antiterror13
Brigadier
How this fighter's performance compared to other fighter FC-1, Gripen, J-10A/B ?
HAL Tejas Jet Fighter
- Thread starter Delbert
- Start date
Dangerous waters
Both aircraft have things going for them, but have similar dimensions and are in the same weight class. I don't think either has a massive avionics edge over the other as of present either, and both are due to be upgraded with either a Mark 2 or Block 2 in the near future too.
They will have similar weapon options, and it's impossible to compare aerodynamic performance.
But I do think JF-17 is a few years ahead of Tejas in operational capability and might have better chances at export, depending on the engine situation.
MiG-29
Banned Idiot
in my opinion, perhaps it can compete with the J-10 and Gripen in instantaneous turn rate, and but it is unlikely it is better in better in sustained turn turn rate than the JF-17, however it is very economical due to its wing design, this will give very low drag, it is more in line with Mirage 2000, the LCA might have better instantantaneous turn rate than the JF-17.
So as a fighter, the Indians got a cheap, economical, difficult to spot visually and on radar fighter, that if it can get enough thrust and better wing loading can compete with the Gripen and J-10, and pretty much beat the JF-17.
But i would rate things like this.
1)J-10, perhps it has better TWR and its canards are aiding ITR and STR but it will have a larger RCS on shape alone due to canards and ventral fins
2)Gripen slightly better than the LCA if it has lower wing loading, larger RCS due to canards
3)LCA very likely has better ITR than JF-17, more economical cruise speed but very likely inferior STR to the JF-17, lower RCS due to simplicity.
LCA
Performance
" Maximum speed: Mach 1.8, 1,920 km/h (1,195 mph) at high altitude
" Range: 850 km (530 mi)
" Service ceiling: 15,250 m (50,000 ft)
" Wing loading: 221.4 kg/m² (45.35 lb/ft²)
" Thrust/weight: 1.07
Gripen Wing Loading: 336kg/m2
Typhoon Wing Loading: 307kg/m2
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I think it is unwise to compare the aircraft with regards to aerodynamic performance, again because we dont' know enough about them. Unless there is a massive difference, like one has TVC, or the other does not have FBW, or one is obviously designed as an interceptor, then it is very difficult to judge performance between similar aircraft, especially ones so new.
MiG-29
Banned Idiot
LCA
Performance
" Maximum speed: Mach 1.8, 1,920 km/h (1,195 mph) at high altitude
" Range: 850 km (530 mi)
" Service ceiling: 15,250 m (50,000 ft)
" Wing loading: 221.4 kg/m² (45.35 lb/ft²)
" Thrust/weight: 1.07
Gripen Wing Loading: 336kg/m2
Typhoon Wing Loading: 307kg/m2
this means that with a low wing loading it might be competitive with the Gripen or J-10 despite the canard will increase the lift at high AoA
no at all, see
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Miragedriver
Brigadier
Interesting article in the “New Indian Express” regarding the Tejas. This explains why the Tejas has been so slow to enter production.
Why this indifference to Tejas fighter jet?
BY: Ajai Shukla
Ask any of the 20-odd Indian Air Force test pilots who have flown the Tejas Light Combat Aircraft and they will all swear that it is a great fighter to fly. It handles beautifully, screams along at Mach 1.6 (2,000 kilometres per hour) and fires the full range of air-to-air and air-to-ground weaponry. With 2,000 test flights under its belt, it has already proven that it can fly and fight better than most fighters on the IAF inventory. It is vastly superior to the MiG-21, and is not too far behind the Mirage 2000.
It certainly outclasses the Pakistan Air Force JF-17 Thunder, a light fighter like the Tejas, which Pakistan pretends to have developed jointly with China, but is actually Chinese through and through. Unlike the Tejas -- a contemporary fighter made of composite materials with an advanced design and sophisticated avionics -- the JF-17 is an outdated design. But the PAF has already inducted 60 of these fighters and will eventually operate 250 to 300 JF-17s, half its total fleet.
Yet the IAF is cool towards the Tejas. It is desperate for more fighters -- against an assessed requirement of 42 fighter squadrons, the IAF has 34 squadrons today, which will fall to 26 in 2017 if the Rafale is not inducted by then. But the IAF chooses to live with this dangerous shortfall rather than inducting the Tejas more quickly.
Why this indifference towards the Tejas, the alert citizen would ask? She might also have noted a parallel: the Indian Army sticks with the decrepit, night-blind Russian T-72 tank rather than embracing the far more capable and modern Arjun. The Tejas and the Arjun have a common problem: they are excellent indigenous designs that are undermined by poor production quality.
Just as the Heavy Vehicles Factory, Avadi, mismanaged by the Ordnance Factory Board, causes the army to believe that the Arjun is unreliab#8804 similarly Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, a public sector undertaking under the ministry of defence, makes the IAF sceptical about the Tejas.
HAL's poor production fails to translate the Tejas' contemporary design into a reliable fighter that takes to the air day after day. Most of Tejas' problems stem from poor production, not from an inadequate design. But they prevent the fighter from flying, slowing down the flight-test programme and making the IAF believe that the Tejas has serious reliability issues.
None of this gives HAL sleepless nights, since it regards the Tejas as the problem of the Aeronautical Development Agency, which oversees the LCA programme. HAL prefers to focus on building foreign aircraft under licence, a mechanical task that it has done for decades with ever-increasing levels of inefficiency
The Sukhoi-30MKI, which was initially bought fully built from Russia for Rs 30 crore per fighter, is now built by HAL (substantially from Russian systems and sub-systems) for well over 10 times that figure. Building expensively suits HAL well; since its profits are a percentage of production costs, higher costs mean higher profit.
HAL's indigenisation is nominal and restricted mainly to low-tech components. High-tech assemblies and sub-assemblies are simply imported from Russia and knocked together expensively into "HAL-built" fighters. Everyone is happy: HAL makes hefty profits; Russia sells lots of Sukhoi-30 kits; and the IAF would much rather rely on Sukhoi-built assemblies than on HAL's dodgy manufacture.
With so much money flowing in from assembly line manufacture, HAL is ill-inclined to engage in the messy business of setting up an assembly line for the indigenous Tejas.
For decades, HAL has obtained production drawings, tools and jigs from abroad, most recently from BAE Systems for manufacturing the Hawk trainer.
In building an assembly line for the Tejas, HAL will have nobody to pass the buck to. The ad hoc Tejas assembly line, which HAL set up two years ago to build 40 Tejas Mark I fighters by 2017, has not yet produced its first fighter.
Now a foreign consultant will teach HAL to do what it has done for decades. HAL gets away with its disinterest in the Tejas thanks to its cosy relationship with the MoD.
Each year the ministry releases a photo of the HAL chairman handing over a large cardboard dividend cheque to the defence minister, as if A K Antony were being presented the Man of the Match award for some intra-office cricket match.
But, in successive photo releases, Mr Antony appears glummer and glummer -- and that is probably because the realisation is dawning on him that a technology company's success is measured not in financials but in technological breakthroughs and user satisfaction.
In those departments, HAL is deep in the red.
HAL must work with the ADA to set up the Tejas Mark I assembly line and to churn out the aircraft in numbers. The ADA's eagerness to develop the Tejas Mark II has resulted in the neglect of the Mark I, which is shaping up as an adequate light fighter for the IAF.
The MoD must ensure that the Mark I design is stabilised, it is built in numbers, operated by the IAF and user feedback obtained. Only after that should the ADA design the Mark II with well-considered enhancements. And HAL must be held to high production standards and low production costs.
Why this indifference to Tejas fighter jet?
BY: Ajai Shukla
Ask any of the 20-odd Indian Air Force test pilots who have flown the Tejas Light Combat Aircraft and they will all swear that it is a great fighter to fly. It handles beautifully, screams along at Mach 1.6 (2,000 kilometres per hour) and fires the full range of air-to-air and air-to-ground weaponry. With 2,000 test flights under its belt, it has already proven that it can fly and fight better than most fighters on the IAF inventory. It is vastly superior to the MiG-21, and is not too far behind the Mirage 2000.
It certainly outclasses the Pakistan Air Force JF-17 Thunder, a light fighter like the Tejas, which Pakistan pretends to have developed jointly with China, but is actually Chinese through and through. Unlike the Tejas -- a contemporary fighter made of composite materials with an advanced design and sophisticated avionics -- the JF-17 is an outdated design. But the PAF has already inducted 60 of these fighters and will eventually operate 250 to 300 JF-17s, half its total fleet.
Yet the IAF is cool towards the Tejas. It is desperate for more fighters -- against an assessed requirement of 42 fighter squadrons, the IAF has 34 squadrons today, which will fall to 26 in 2017 if the Rafale is not inducted by then. But the IAF chooses to live with this dangerous shortfall rather than inducting the Tejas more quickly.
Why this indifference towards the Tejas, the alert citizen would ask? She might also have noted a parallel: the Indian Army sticks with the decrepit, night-blind Russian T-72 tank rather than embracing the far more capable and modern Arjun. The Tejas and the Arjun have a common problem: they are excellent indigenous designs that are undermined by poor production quality.
Just as the Heavy Vehicles Factory, Avadi, mismanaged by the Ordnance Factory Board, causes the army to believe that the Arjun is unreliab#8804 similarly Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, a public sector undertaking under the ministry of defence, makes the IAF sceptical about the Tejas.
HAL's poor production fails to translate the Tejas' contemporary design into a reliable fighter that takes to the air day after day. Most of Tejas' problems stem from poor production, not from an inadequate design. But they prevent the fighter from flying, slowing down the flight-test programme and making the IAF believe that the Tejas has serious reliability issues.
None of this gives HAL sleepless nights, since it regards the Tejas as the problem of the Aeronautical Development Agency, which oversees the LCA programme. HAL prefers to focus on building foreign aircraft under licence, a mechanical task that it has done for decades with ever-increasing levels of inefficiency
The Sukhoi-30MKI, which was initially bought fully built from Russia for Rs 30 crore per fighter, is now built by HAL (substantially from Russian systems and sub-systems) for well over 10 times that figure. Building expensively suits HAL well; since its profits are a percentage of production costs, higher costs mean higher profit.
HAL's indigenisation is nominal and restricted mainly to low-tech components. High-tech assemblies and sub-assemblies are simply imported from Russia and knocked together expensively into "HAL-built" fighters. Everyone is happy: HAL makes hefty profits; Russia sells lots of Sukhoi-30 kits; and the IAF would much rather rely on Sukhoi-built assemblies than on HAL's dodgy manufacture.
With so much money flowing in from assembly line manufacture, HAL is ill-inclined to engage in the messy business of setting up an assembly line for the indigenous Tejas.
For decades, HAL has obtained production drawings, tools and jigs from abroad, most recently from BAE Systems for manufacturing the Hawk trainer.
In building an assembly line for the Tejas, HAL will have nobody to pass the buck to. The ad hoc Tejas assembly line, which HAL set up two years ago to build 40 Tejas Mark I fighters by 2017, has not yet produced its first fighter.
Now a foreign consultant will teach HAL to do what it has done for decades. HAL gets away with its disinterest in the Tejas thanks to its cosy relationship with the MoD.
Each year the ministry releases a photo of the HAL chairman handing over a large cardboard dividend cheque to the defence minister, as if A K Antony were being presented the Man of the Match award for some intra-office cricket match.
But, in successive photo releases, Mr Antony appears glummer and glummer -- and that is probably because the realisation is dawning on him that a technology company's success is measured not in financials but in technological breakthroughs and user satisfaction.
In those departments, HAL is deep in the red.
HAL must work with the ADA to set up the Tejas Mark I assembly line and to churn out the aircraft in numbers. The ADA's eagerness to develop the Tejas Mark II has resulted in the neglect of the Mark I, which is shaping up as an adequate light fighter for the IAF.
The MoD must ensure that the Mark I design is stabilised, it is built in numbers, operated by the IAF and user feedback obtained. Only after that should the ADA design the Mark II with well-considered enhancements. And HAL must be held to high production standards and low production costs.
Equation
Lieutenant General
Tejas better than J/F-17 according to the article. How is what I would to know?
AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
What a load of nonsense in that article. It's a great fighter but suffers from poor production quality? Same with the Arjun? Maybe it's because they're not great at all. If it's true that the powers in government won't back them despite being so great, then India suffers from something worse than poor production quality. Don't expect them to ever get anything right and no hope for the future that's for sure.
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Quon_Duixote
New Member
Not going into the lca v jf17 argument here as it leads down a familiar road. The author of the article, ajay shukla is a nut job. The truth is Hal has taken up the lca pretty seriously now and the so called poor production quality doesn't hold ground anymore. Lca has got a new state of the art production facility which would start churning out an incremental batch of fighters through 2020. The question is whether articles like these, which undermine the indigenisation effort to the benefit of very powerful defence contractors, would manipulate the Iaf's procurement doctrine.
Actually, I think the Indian Military is suffering from the same problem the Chinese Air Force had during the Cultural Revolution era and the 80s. They want ridiculously high performances for the indigenous effort. Take the J-9 project, for instance. The PLAAF first wanted double "25s" (25,000m ceiling and MACH 2.5 airspeed), but then quickly scaled up to double "28s", even dismissing CAC's request to compensate speed with greater agility and better avionics. In the end, despite all the effort that Song Wencong and his team poured into the project, nothing came out of it until the J-10 finally entered service in the mid-2000s. In a documentary on J-10's first flight Song Wengcong and a fellow engineer of similar age were in tears after Lei Qiang landed. Given all that they've been through, I can understand why.
Indian Air Force is perhaps worse in this regard since both Western and Russian Aircraft companies are desperate to push their products to it and, unlike China during the 1980s, India actually has a strong enough economy to support such purchases. The incentive to "indigenize" is not that strong in India since barring a brief period following their nuclear test in the 90s, they never experienced the same scale of arms embargo (from both sides of the Iron Curtain, for that matter), that China endured between 1960 and 1980. In fact I almost understand IAF's reasoning? Why don't you get the greatest bang for the buck with proven foreign arms developed by aerospace companies with decades of experience instead of potentially risking a less capable and worthy indigenous product? LCA is almost like India's J-8 in that regard. Both are first attempts at completely new domestic design of a combat aircraft that's not really state of the art compared with contemporary fighters. However, there is a key difference. China during the 70s and 80s didn't really have a choice and had to grit her teeth to induct the J-8s. India, on the other hand, isn't in the same dire straits as China, with France and Russia offering far more capable platforms. I think the true reason that the LCA took so long to induct isn't so much that there is something fundamentally bad with the engineering, but resistance and pressure from some elements in the Indian Air Force. It took several one-sided victories by the J-10s over the Su-27s for it to win favors with PLAAF. Perhaps that's the best chance for LCA as well.