
Tuesday, 29 June 2010
McChrystal gazing

Monday, 28 June 2010
Air Force says DRDO stalling Tejas fighter engine
Tuesday, 22 June 2010
DRDO policy gaffes attract international flak
Friday, 18 June 2010
Arms spending: India grows as west shrinks: Deloitte-CII report
Wednesday, 16 June 2010
Grob Aircraft targets 181 trainers for the IAF: eyes HAL's share of 106 basic trainers





Tuesday, 15 June 2010
Naxalism: arranging the facts

Thursday, 10 June 2010
European fighters become 25% cheaper
Tuesday, 8 June 2010
New MoD policy to boost Indian arms industry
Saturday, 5 June 2010
Tejas LSP-4 tests the skies, boosts test programme
Wing Commander Suneet Krishna, the newest test pilot of the National Flight Test Centre (NFTC) is welcomed by Tejas engineers
The traditional bucket of water is dumped over his head to celebrate the first flight of a new aircraft. Champagne, clearly, is not catered for by the Tejas budget
Suneet flashes a thumbs-up at the end of his first test flight of a new Tejas. He was not alone. Every parameter of the LSP-4 was monitored, every second of the flight, from the NFTC
A happy group. To the left of Suneet (i.e. to the viewer's right) is PS Subramaniam, the Director of the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA), which is developing the Tejas
By Ajai Shukla
HAL, Bangalore
Business Standard, 5th June 10
The small group of engineers stood tensely beside the runway on Thursday at Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, Bangalore, peering at the sky. As two approaching dots rapidly enlarged into the menacing delta-wing shapes of the Tejas Light Combat Aircraft, an animated murmur arose. Test pilot, Wing Commander Suneet Krishna, was bringing in a brand new Tejas fighter from its inaugural test flight.
Krishna descended steeply, a parachute flowering as his aircraft touched down; a split second behind him, the chase aircraft, another Tejas flown by Group Captain RR Tyagi, “peeled off” into the sky with a roar. That was the “chase aircraft”, which had watched and photographed every moment of Krishna’s flight. In those forty minutes, both fighters had climbed to 36,000 feet; broken the sound barrier; turned and twisted sharply; and checked several parameters as part of the Tejas flight test programme.
The fighters taxied in to where the ground crew was assembled and clapping broke out as Krishna climbed out flashing a thumbs-up. A bucket of water was ceremonially dumped over his head (the Tejas budget does not run to champagne), several bouquets handed over, and kaju barfi stuffed into his mouth. The fourth Limited Series Production Tejas (LSP-4) was ready to join the flight test programme.
Each LSP Tejas contains more systems, and is more complex, than its predecessors. LSP-3, which first flew on 23rd April, was the first Tejas with a multi-mode radar (MMR); and with electronic systems to differentiate friendly from hostile aircraft. LSP-4 has all that and also flare and chaff dispensers to confuse enemy radars and missiles: a Counter Measure Dispensing System.
With the Initial Operational Clearance (IOC) of the Tejas due this year, the flight test programme desperately needs every aircraft it can build. The testing, which requires thousands of individual flight checks, proceeds only as fast as the number of aircraft available for the testing. The Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA), which oversees the Tejas programme, has faced sharp criticism from the Indian Air Force for producing successive LSP aircraft too slowly, thereby protracting the testing and delaying the IOC. LSP-4 will be only the 8th Tejas in the flight test programme, which has done 1300 sorties amounting to more than 700 hours of flying.
HAL admits that LSP-3 was overdue by a year, but points out that LSP-4 has followed in just over a month. “I am pushing for LSP-5 to fly by June-end”, says D Balasunder, the Managing Director of HAL’s Bangalore Complex. “It will have all the systems fitted in LSP-4, and will additionally have night lighting within the cockpit, and an auto-pilot.”
From the runway, technicians move off to the hangars with the newly inaugurated LSP-4 to ready it for a gruelling regime of hot weather trials. This weekend, LSP-3 and LSP-4 will leave for Nagpur where, day after day, they will bake in the sun for hours before hurling themselves into the sky to test whether their sophisticated electronics can withstand the Indian summer.
The ADA plans to build LSP-6 and LSP-7 quickly and then hand those two Tejas fighters to the IAF. At its base in Sulur, near Coimbatore, the IAF will operate the aircraft to provide feedback about improvements that are needed to make the Tejas easier to maintain in combat. ADA sources plan to make easy maintainability a key feature of the Tejas Mark II, the next, improved, version of the Indian fighter.
“The Tejas Mark I is already as good or better as the light fighters in the IAF”, declares ADA chief, PS Subramaniam, referring to the MiG-21 BISON. “The air force should order at least 60 of them.”
But the IAF is less exuberant. Senior air marshals point out to Business Standard that, if they grant the Tejas IOC at the end of 2010, it will be in the long-term interest of the fighter programme, not because the Tejas has met all its targets. The Tejas does not fly as fast as originally planned; its acceleration is significantly less; and the Tejas has not been tested yet in carrying much of the weaponry that it is designed to.
Wednesday, 2 June 2010
Visiting HAL, Bangalore, for a couple of days... any specific questions?
Tuesday, 1 June 2010
Fundamentally different: legal issues spin off from fighter bases tussle
Contender for Indian Light Utility Helicopter (LuH) contract performs world's highest rescue at 22,600 feet

Marignane, France, May 27, 2010
A record-breaking aerial rescue on Nepal’s Mount Annapurna has underscored the performance capabilities of Eurocopter’s AS350 Ecureuil helicopter in extreme conditions – including the most challenging high-altitude operations.
Three Spanish mountain climbers were successfully airlifted by the Fishtail Air AS350 B3 from a 6,900 meter-high location using the “longline” technique, in which a rescuer is suspended at the end of a long rope for insertions/extractions from difficult terrain.
The April 29 operation was part of special rescue flights being performed in a cooperative effort involving Fishtail Air, a charter helicopter company based at Kathmandu, Nepal, and Switzerland’s Air Zermatt.
This mission utilized Fishtail Air’s second AS350 B3, which arrived in Nepal on March 1 to join a helicopter fleet that includes an AS350 B and one AS350 B2, along with the company’s first AS350 B3.
Air Zermatt’s Capt. Daniel Aufdenblatten performed the rescue, while Swiss Mountain Guide Richard Lenner was deployed as a human sling to lift the stranded climbers on the longline – evacuating them one-by-one to a base camp at an altitude of 4,000 meters. The climbers had been stranded 36 hours on Mount Annapurna.
In addition to this difficult operation, Fishtail Air’s newest AS350 B3 also rescued four Korean climbers and three Nepalese Sherpas on April 26 from Nepal’s Mount Manaslu, extracting them at an altitude of approximately 6,500 meters. Piloting the helicopter was Fishtail Capt. Sabin Basnyat, who was joined by Air Zermatt’s Daniel Aufdenblatten and Richi Lehner. Mount Manaslu is the world’s eighth highest mountain, while Mount Annapurna is the tenth highest.
“These rescues are tributes to the crews’ professionalism, as well as the capability of our AS350 Ecureuil and the AS550 Fennec military version to deliver performance and reliability in the most extreme conditions,” said Eurocopter Group President and CEO Lutz Bertling.