The most important feature would be jam resistance. Plus more efficient multi-mode operation.fanne wrote:What would jag do with aesa?
There is a generational difference between 4G multiroles and 3G single mission aircraft making the 4G aircraft, often, highly superior either in handling, range/payload or both.Picklu wrote:As ruski frogfoots over Syria are showing, the 3rd gen strike/attack aircrafts, upgraded with 4th gen avionics etc still perfect solution for their intended role unless you are going against Khan scale of opposition. Co-locate them with pure fighter and multi-role and you get the best bang for the buck without much compromise on quality.
Multi-roles are less optimized and hence a force composed of pure multiroles will be less efficient but when attached to pure strike/attack/intercept crafts, they act as force multiplier by changing their role as the situation demand creating local superiority.
I once had an opportunity to fly a 1 v 1 tail chase mission with a Mig 21 Bis pilot vs a Jag pilot. It was fun. Don't underestimate the power of the 3rd gen (Common man).Karan M wrote:Arun, no - the Jaguars won't have BVR - they will however get ASRAAM for close in protection. The Jaguar is completely unsuited for air combat though it may get lucky once in a while.
No Karan,Karan M wrote:LCAs auxiliary doors are only required in high-alpha manoeuvering beyond the existing 24-28 deg or in slow speed conditions and high-Alpha (eg CTOL from carrier). That is the claim made by folks like Khokhar, Mao et al. Khokhar said the design had potential to be used at more than the existing plans (per Shukla) but the intake wasnt designed for those. Mao mentioned, low speed high alpha eg carrier specific take-off.
Basically within the regular envelope, the intakes should be ok.
Nilesh,nileshjr wrote:The main reason of having aux. intakes for Mig-29 was FOD as I also said, that's why they were linked to nose gear (below 200kmph and when nose LG is compressed the intake doors will be closed). But they also were used during high engine power setting at moderate speeds such as during manoeuvring. They would provide additional air mass that only main intake openings would not be able to at lower speeds. In fact 800 kmph speed could be maintained with only aux. intakes open and main inlets closed fully (Ref: 'Mig Aircrafts since 1937'). Yes, the stall-free envelope was a design feature for RD-33, since they could operate at any inlet turbulence levels ("engine magic"), but they need to be supplied required amount of air mass flow. The under-wing placement of straight inlets is again the main force behind this at higher AoA but the aux. intakes surely would help in supplying enough air so that the pilot can have the engines at full power setting even at low/moderate speeds at extremely high AoA (like more than 60deg or something like that). Remember the sizing of those aux. intakes was for entire air mass flux at Max TO condition where max airflow is demanded, so they were more than good at any other conditions while main intakes were also open, and being spring loaded they would open any time when engine is stymied of air.indranilroy wrote:Nilesh,
The reason for LCA's auxilary doors and that on the Mig-29 are completely different. The auxilary and the front inlet were never simultaneously open on the Mig-29. IIRC, the front door is linked to nose gear. At high AoA, the auxilary doors are not open. The wonderful no-stall characteristics of both the Mig-29 and Su-27 come from the completely straight underbody intake, and some engine magic.
As an aside, I have to check if total area of the grill on the top was larger than the mouth of the front intake.
I don't expect canards on the LCA either. As I said earlier, if we were to ever see them it will be the moustache arrangement, but even then (as you rightly point out), I don't know how to place them without having a large anhedral.
You can easily see the aux. intakes open during flight in many pictures/some videos:
http://www.walldesk.net/pdp/1024/13/01/ ... MiG-29.jpg
Having said that, they are not necessary features if the intakes are well designed. The newer versions of Mig-29 don't have these aux. intakes do they??
BTW the comment on canard was not directed at you, but in general regarding the canard related discussion going on here.
Edit: I checked. Mig-29M has redesigned inlet with higher inlet area with movable lip (a la EF-2000) and aux. air intakes removes. Mig-29SMT also has aux. intakes removed as upgrade for older mig-29s. They utilised the space emptied by aux. intakes to increase internal fuel capacity. Also Mig-29M has a analog FCS not a digital one. (quad redundant in pitch and tri redundant in roll/yaw). I didn't know that.
The LCA is nearly a generation ahead in its 2nd iteration ! ..add to the fact it will possess much greater growth potentialPrem Kumar wrote:This is HUGE if true!
India Offers Tejas LCA Against Pakistani JF-17 Fighter For Sri Lankan MiG Replacement
Interesting Indranil..your argument in one part is the same thing that I am saying I did mention speed.indranilroy wrote:No Karan,Karan M wrote:LCAs auxiliary doors are only required in high-alpha manoeuvering beyond the existing 24-28 deg or in slow speed conditions and high-Alpha (eg CTOL from carrier). That is the claim made by folks like Khokhar, Mao et al. Khokhar said the design had potential to be used at more than the existing plans (per Shukla) but the intake wasnt designed for those. Mao mentioned, low speed high alpha eg carrier specific take-off.
Basically within the regular envelope, the intakes should be ok.
This is not true. The auxiliary doors in the intakes of LCA has nothing to do with the AoA. It has everything to do with the speed of the aircraft. This door is a passive device which is spring loaded to stay closed. Now, when the engine is running you can view the operation of the door in two ways.
1. The engine wants the air to "hit" its face at approximately 0.7 M. But the plane is not moving. So, what would the shape of the intake be if you were to design it? It would be shaped like a funnel with the engine attached to the thinner end. There is a lot of air entering at a very low speed at the other end, but speeding up as it moves through the funnel to "hit" the face of the engine. Now reverse the situation. The plane is flying at 1.2M. How should the shape of the intake be? You would now want to slow down the air entering the intake. Obviously, you now want a divergent intake where the air is entering at a high speed, but slowing down as it moves through the intake. But, our plane has a fixed inlet design (optimized for cruise at 0.9M). This intake is not optimized for the take-off and landing, we discussed above. Therefore, the door just works in increasing the area of the mouth of the intake.
2. The second way to look at it as follows. Once again, the inlet is designed to accelerate/decelerate the air to 0.7-0.9M. Now, the airplane is at a slow speed. The air outside the inlet is moving at a relative speed of say 0.2M to the plane. The air inside the inlet is moving at 0.4-0.6M (near the door part). According, to Bernoulli's principle, the pressure is higher on the outside, and the door is forced open allowing more air to get in which increases the pressure and decreases the speed.
So you see, that the opening of the auxiliary doors is not with AoA, or with how much power the engine needs to develop. If the plane is cruising at 0.9M or doing loops at 0.7M, requiring full military power, the door does remain shut. If the plane is flying level at 0.3M or doing loops at 0.3M, the inlet will be open.
Also, Air Cmde Khokhar was not speaking about this. The intake of any supersonic aircraft with a fixed air intake is convergent-divergent in shape. That is, the air accelerates in the first half of the intake (losing pressure), and then decelerates through the second half (gaining pressure) before hitting the compressor face. The ratio of this pressure to the pressure of the air entering the intake is called the pressure recovery of the intake. The better the pressure recovery, the better the engine operates. However, with curved Y-inlets and various airspeeds, it is truly black-magic to get the shape perfectly right. This is what the late Cmde was accusing that the ADA has not got perfectly right.
Believe it or not they flight tested and confirmed that Mig-29 could sustain 800kmph with air coming only through aux. intakes and main inlets completely shut off.indranilroy wrote: Nilesh,
There is no argument on the SMT/M/K versions. For the early versions, I would refer you to the pilot's manual of the Mig-29 (page 1-22 onwards). There are drawings and a lucid explanation of the interplay of the various ramps and ducts in the intake.
The louvers on the LERX were spring loaded very similar to the LCA (infact more similar to the newer LCA intakes). They were passive. So if the air pressure in the inlet was lower than the pressure outside they would blow open, otherwise remain shut. When the engine started and hydraulic pressure built up, the forward ramp was closed. With the engine air intake increasing, the louvers were blown open and stayed open till the forward ramp stayed closed. When the plane reached 108 KIAS, the forward ramp was hydraulically opened almost closing the duct from the louvers, except for a perforated opening for bleed air. From now on till the forward ramp was closed again, the louvers opened intermittently (up to 0.3 M on IDLE power) and (up to 0.7M on full military power) but not to provide air to the engine (AFAIK).
Once, the plane was above 108 KIAS, the louvers cannot provide enough air to the engine, and this is marked by a severe drop in the engine power. The Mig-29 therefore had a manual way of opening the front ramp should this happen.
(Read this book - 'Mig Aircrafts since 1937', you will like it). In fact during one Mig-29 prototype crash due to one engine failure, the jet entered into spin and crashed. They later found out through the flight recorder that the second engine was working alright all the while till crash without flame-out. I can bet that the auxiliary intakes had a part to play in this for sure.So Govt has already taken in principle decision to export LCA and field it against other fighters in the similar category like JF17. So govt is quite confident. If we can offer export variants to other countries , eg vietnam, thailand, myanmar etc??Prem Kumar wrote:This is HUGE if true!
India Offers Tejas LCA Against Pakistani JF-17 Fighter For Sri Lankan MiG Replacement
Which is exactly the same method mentioned for the LCA, see the quote I posted.nileshjr wrote:I have gone through the flight manual. And I am saying exactly the same thing, wherever there is suction (due to less than required air coming in) in air intakes these spring loaded doors will be pushed open, even during manoeuvring. I was watching a video the other day in which you can see those doors open still while the jet takes off and makes full vertical tight turn. Don't have the link now.
There could have been various motives behind what he said (believed). I will not get into them. In aero, often designers will stop at a "good enough" point. Because any inlet you design for today's engine will not be ideal for the uprated engine you fit during midlife upgrades. So you say, it is good enough. And this is where I start speculating. My theory is that ADA designed the inlet for the Kaveri, and tinkered it to a good enough point for the GE-404 as it was supposed to be for the prototypes only. Now that the GE-404 is going to be in series produced articles, people say, "this is not the ideal inlet for the GE-404". I feel this theory is somewhat confirmed by Tamilmani's statement that the air intake on Mk2 needs very little changes as the intake was designed for the Kaveri which has almost identical airflow characteristics to the 414. That is also bolstered with Kartik's talk with Mao who says that the diameter of the intake will be merely increased by 1 cm.Karan M wrote: And in the second, re: Khokhar what he said is where I think he was mistaken, since I have had the opportunity to discuss what he said with several LCA folks. He wanted the aircraft to be brought into some new ASR level with consultants. ADA/HAL disagreed, they thought the NAL tests didn''t agree with him & finally did this intake jugaad in part as addressal. I also consider it pretty illustrative that the CEMILAC document which spoke of improvements completely ignored the intake aspect. Basically neither ADA/HAL were sold on the idea.
You may notice that the AoA at take off from a carrier is ~14 degrees, nowhere near the end of the AoA envelop of any modern fighter plane. The problem is generation of speed as soon as possible. In a ski-ramp, all the power has to come from the engine. And for this the normal intakes of LCA + the small intake door is not enough. That's why they are going with a much larger auxiliary intake with spring-loaded louvers (This explanation too comes from none other than Mao himself).Karan M wrote: That the intake has an issue with relative slow speeds at high angles of attack when taking off from a carrier is stated by Mao..
The other is at high angles of attack where the engine was not getting enough "air" per several folks - Khokhar IIRC was one of a long list of people who was cribbing about it, since they felt the basic design of the aircraft could go far higher than the standard 28 odd deg per ASR and thrust was an issue. Could be either. Looks like most TPs also keep changing their opinions on aero causes etc and the true answers are only available when NAL does the tests.
The other issue was of controllable flight, and FBW since this is the specific area where our simulations broke down & there was no surety they'd track the performance, so they went looking for Boeing in particular given its F/A-18 experience (high alpha airframe) but made do with EADS when denied.
As I said before, if my understanding of the aux. doors is correct, it is not related to the AoA, engine power. It is related to speed (some simple physics dictate so). The auxiliary doors are required for low speeds. Somebody can ask at what speed and level flight, the doors close. Let's say it is 0.3M. It will stay open for slightly longer when the plane is maneuvering, because the engine is using up air faster, making the air inside the convergent part of the intake accelerate faster, but not for much longer. I can't believe that the air intakes stay open above 0.7M, maneuvering or not.Karan M wrote: Re intake some folks felt that the engine thrust should more than compensate for the sustained performance at different speeds, but at the time, the detailed drag vs aircraft performance calculations were not done. At any rate, HAL did this compromise. Shukla notes:
Top HAL decision-makers pooh-pooh the IAF’s contention that the LCA’s air intakes are incorrectly designed, resulting in oxygen starvation and incomplete burning and, therefore, sub-optimal engine power from the F-404s. At the same time, however, steps are being taken to improve air intake, without getting into major redesign that could set back the programme by years. Instead, auxiliary air intakes are being provided on the sides of the Tejas engine housing --- similar to those on the Jaguar (see photos).
These auxiliary air intakes comprise of spring-loaded panels that open when engine suction is very high and provide an additional route for airflow into the engine intakes. As you can see in the photos, the spring-loaded panels can be pushed in by manual pressure.
At critical stages in the flight envelope, such as during take-off, rapid climb, sustained turn… and in any case, when afterburners are on… the heavy suction from the engines would open the auxiliary air intakes. When the demand for air goes down, such as in level flight, the auxiliary air intakes would close.
http://ajaishukla.blogspot.in/2008/07/c ... es-on.html
Khokhars claim that ADA had not got the intake design right was actually contradicted by two TPs, including Mao who noted it did it's job in most conditions. That video is also around someplace.
Karan is right about both parts. It has to do with low speed and/or high AoA. Low speed, you know why. And at high alpha, the incoming air is at high angle and since LCA does not have movable lips or something like that, it would not receive enough air (in simplest terms mass flux = area * density * velocity and at high AoA velocity component normal to intake will be smaller by factor of sin [alpha]. But it will also include separation and flow distortion). So there would be suction created inside air intake, so side inlet door will be pushed open. Wing shielded intakes help here like in F-16 or Mig-29. LCA does not have enough of this help. But you know this as well right?indranilroy wrote: No Karan,
This is not true. The auxiliary doors in the intakes of LCA has nothing to do with the AoA. It has everything to do with the speed of the aircraft. This door is a passive device which is spring loaded to stay closed. Now, when the engine is running you can view the operation of the door in two ways.
1. The engine wants the air to "hit" its face at approximately 0.7 M. But the plane is not moving. So, what would the shape of the intake be if you were to design it? It would be shaped like a funnel with the engine attached to the thinner end. There is a lot of air entering at a very low speed at the other end, but speeding up as it moves through the funnel to "hit" the face of the engine. Now reverse the situation. The plane is flying at 1.2M. How should the shape of the intake be? You would now want to slow down the air entering the intake. Obviously, you now want a divergent intake where the air is entering at a high speed, but slowing down as it moves through the intake. But, our plane has a fixed inlet design (optimized for cruise at 0.9M). This intake is not optimized for the take-off and landing, we discussed above. Therefore, the door just works in increasing the area of the mouth of the intake during these slow speed part of the envelop.
2. The second way to look at it as follows. Once again, the inlet is designed to accelerate/decelerate the air to 0.7-0.9M. Now, the airplane is at a slow speed. The air outside the inlet is moving at a relative speed of say 0.2M to the plane. The air inside the inlet is moving at 0.4-0.6M (near the door part). According, to Bernoulli's principle, the pressure is higher on the outside, and the door is forced open allowing more air to get in which increases the pressure and decreases the speed.
So you see, the opening of the auxiliary doors has nothing to do with AoA, or with how much power the engine is deveoping. If the plane is cruising at 0.9M or doing loops at 0.7M, requiring full military power, the door does remain shut. If the plane is flying level at 0.3M or doing loops at 0.3M, the inlet will be open.
Also, Air Cmde Khokhar was not speaking about this. The intake of any supersonic aircraft with a fixed air intake is convergent-divergent in shape. That is, the air accelerates in the first half of the intake (losing pressure), and then decelerates through the second half (gaining pressure) before hitting the compressor face. The ratio of this pressure (entering the low pressure compressor) to the pressure of the air entering the intake is called the pressure recovery of the intake. The better the pressure recovery, the better the engine operates. However, with curved Y-inlets and various airspeeds, it is truly black-magic to get the shape perfectly right. And this is what the late Cmde was accusing that the ADA did not got perfectly right. Or got it right for the initial Kaveri design, but not so much for the GE404IN which has different airflow requirements and inlet diameter. Nobody has refuted him till now.
In fact Subsonic inlets are divergent (e.g. civil jets). Theoretically its possible to design a shock-less CD nozzle which will decelerate incoming flow at design point to subsonic flow, but believe me it will never work in practice, not even one in a billion times. Instead, supersonic flow is always decelerated through shock compression to subsonic flow first and then that subsonic flow passes through divergent section to get slowed further to certain value. It always decelerates, never accelerates. You can have fixed shape intake for supersonic flow till may be M1.2 if you are planning to use only normal shock, since the terminal shock till that level will be moderately strong and you can manage the loss in pressure. If you can make a oblique shock just ahead of inlet (so that flow at inlet entry is aroung M1.2 and the terminal shock is acceptably strong) you can get off with fixed inlet till M1.6 may be or till M2 with cleaver design. But after that it simply becomes unacceptable and you got to go for variable inlets. Most of the supersonic intakes are mixed compression type - external + internal shock compression. After point where the flow becomes subsonic (the throat/the place where you get terminal normal shock) the duct is divergent for some distance and then it becomes a constant area duct (which is like 80-90% of its length).It does but, it does it thorough 3 slots which have fine mesh on it to leave flow in clean way, not like just dumping it as in LCA or F-18. Would be interesting to know why so much care. F-15 also has similar mechanism in inlet. But its not just BL spill, it also spills additional air when throat is chocked, IIRC. Same might be true for Mig-29 as well. but its just speculation.indranilroy wrote:I am believing you. I am saying that the intake through the louvers were not designed for the same reason as that on the LCA. They are not there to provide "extra" air intake at low speeds. I can't see how air from the louvers gets into the main duct after the front ramp is open (duct from the louvers closed). The only way is that pressure differential makes the "bleed channel" suck in air below 0.7M. I have to read more to confirm/dispel this. I will look into the book you suggested.
Anyways, the flight manual was interesting to read. I did not know that the Mig-29 also spills the boundary layer from the inlet region to above the wing. This is similar to the LCA and the F-18s.
I have never heard of movable lips being used for higher AoA. I have always heard of them being used for creating shock waves to slow down incoming supersonic air. You will have to show me literature for the former.nileshjr wrote: Karan is right about both parts. It has to do with low speed and/or high AoA. Low speed, you know why. And at high alpha, the incoming air is at high angle and since LCA does not have movable lips or something like that, it would not receive enough air (in simplest terms mass flux = area * density * velocity and at high AoA velocity component normal to intake will be smaller by factor of sin [alpha]. But it will also include separation and flow distortion). So there would be suction created inside air intake, so side inlet door will be pushed open. Wing shielded intakes help here like in F-16 or Mig-29. LCA does not have enough of this help. But you know this as well right?
Of course. I was simplifying. I did not want to cover aspects other than pressure and speed.nileshjr wrote:
About your explanation there are some issues there. The reason of putting bell-mouth on static engine is to facilitate smooth airflow with minimum loss. It does not speed up the air it only facilitates the speed up with least losses and flow distortion. If you don't provide it, still air will be sucked in but there will be severe separation at the engine intake lip, since the air near the lip has to turn through 90 degree sharply. You are correct in saying its like funnel, but it only facilitates the process and its not a necessary thing. You can run engine without it but your test will not give you correct data.
No contradictions here, I completely agree. I know that in supersonic flows, the air decelerates through both the convergent and divergent sections. I just did not want to discuss supersonic flows and shocks which would make the explanation unnecessarily complex. And that's why my choice of M1.2 was most unfortunate. I just wanted to take a number greater than 0.7M, and was not careful enough. I should have just gone with M0.85, or something like that.nileshjr wrote:
Also keep in mind that supersonic flow actually accelerates in divergent duct (opposite of subsonic), picking up more speed. So you can't put divergent section for M1.2 incoming flow.
In fact Subsonic inlets are divergent (e.g. civil jets). Theoretically its possible to design a shock-less CD nozzle which will decelerate incoming flow at design point to subsonic flow, but believe me it will never work in practice, not even one in a billion times. Instead, supersonic flow is always decelerated through shock compression to subsonic flow first and then that subsonic flow passes through divergent section to get slowed further to certain value. It always decelerates, never accelerates.
You can have fixed shape intake for supersonic flow till may be M1.2 if you are planning to use only normal shock, since the terminal shock till that level will be moderately strong and you can manage the loss in pressure. If you can make a oblique shock just ahead of inlet (so that flow at inlet entry is aroung M1.2 and the terminal shock is acceptably strong) you can get off with fixed inlet till M1.6 may be or till M2 with cleaver design. But after that it simply becomes unacceptable and you got to go for variable inlets. Most of the supersonic intakes are mixed compression type - external + internal shock compression. After point where the flow becomes subsonic (the throat/the place where you get terminal normal shock) the duct is divergent for some distance and then it becomes a constant area duct (which is like 80-90% of its length).
We have discussed this before. This is my understanding as well.nileshjr wrote:
(If you see some supersonic inlet, it might look like its convergent-divergent, but don't get deceived, the initial portion till terminal shock is convergent since flow is getting compressed/decelerated through shocks and not the other way round - that its convergent so flow is getting decelerated. Two completely different things - one is reversible thermodynamic process other is not).
LCA does have an oblique shock in front of its inlet. It originates from the inboard wing section I think (can't remember for sure now, its mentioned in some paper somewhere). So it manages till M1.6 with fixed inlets.
AFAIK, in case of the LCA and the F-18, the spill air duct is completely open (see through). You can see any foreign object if you wanted to. This is not the case with the Mig29 when it is powered down. Therefore the fine, mess is to stop anything from going in.nileshjr wrote: It does but, it does it thorough 3 slots which have fine mesh on it to leave flow in clean way, not like just dumping it as in LCA or F-18. Would be interesting to know why so much care.
It is true for the Mig-29. The front ramp and the aft ramp create the wedge in the Mig-29 (See figure 1-7 in the manual). There is a small gap between the front ramp and the aft ramp whose opening is controlled by a valve. When additional air needs to be let out of the throat region, this valve is opened, which lets the air spill out of the intake and out through the mesh.nileshjr wrote: F-15 also has similar mechanism in inlet. But its not just BL spill, it also spills additional air when throat is chocked, IIRC. Same might be true for Mig-29 as well. but its just speculation.
As I said before, it may be happening through the same gap described above. If the valve is kept open up to 0.3M (at IDLE power) and 0.7M (at full military power), instead of bleeding air out, it may be sucking air in. But, I can't be sure. I have to read more to be sure.nileshjr wrote: Well, all I was saying is, they are not there to provide extra air, but they provide extra air anyway because they are there.
Simple google search will give you many references for EF-2000. For example read section 3 of this paper:indranilroy wrote:I have never heard of movable lips being used for higher AoA. I have always heard of them being used for creating shock waves to slow down incoming supersonic air. You will have to show me literature for the former.nileshjr wrote: Karan is right about both parts. It has to do with low speed and/or high AoA. Low speed, you know why. And at high alpha, the incoming air is at high angle and since LCA does not have movable lips or something like that, it would not receive enough air (in simplest terms mass flux = area * density * velocity and at high AoA velocity component normal to intake will be smaller by factor of sin [alpha]. But it will also include separation and flow distortion). So there would be suction created inside air intake, so side inlet door will be pushed open. Wing shielded intakes help here like in F-16 or Mig-29. LCA does not have enough of this help. But you know this as well right?
Makes sense. I had turbulence grill in mind and was thus thinking only about air going out.indranilroy wrote:AFAIK, in case of the LCA and the F-18, the spill air duct is completely open (see through). You can see any foreign object if you wanted to. This is not the case with the Mig29 when it is powered down. Therefore the fine, mess is to stop anything from going in.nileshjr wrote: It does but, it does it thorough 3 slots which have fine mesh on it to leave flow in clean way, not like just dumping it as in LCA or F-18. Would be interesting to know why so much care.
All it means is that India could possibly export the LCA to France, but never to Russia. : DEric Leiderman wrote:http://thediplomat.com/2015/10/us-stops ... zbekistan/
This is a link on tech denail/banning of export for a platform with US inputs
Hence our LCA exports ???
Interesting. Learnt something new today.nileshjr wrote:
Simple google search will give you many references for EF-2000. For example read section 3 of this paper:
http://scholar.google.co.in/scholar_url ... s=1366x587
For Mig-29M see in the book "Famous Russian Aircrafts - Mig29" page 92.
This, I know and meant when I said variable inlet shapes for shock creation. The EF mechanism is new to me. Are there other aircraft you know of which uses a variable lip?nileshjr wrote: Only F-15 has movable inlet cowl for shock. I can't think of any other jet right now. Others (Tomcat, Su-27. mig-29, mig25) have internal mechanism for geometry manipulation. But for F-15, you can see the inlet opening itself moving/changing. (There are many with moving cone though)
These talks about exports sound very premature. Firstly, as you said we may have the capability, but haven't realized the capacity in building LCA in large numbers.rohitvats wrote:Its all very nice sounding to offer your home grown fighter for export but how are you going to deliver the plane? When the installed capacity cannot meet the requirement of the domestic AF, how are you going to service a foreign customer?
Build a second line in the pvt sector. LCA could havd ensured there was a significan trainer market if we worked with the Germans...rohitvats wrote:Its all very nice sounding to offer your home grown fighter for export but how are you going to deliver the plane? When the installed capacity cannot meet the requirement of the domestic AF, how are you going to service a foreign customer?
This is the main issue that never gets discussed in this forum. There are pages and pages of gyan on LEVCONS, Engine, weight reduction, composites etc etc but no mention of issues with mass production of LCA as a product.Kailash wrote:These talks about exports sound very premature. Firstly, as you said we may have the capability, but haven't realized the capacity in building LCA in large numbers.rohitvats wrote:Its all very nice sounding to offer your home grown fighter for export but how are you going to deliver the plane? When the installed capacity cannot meet the requirement of the domestic AF, how are you going to service a foreign customer?
<chop>
If you don't have the numbers, capacity will not be built up. Our private and public sectors both need assured orders. You have surely followed what Parrikar did to get production upto 18/yr.Kailash wrote:^^^
Private sector or public sector, we don't have the capacity to churn out numbers as of now. We should work on the numbers, trusting that those responsible will get the guaranteed export orders.
Those are long term issues you speak of, but by themselves they are not stopping us from exporting. Its our mindset and chalta hain stuff viz ignoring the short term which is the issue. But the same is not there elsewhere (eg HUMSA sonar export).Scores of export laws need to be updated. We should work towards protecting IP and stop reverse engineering, which we have no prior experience of. If we are downgrading the export variant for strategic reasons, need to plan a variant and run parallel line of a less capable version. Indian arms lobbies should network with politicos of prospective buyers, all the while fighting well established competitors. In short - we have to change our point of view from that of a buyer to seller. China is striving but struggling - our own struggle will be no less.
