India’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) approved on 18 March the procurement of 83 units of the Mk 1A variant of the country’s indigenously designed HAL Tejas Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) for the Indian Air Force (IAF). Consequent to the separation of duties between Indian Department of Defence (DoD) and Department of Military Affairs (DMA), the first meeting of the Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) under the chairmanship of Raksha Mantri Shri Rajnath Singh was held with the Acquisition Wing being the Secretariat of the DAC. This would lead to better coordination and faster processing of cases with the Acquisition wing being in the overall charge of the Capital acquisition process.
While orders of 40 Tejas aircraft had been placed with HAL in initial configurations, DAC paved the way for procurement of 83 of the more advanced Mk1A version of the aircraft from HAL by finalising the contractual and other issues. The proposal will now be placed for consideration of Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS). This procurement will be a major boost to ‘Make in India’ as the aircraft is indigenously designed, developed and manufactured with participation of several local vendors apart from HAL.
The Light Combat Aircraft Tejas indigenously-designed by Aircraft Development Agency (ADA) under the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and manufactured by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) is going to be the backbone of Indian Air Force in future. The Defence Acquisition Council also accorded approval for acquisition of indigenous Defence equipment for about Rs 1,300 crore. The proposals were for procurement of Aerial Fuses and Twin-Dome Simulators for Hawk Mk32 aircraft for the Indian Air Force.
HAL Tejas is an Indian single-engine, delta wing, multirole light fighter designed by the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) for the Indian Air Force and Indian Navy. It came from the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) programme, which began in the 1980s to replace India’s ageing MiG-21 fighters. In 2003, the LCA was officially named “Tejas”.Tejas has a tail-less compound delta-wing configuration with a single dorsal fin. This provides better high-alpha performance characteristics than conventional wing designs. Its wing root leading edge has a sweep of 50 degrees, the outer wing leading edge has a sweep of 62.5 degrees, and trailing edge has a forward sweep of four degrees.
