Have we lost the plot ?
Air Marshal M Matheswaran, writing about the LCA, wonders:
Air Marshal M Matheswaran writes about status of the light combat aircraft, its genesis and flawed decisions over the decades which have resulted in the LCA becoming an essentially technology development programme, not meeting the IAF’s vital requirement. He calls for a realistic assessment of the LCA’s operational role.
All major powers, and there are just a handful of them, endeavour to design, develop, and manufacture fighter aircraft by themselves. Ideally, this would include all critical technologies, being the aero engine, aircraft design, metallurgy, radar, sensors, and weapons. However, very few countries have mastery over all these areas of technology. The leaders, or ‘ early birds,’ are the USA, Russia, UK, and France, followed closely by Germany, Japan, Italy and Sweden. The post-1945 world has seen many countries aspire for the same self-reliance in combat aircraft production including Argentina, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Israel, Iran, South Korea, and Taiwan. Of these, only a few have emerged as reasonably successful late entrants into the aerospace club: Brazil, China, India, Israel and lately South Korea. While China and Israel lead the pack, all of them have built capabilities and strengths in some key domains, but not in all. The most complex challenge involves design and development of aero-engines and aviation-grade materials. Except for China, to a certain extent, none of the others have achieved any meaningful control in these two domains. Simply put, aerospace technology mastery will continue to remain a huge challenge for emerging powers like India.
Casual follow-through
Aspirations to build an indigenous fighter aircraft began well with the HF-24 Marut programme. In the 1950s, when denial regimes were yet to take shape, India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru made the wise decision to bring in legendary German
aircraft designer Dr Kurt Tank to head the HF-24 design team. In the aftermath of the Second World War, Tank had offered his services to Argentina, which gladly accepted him. By 1948, he had designed the FMA/IAe 33 Pulqui II, a state-of-theart fighter for its time. Multiple prototypes were built but its development was cut short by political turmoil in Argentina. That is when he moved to India and began teaching at IIT Madras, before being entrusted in 1957 with the task of designing the HF-24. Until then the only aircraft designed and built by HAL was the HT-2 basic trainer. From HT-2 to the HF-24 was like travelling from Earth to the Moon. The dream was audacious but it became a reality because it was backed by brilliant strategic decisions.
Dr Tank was allowed to bring with him a small group of German engineers to form the nucleus of the final design team, which comprised some 150 HAL engineers by end of the development. The project was sanctioned in 1957, and the first prototype flew in 1961, a mere four years later while the first squadron of series production aircraft went operational in 1967, just six years later! Though handicapped by underpowered engines, the HF-24 acquitted itself well in the strike role during the 1971 India-Pakistan war.
The HF-24 was a brilliant design and a state-of-the-art aircraft for its time. The programme met an untimely demise in 1982 largely owed to short sightedness of the User, Government and Industry. The IAF’s leadership displayed singular lack of foresight and national perspective when it decided to phase out the aircraft in 1982, a mere 15 years after induction. The political leadership and the bureaucracy displayed ignorance and strategic blindness over the course of the HF-24’s development and operational life. Decisions on engine development with foreign collaboration were shelved under the pretext of it being too expensive; the cost involved was a mere Rs 5 crore! The industry failed to follow a strategy of developing improved derivatives in order to sustain the huge leapfrogging achieved with the help of Kurt Tank’s team. The net result was a withering away of precious talent. The 1970s were a lost decade, and HAL shifted focus to licence production of MiG-21s. When the LCA decision was taken in 1983, HAL’s design capability was at an all time low. It lost control of the design process and management to the DRDO, which “created” the ADA to “manage” the LCA programme.
Genesis
Of late there have been frequent articles written by some self-proclaimed champions of indigenisation and ‘Tejas patriots.’ None of them know much about aeronautics, leave alone air combat or air strategy and military flying, but continue to comment on how the Indian Air Force must learn to fly and fight any war with the Tejas as its backbone and not pursue hopeless ideas like the MMRCA or FGFA! They would do well to study the LCA programme’s genesis, development, hurdles, indigenous content and its true performance in order to appreciate its possible role and potential.
Concept of the light combat aircraft is nothing new. Throughout aviation history, the idea of a ‘Light Weight Fighter’ (LWF) has been in contention from the point of view of meeting performance requirements at affordable cost. This was feasible in the jet age as downsizing of engines were relatively easier. The Folland Gnat, which the IAF flew successfully in its 1965 and 1971 wars, was a classic lightweight fighter whose performance, in its age, was excellent at minimal cost, although it came at a huge compromise of safety and reliability. Effectively, the MiG-21 has proved to be the most successful lightweight fighter in history. The IAF will have operated large numbers of the MiG- 21 for almost six decades once it phases out the last of them by 2020. The focus of the concept of the lightweight fighter has always been ‘low cost’ balanced by ‘acceptable performance’.
The genesis of modern lightweight fighter development goes back to the late sixties which ultimately resulted in production of the most efficient lightweight fighter of the century, the General Dynamics (now Lockheed-Martin) F-16. USAF Colonel John Boyd’s EnergyManoeuvrability theory laid the foundation for the lightweight fighter development. This radical new concept was seen as necessary following the poor performance of technologically advanced, heavily armed, expensive and large aircraft like the F-4 Phantom II against low cost, technologically inferior but much smaller and more agile aircraft like the MiG-17 and MiG-21 in the skies over Vietnam. A process of competitive prototype development was adopted. At core of the LWF’s design requirement was performance. The YF-16, which won the prototype competition in 1972, was the first aircraft to be designed as an unstable platform with fly-by-wire control system and was also the first to use composite materials as structural elements. The rest is history. The prototype programme began in 1971, and by 1978 the series production F-16 was in operational service. Fundamentally, the F-16 programme validated the relevance of balancing technology while keeping performance and low cost as drivers of the programme.
By the late 1970s, the IAF was looking for a replacement for the accident-prone and unreliable Gnat and its Indian version, the Ajeet. The requirement was for a low-cost,
conventional aircraft to replace the Gnat/ Ajeet and early MiG-21 variants by the late 1980s. Based on its experience with the Gnat and the need for a low-cost fighter, the IAF projected a requirement for a small fighter of 5 tonnes empty weight. This would make the aircraft marginally bigger than the Gnat but smaller than the MiG-21. But this was an inherently flawed approach and indicated that the lightweight fighter concept had not really been studied in depth. This has sometimes been attributed to non-availability of adequate information at that time, but is only partially correct, as HAL did feasibility studies, consulting a number of leading aircraft design firms from western Europe.
After initial studies, the IAF and HAL concurred on a plan for a conventional planform fighter to be developed. DRDO then stepped in to suggest that the fighter development programme be used to bridge technology gaps such as fly-by-wire control systems, airborne multimode radar, aero engines and composite structures. By the mid 1980s this was agreed to and an ambitious plan to develop a fourth generation platform with high performance was submitted to the government. Government approval of the intent was followed by formulation of the ASR (Air Staff Requirement) in line with performance expected of a 4th generation fighter. This is where anomalies in decisionmaking began to creep in.
To develop a 4th generation fighter within a 5 tonne airframe was a tall order. Even when revised upwards to a 6 tonne empty weight requirement, this remained a difficult task. The projected time frame for completion of development and operational induction of the aircraft in less than a decade was not merely over-optimistic but almost
foolhardy given state of the technical base that existed with respect to FBW, aero engines, and airborne radars. Starting from scratch, each of these would have required nothing less than two decades of focused research along with significant foreign assistance. Ultimately, two of the major technology objectives were not achieved: the Kaveri engine programme floundered even after three decades of work and has now been declared foreclosed, while the multimode radar did not make any headway and was dropped in 2006 in favour of the Israeli Elta EL/M-2032.
The aircraft project was now called Light Combat Aircraft in order to create an identity distinct from the lightweight fighter concept. However, it was evident that the concept suffered from the IAF’s fixation with the original idea of replacing the Gnat and MiG-21. Hence, the size and weight limitation remained close to the original idea. These created contradictions in the programme, which the IAF failed to appreciate. By keeping the weight and size at extremely small levels, we were destined to get an aircraft whose radius of action would be no better than that of the 40-year-old MiG-21. Low cost was the primary consideration when deciding to keep the size small, but by introducing high technology requirements this was impossible to achieve. The challenges were about timeframes, cost and performance. Bringing in high technology developments made it inevitable that timeframes would be exceeded by a wide margin. This was either not foreseen or the authorities and agencies concerned refused to acknowledge it. The net result is that the LCA concept, evolved more than three decades ago, is now in question for its very relevance in today’s operational and technical environment. Hindsight analysis is always easy as opposed to decision making at that time. However, in development projects it is important to analyse them subsequently in order to learn the right lessons for the future, particularly when the product developed fails to meet the core objectives.
In that context the following questions and observations need to be answered: What was the objective when the LCA programme started? Was it to fulfil the operational imperatives of the IAF with a suitable indigenous replacement for its obsolete and ageing fleet or was it national imperative that an advanced fighter aircraft must be made in India? The former is an operational and timeframe imperative while the latter is technology imperative. Why were these two contradicting requirements not addressed? Concept of the LCA was to have been based on the successful Light Weight Fighter programme of the USAF. It is now evident that more in-depth research would have helped in defining the size and weight limitations of the aircraft with better strategic foresight and focus on cost. Misplaced beliefs about the Gnat’s viability as a low-cost lightweight fighter had overarching influence on the definition of the size and weight of the LCA. Following the AST 201 of October 1983, ASR 2/85 was approved in 1985 after more than two years of deliberations. During this period the IAF was fully aware of the performance, technological sophistication, and operational relevance of the F-16 and Mirage 2000 fighters. Development of the IAI Lavi in Israel should have had significant lessons for us : better research and analysis could have had meaningful impact. When the DRDO inserted the need for state-of-the-art technologies to be developed in the LCA programme, why were the timelines not estimated with
reasonable accuracy? That some of the technologies would take nearly three decades to mature, as they finally did, was clear to all, but statements repeatedly indicated that the LCA would enter service in less than decade! These should have been scrutinised in closer detail, which could have led to strategically wiser decisions. To say that these statements were simply errors of judgement would be a gross understatement. The IAF repeatedly voiced its concerns regarding the programme but these were overlooked. Secondly, the Air Force’s concern about the serious impact in its force structure that a long-delayed LCA would have was painted by interested parties as almost being an obstruction to the national endeavour. The IAF then simply stayed away from the project. This was a serious blunder. The IAF should have convinced the government to grant it full control of the programme, as is done the world over. It is critically important that the user drive the programme in order to balance operational needs and technology development needs. The LCA programme began from scratch. The long period of development and possibility of time delays were inherent in these decisions and should have been foreseen. However, periodic statements over the last 20 years belie such understanding. Given the urgency and priority of the Air Force’s requirement it is surprising that the IAF went along with such decisions when alternate courses of action were available. The HF- 24 was a proven airframe but ended prematurely due to its underpowered engines. Considering the fact that the American GE F404 engines were procured for the LCA even before the first prototype was begun, it is surprising that the same engines were not considered as an immediate option to integrate into a revised and upgraded HF-24 airframe. This could have given the Air Force a very viable frontline fighter aircraft that could have entered operational service twenty years ago even while the LCA continued along a realistic development trajectory. Such a derivative-based approach would have been the most logical strategy to follow as the two would have complemented and strengthened the development process. Instead we just allowed the HF-24 experience to fade away.
The LCA programme primarily became a technology development programme and its operational performance was unintentionally relegated to second priority. As a result there are significant achievements in the technology area but there are serious deficiencies in the performance area.
Development and mastering the digital fly-by-wire flight control system is the most significant achievement of the programme. The concept, forming a national control law team for development, its execution and the final result has all been done in exemplary manner, overcoming enormous challenges. The LCA has a significantly large share of its structures and surfaces made of carbon composite material. The process of developing the required fibres and converting them into the required structures were mastered over a period of time. This is another significant achievement. The Composite Manufacturing Division (CMD) of HAL is truly a worldclass facility and addresses the requirement of both the LCA and the ALH (Advanced Light Helicopter) and its derivatives. There are also private sectors players establishing similar facilities to create increased capacity. However, there exists vulnerability owing to import dependence on the raw material (carbon pre-pregs). This is an area where research should have commenced at the same time as the LCA programme.
Other significant achievements are in the areas of system integration, glass cockpit and the mission computer, components development and engineering such as jet fuel starter, accessory gearbox and indigenisation of imported critical equipment such as actuators.
Major technology shortfalls have been the non-realisation of the aero-engine and the multi-mode radar. In spite of major achievements in critical technology areas like the FBW and composites, the LCA as a weapons platform is still critically dependent on imported equipment in areas of power plant, materials, fire control, EW, sensors, and weapons.
Above all, serious shortfalls lie in the area of operational performance. Lack of early focus on operational issues has resulted in poor weight management. As a result the LCA is significantly overweight and cannot meet the thrust to weight requirement in the air-combat configuration. Considering the severe size and weight limitations, it would have been prudent to choose a canard-delta design. Which was also the recommendation of foreign consultants in the early phase. It is strange that this was not followed. Instead we opted to rely on a pure tailless delta design and thought that the combination of unstable platform and digital FBW flight control system would generate enough performance. This was not possible, as subsequent results have shown. Interestingly the Swedish Gripen, which is very similar to the LCA in terms of initial requirement and timing of development and uses the same engine, has a canard-delta configuration, as do the larger Rafale and Typhoon. It is completely clear that one of the reasons as to why the LCA is unlikely to ever fully meet the ASR is owed to the basic choice of the planform design.
The LCA also suffers from high supersonic drag and poor intake efficiency, along with other significant shortfalls in performance related to turn rates, acceleration, top speed and rate of climb. While the aircraft may have excellent flight controls, good sensors and weapons, these critical deficiencies put a question mark on operational relevance of the aircraft. Quite naturally, the IAF would be worried about the LCA’s ability to provide required operational capabilities.
Unfortunately, it appears that history is repeating itself. The HF-24, although an excellent design, failed to meet a significant part of its operational requirement – the air defence role – owing to its underpowered engines. Failure to address this critical need was the primary reason due to which the Air Force phased it out prematurely. More importantly, this also resulted in discontinuity in the indigenous fighter development capability. The expertise created from the HF-24 programme was allowed to decay and the LCA work began virtually from scratch.
Given the serious shortfall in performance of the LCA, a focus on its inability to meet the ASR would result in re-living the HF-24 story. Hence, it is important to recognise the larger strategic need, which is consolidation of indigenous fighter aircraft development capability. For this the LCA needs to be factored appropriately, taking into consideration its strengths and deficiencies and here the original US lightweight fighter programme offers the right lessons. That programme focused on developing a lightweight fighter at low cost but with performance as a frontline fighter to complement the more expensive, larger, and technically far superior F-15. This is how the ‘Hi-Lo’ capability mix evolved. In a similar manner, if the LCA had met the ASR, it would have complemented the more capable but expensive mix of Su-30MKI and FGFAs.
Since there are serious deficiencies in performance, the LCA cannot become the IAF’s frontline fighter at the ‘Lo’ end of the mix, neither can it fill the slot of the MMRCA or its equivalent role. Above all, the IAF cannot afford to look for a oneto-one replacement of its rapidly ageing MiG-21 fleet. India’s global profile and security situation of the 1970s and early 80s may have allowed for one- to- one replacement but the nation’s increasing stature and global role, its rapidly evolving threat environment, and rapid technological developments around the world necessitate an aircraft with better performance and radius of action in this segment. One can see this with the Chinese equivalent : the JF-17, similar to the LCA, is essentially developed for overseas customers and presently has no place in the PLAAF inventory.
We must re- strategise on the place of the LCA in the IAF’s operational force structure, without compromising on the necessity to continue, consolidate and stabilise India’s fighter aircraft industry. This will call for a realistic assessment of the LCA’s operational role.
The so-called LCA Mk.II should be seen as the vehicle that should address larger operational radius, better performance and greater indigenisation. It could be a single engine aircraft with redesigned airframe and larger fuel capacity on lines of the Gripen NG or it could be a twin-engine version of the LCA with just incremental technology changes. These options need to be deliberated seriously and success can only be achieved if the industry is allowed to take full charge, with major role for the private industry, and a foreign OEM brought in as a risk-sharing partner and technology provider. This would have the advantage of providing continuity later on to the AMCA programme.
Critically, the need to develop India’s follow on fighter aircraft programme must be realised, as this should become the main frontline indigenous fighter for the IAF from the 2030s. For this to materialise, a broader strategy will need to be put in place.