The Hindu : First LCA squadron to roll out by 2006

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Dec 21, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Andhra Pradesh

First LCA squadron to roll out by 2006

By Our Special Correspondent

The Vice-Chancellor of University of Hyderabad, Kota Harinarayana, delivering a lecture in Tirupati on Saturday. The Sri Venkateswara University Vice-Chancellor, P. Murali, and the MST Radar Director, D. Narayana Rao, are also seen.

TIRUPATI. Dec. 20. Kota Harinarayana, who was Project Leader of the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) programme, has said the indent placed by the Government for the delivery of half a squadron of LCAs (10 numbers) will be met by 2006.

Prof. Harinarayana, currently Vice-Chancellor of University of Hyderabad, said the Rs.5,000-crore LCA project was the largest R&D project in India involving 40 disciplines and a core of 200 scientists representing academic, industry and national laboratories. In all 250 LCAs, including 30 for the Navy, would be required by the country. Prof. Harinarayana was instrumental in the development of the `carbon composite materials' by using which the weight of a normal fighter aircraft could be reduced by 750 kg.

He was participating in a lecture programme here today organised by the local chapters of the Andhra Pradesh Akademi of Science and the Institution of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers (IETE). Delivering the lecture on `From concept to flight--The story of an aircraft development,' Prof. Harinarayana said by using the carbon composites the Boeing company of the United States was designing a passenger aircraft which could carry 600 passengers.

Speaking on the LCA project, he said not a single defect was noticed during the 150 and odd flights of LCA in the last two years. He said the project proved wrong the predictions of Week magazine of the US which reportedly wrote before its test flight that the LCA would never take-off.

He said the sanctions imposed by the US after Pokhran-II on the supply of flight control systems required for the LCA had, in fact, become a blessing in disguise which eventually made the Indian scientists develop indigenous systems. It was now a 90 per cent indigenous aircraft, the lightest in the world, highly cost-effective, agile, flexible, versatile, all-weather and day-night aircraft unlike Jaguar which, he said, could not fly in night.

The former LCA project chief said there was a proposal to export LCAs to other countries but he hastened to add that exports would be on the basis of strategic and diplomatic grounds and not on commercial or economic considerations. Prof. Harinarayana said work was under way to design transport aircraft based on the LCA technology and pointed out that next variant of the LCA would be the ones which could take-off from aircraft carriers.

P. Murali, Vice-Chancellor of S.V. University, presided.

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