NEWS
On December 17, the indigenous light combat aircraft (LCA) Tejas passed another milestone by successfully carrying out the drop tank jettison test. The feat was achieved by the Tejas over DRDO’s air-to-ground facility near Challakare in Chitradurga district, about 250 km from Bengaluru. The 1,200-litre drop tank jettison trial was conducted at a critical point in the jettison envelope on Tejas LSP-3 aircraft. To ensure safety of flight, clean separation with adequate clearances from the mother aircraft or neighbouring external stores need to be established from flight tests covering a number of conditions such as empty, partial and full drop tank under different ejector release unit settings.

VIEWS
Jettisoning drop tanks from a fighter aircraft may sound like a mundane exercise amidst the more complex accomplishments in the course of detailed flight-testing of an aircraft in its development programme. Nonetheless, it is extremely vital from the operational-cum-flight safety point of view. As the name suggests, jettisoning drop tanks are carried out by fighter aircraft during emergent situations such as a quick getaway after mission completion—by which time the drop tanks would have generally emptied out and become redundant—especially when being chased by enemy interceptors. Other scenarios could include premature return to the base after getting airborne for a mission due to bird strike, aircraft unserviceability, etc. The trial which was conducted at the recently commissioned National Flight Test Centre (NFTC) air-to-ground range at Challakare, Chitradurga in close proximity to Bengaluru obviated the requirement of moving timeconsuming and costly detachment to distant locations such as Hyderabad or Pokhran. The near vicinity also ensured that the entire process could be easily monitored from Bengaluru. The test also suggests that the Tejas may finally be coming close to achieving the initial operational clearance (IOC) as such tests are normally carried out towards the end of the ‘flighttesting’ programme.

Conceptualised as far back as 1983, the indigenous LCA Tejas programme stumbled through a number of roadblocks and weathered many a storm in its turbulent history of development spanning more than a quarter of a century. LCA has indeed been one of the most ambitious indigenous defence related programme. Of the five critical technologies identified at the beginning of the LCA programme to be mastered for India to be able to design and build a ‘completely indigenous’ state-of-the-art fighter, it would be worth examining the successes and failures in different fields. Where the indigenous effort succeeded was in the development and manufacture of advanced carbon-fibre composite (CFC) structures and skins and a modern ‘glass cockpit’. However, self-reliance goals also included indigenous development of the three most sophisticated and hence most challenging—systems viz the fly-by-wire (FBW) flight control system (FCS), multi-mode pulse-doppler radar (MMR) and afterburning turbofan engine. All these proved real tough nuts to crack. And while being constituted for the purpose, National Control Law (CLAW) team was somehow able to pass muster with help coming from foreign players such as the British Aerospace and Lockheed Martin and later through some innovative effort of its own, it was in the field of multi-mode radar and the power plant systems that the concerned agencies (LRDE for the MMR and GTRE for the Kaveri engine) had to face embarrassing failures.