The LCA programme was initiated 43 years ago in 1973. The IAF will revive the No. 45 “Flying Daggers” squadron in Bangalore with two Tejas planes on July 1, sources in air headquarters said today.
The “Flying Daggers” recorded the IAF’s last air-to-air kill. In 1999, a MiG 21 aircraft of the squadron shot down a France-made Atlantique that the Pakistan Air Force was flying over the Rann of Kutch.
The squadron was “numberplated” — air force jargon for de-commissioning — in 2002 because the MiG 21 aircraft it was flying had outlived its time. The IAF has at least 10 such “numberplated” fighter aircraft squadrons. It has an authorised strength of 42 fighter squadrons.
Time and cost overrruns as well as worries over the depletion of combat strength have forced the IAF to commission the Tejas with a version that does not yet meet all its requirements. The development cost of the Tejas was estimated to be around Rs 13,500 crore by the comptroller and auditor general last year. Hindustan Aeronautics estimates that the unit cost of a Tejas would be about Rs 270 crore.
A squadron of fighter aircraft in the IAF usually comprises 18 aircraft that would include two trainer aircraft. The “Flying Daggers” can expect to get that many aircraft only in 2019.
The revival of the No. 45 squadron was necessary not only because the IAF has to meet the shortfall in combat aircraft but also because “a squadron is the only legal entity that can hold aircraft”, said the sources.
Last January, the government ordered the IAF to induct the Tejas, although it had pointed out that the aircraft fell short of the requirements the force had projected. The government further asked the IAF to prune its requirements so that the scientists at the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and the manufacturers at the public sector Hindustan Aeronautics find it simpler to make the aircraft and give a boost to the “Made in India” product.
When defence minister Manohar Parrikar handed over the first of the Tejas aircraft to Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha in January 2015, the DRDO promised that the plane would get its final operational certificate (FoC) in December 2015.
That has not happened. The first two aircraft with which the IAF will this week form the first squadron of Tejas got an “initial operational certificate” (IoC) in 2013.
The difference between the IoC configuration of the aircraft and the projected FoC configuration of the Tejas is in the firepower and in the avionics. The IAF wanted the Tejas armed with beyond visual range missiles with a 28 degree angle of attack and with active electronic scanned array (AESA) radar that would enable the pilot to see farther and a greater number of targets faster.
The DRDO has now told the IAF that an aircraft fit for the FoC would be available by December this year. The IAF has its doubts but has been told not to voice them.
The IAF has contracted 20 Tejas aircraft in the IoC configuration, 20 in the FoC configuration. It has been told to prepare to contract 80 in the Mark 1A version of the aircraft. The IAF also expected four trainers – with two cockpits each, one for the instructor and one for the trainee – but only two are in production now.
Fighter pilots of the IAF who have flown the Tejas describe it as a “very good platform, much better than the MiG-21 that it is replacing” but they also add “it will get better as we add teeth to it”. That sounds like the Flying Daggers are being equipped with aircraft that lack razor-sharpness.
The Tejas can drop laser-guided 500kg and 1000-pound bombs for ground attack and it can fire short and medium range air-to-air missiles. But that is technology that is 20 years too old. It flies at a maximum speed of 1350kmph (about 1.4 times the speed of sound).
The DRDO claims that 70 per cent of the components of the Tejas are “indigenous”, but a CAG report in May last year had found only 35 per cent to be so.
Writing in the journal, Indian Defence Review, in 2015, Air Marshal Anil Chopra, who retired as air officer in charge of personnel, said: “In all fairness, the SQRs (staff qualitative requirements) for an aircraft to be delivered in 1995 cannot remain frozen for an aircraft to be delivered in 2015.”
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