there will be requirements for Tejas once production issues are sorted out.

[Cosmo_R]

^^^The origin of this foolishness predates the MMRCA. Two MoD babus objected to the M2K follow on orders for 126 on the grounds that M2K-5 was a different a/c. Such is the bloody mindedness of MoD. Google this. I think Shukla wrote about this.

The Rafale deal had to be done because canceling the MMRCA when it had been explicitly structured as leading a winner would have put any other choice (except perhaps the F-35) in legal limbo. It would have become a huge lawsuit with GoI having to pay penalties plus all the political fall out.

The 36 Rafales were the exit price for getting out of the stupid MMRCA bind with the 50% offset as a QPQ for doubling the original 18 flyaways. The single engine RFP today with its MII aspect and non PSU ownership, was a way to circumvent the MoD idiots. It was to be an industrial initiative not just a procurement one.

JMT

[Cosmo_R]

^^^"Please note the US never offered F-15 line that is a much superior aircraft and also going out of production this decade." They did. Boeing did offer up the F-15 at the MMRCA onset only to be told we have the SU-30s and we are looking at medium a/c as in MMRCA.

The EF may be a much better plane on paper than the F-16 but with zero export potential vs the Viper. Plus, on ecosystems, we would not learn anything anywhere near what we can learn from LM.

Finally, the US has been pretty open about tech through DTTI (engine, Vishaal etc). You have to buy LM or Boeing else, no go.