India HAL Tejas Program

[Bhartiya Sainik]

Hope you stick around and give us the deeper dives on things as you would like. I am enjoying your contribution to AMCA thread so far

I'll definitely share conceptual pics, diagrams collected since my college days in early 2000s like we have seen in documentaries.
There are many YouTubers & journalists. All of them can talk about govt. decisions, contracts, timelines, prices, etc bcoz they are news oriented & their aim is viewership. But very few talk about design & performance by graphs, diagrams, etc.

The following is a small list.

 

[Nilgiri]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1826129869844939035

 

[Nilgiri]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1831600120153989482

 

[Nilgiri]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1833145942314262836

 

[Nilgiri]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1839236956690985083

 

[Gessler]

With FA-18 during Tarang Shakti-24

 

[Gessler]

With JDAM-ER:

With Astra BVR missiles & EL/L-8222 SPJ:

Both pics courtesy aviation photographer Praneeth Franklin.

 

[Spitfire9]

Got to make and deliver Mk1A before cracking the champagne open. I read in the Indian online press that GE is hoping to start delivering the delayed engines soon and to accelerate deliveries over the scheduled level to help HAL to deliver Mk1A faster in the future. There should already be quite a few completed frames waiting for engines when the engines turn up

From what I read the old Su-30MKI assembly plant at Nashik was turned over to Mk1A assembly with one completed aircraft to be rolled out in 2024 (or in the 2024/2025 financial year - don't remember). It will be interesting to see how many Mk1A are actually delivered to IAF in the next year or two. And with HAL projecting to build Mk2 on existing Mk1A assembly lines, to see what arrangements are made for Mk2 production. I suspect that Mk2 will not be tested and certified before 2029/2030, so perhaps HAL will be able to produce all 83 Mk1A frames ordered by then.

Of course, HAL could get more orders for Mk1A, in which case I think it's back to the drawing board for Mk2 production!

 

[Gessler]

With Astra BVR missiles & EL/L-8222 SPJ:

View attachment 71388

This is apparently the newer EL/L-8222SB variant with AESA-based EW transmitters.

 

[Gessler]

Found some more renders of the Mk-2 -

The root extension for the canards is fairly obvious here:

Panoramic Wide-Angle Display (WAD) and side-stick controls mark deviation from the Mk-1/1A's centre-stick layout:

13 hardpoints with NGCCM (ASRAAM), Astra, Rudram-II, TARA, LDP (probably Litening-G4), SAAW and two types of drop tanks. Note the dual-rack config of the Astra on the left and quad-rack SAAW on the right.

 

[Bhartiya Sainik]

For Tejas MK2 (MWF), Artist Kuntal Biswas made CAD with dual-rack launcher giving 14 AAMs capability.

After dual racks side by side, perhaps we can try quad rack.