DRDO’s Medium Combat Aircraft (MCA) brochure

26 thoughts on “DRDO’s Medium Combat Aircraft (MCA) brochure”

  1. drdo is bloody good at making brochures. they just surf the net, download glitzy sounding terminology from successful aircraft makers, and author such tripe. IMHO the value of the info on this brochure is less than the value of the paper it is printed on. best part is some clerk must have made money on the paper also.

  2. tough the targets are good, i think given a good amount of time and proper resource those guys are capable of doing things they want to do .. and do u mean to say that in this world there’s no other place without corruption ?? if so please reconsider your argument ..

  3. The brochure: reminds me of the presentations that we made when we first got our hands on Powerpoint in school. Just look at the colors used!! Are they making MCA (Mediun Combat Aircraft) or MCA (My Child’s Artwork)? Amateurish.

  4. Extremely tall claims by the DRDO!

    Give a professional designer a two week timeframe and (s)he can make a brochure for the most advanced aircraft in the world with all the features of the MCA and many more!

    I suggest we so not un-necessarily get excited about an aircraft which is still on the design board, and urge the DRDO to complete the LCA on time, with all features it promised in the LCA brochure. And the bulk of this flak should be taken by the GTRE for promising the moon with the Kaveri, but not being able to even reverse engineer some hi-tech engines.

    Probably the IAF too would have learnt its lessons and shall not wait for the MCA, but fill its inventory with aircraft as and when required to maintain a minimum of 39.5 squadrons as sanctioned.

  5. @saurab

    They are not good at making brochures either.

    Too tall claims,
    you know stealth mode,un stealth mode ..I don’t know sounds too complicated.

    May be they should team up with Israel for this too.

    What say?

    Save time, money and gain expertise

  6. Mayuresh G: Still on the design board, eh? Is that what we call aircraft in the production stage these days?

    As for reverse-engineering engines goes… which engine’ pray tell, did the GTRE have mandate to reverse engineer? And do you know how tough it is to “reverse engineer” a jet engine?

  7. @fishbed you are right….

    supercruise, internal payload, stealth, ha……this is inpossible untill india reverse-engineers the T 50, or develop n no of aircraft…

    Just consider the fact the IAF doesnt even have a single indegenious aircraft in its inventory…

  8. @fishbed you are right….

    supercruise, internal payload, stealth, ha……this is inpossible untill india reverse-engineers the T 50, or develop n no of aircraft…

    Just consider the fact the IAF doesnt even have a single indegenious aircraft in its inventory…

  9. Are all posters here engineers in lockheed martin or boeing? else i would suggest you to kep ypur mouthy shut and guys please realize making aircrafts is not childs play even for a country like US/Russia so refrain fro making such stupid comments and i am not an expert too but being an engineer at HAL has taught me more than what you people can ever visualize

  10. the indian advances in aerospace have made porkistanis dead jealous. in contrast they have pindigenous green paint and the taliban – and the assh*les whom they send across the border to india.

  11. @ Mihir,

    Read my comment carefully. I have said “I suggest we so not un-necessarily get excited about an aircraft which is still on the design board, and urge the DRDO to complete the LCA on time” – meaning :
    1. Do not get excited about an aircraft which is still on the design board i.e. do not get excited about the MCA
    2. Complete the LCA on time with all features as promised for the LCA

    Secondly, It is much easier to reverse engineer a jet engine than to build it from scratch. How do I know? I did my internship at DRDO in Bangalore (ADE to be more specific, I worked on Lakshya PTA under Mr. J. Jayaraman, a grade “G” scientist back then) back in the summer of 2001. I have extensively interacted with the scientists at ADE and GTRE (because one of my batchmates was interning with GTRE) and most of them were of the opinion that they could have done a reverse engineering job much faster and got the Kaveri to produce the required thrust, or atleast quite close to it in the timeframe that was set initially. To build a jet engine from scratch is an extremely difficult task, I hope you realize that.

    GTRE did not have the mandate to reverse engineer a jet engine simply because they said they were confident of building one from scratch on their own. Else, we could have easily got some of the engines available off the shelf for research purposes (even the F-414 from GE)

  12. anon 9:05
    No engineering knowledge is required to understand the visionaries of DRDO, dont know why ‘some fools’ and ‘some geniuses’ are arguing here.

    DRDO must be awarded to for at the work they are really good at i.e. visualization.
    It seems these guys have altogether a separate set of people who put in place the requirements which usually contain all the buzzwords prevailing at that time. Its not these visionaries who are failing to do their job its the people down the line who fail to realize the awesome requirements :).

  13. Questioning programme makes you enemy of India? Since when?

    Would you rather us say

    “I expect it to be deployed by 2015 alongside PAK FA”

  14. poor boy Mihir is getting flogged again and again…..the poor kid has the misfortune of picking up fights with strangers,who happen to be top-notch professionals…mihir,i have an advice:- keep sharing ur wet-dreams with BR…you’ll find lots of characters like you there.

  15. Guys,

    Don’t let pessimism ride your thoughts all the time. I think with in any adventure last 20% of work takes 80% of the time and this is exactly why DRDO takes quite long from TDs to operational induction. Please keep in mind that knowledge once developed will be of tremendous use in the long run.

  16. Mayuresh, regardless of what the GTRE scientists feel, they did not have the mandate to reverse engineer an engine, which makes your whole comment rather pointless. Maybe they could have reverse engineered an engine successfully, maybe they couldn’t… we shall never really know.

    But it is not strange to see some of them now say that reverse engineering might have worked, given the immense challenges they faced attempting a new design. This makes little sense, since the biggest problem for GTRE is the lack of infrastructure and testing facilities, lack of advanced materials, and new IAF requirements (going by the director’s talk at AI 09). These would have cropped up even if GTRE had tried to reverse engineer an engine. I suppose you didn’t learn this during your internship.

    Your comment about how “flak should be taken by the GTRE for promising the moon with the Kaveri, but not being able to even reverse engineer some hi-tech engines” paints the wrong picture. It implies that reverse-engineering engines is an easy task, and the GTRE (which had zero experience with jet engine development) should have known better from the outset.

  17. Mayuresh,

    I read your comments with amusement, as nothing you wrote is anywhere near reality. How does one reverse engineer a GE fan blade, whose development means that you develop the same processes that you need to develop from scratch? All this reverse engineering stuff is a joke, a bad joke, because what will happen is India ends up with a second rate copy of an engine which is already underpowered(Ge404) and without even the knowledge to develop new variants either on its own or via JV. Right now GTRE can at least work with Snecma to make a Kaveri Mk2. Using your brilliant insight, they would have only been able to make a rip off a 70’s era Ge404 and then after that, nobody would work with them as well, because they were doing blatant IP rip offs.

    And as for anonymous at 12:43 pm, find some goat to bugger you Talib idiot. I sometimes wonder why Pakistanis waste so much time on indian bogs – then i remember, Pak has nothing that it makes anyways.

  18. the anon @ 3:47 pm is Mihir himself….just check their IP addresses using SpyBot…
    take care mihir ..have a nice day on BRF…..will meet u there.

  19. @Mihir and others,
    My entire point is:
    1. Reverse Engineering an engine is tough, yes. Very tough. Agreewd. But it is still easier than developing an engine from scratch, especially when we have zero experience in building one. Is it not great to have a starting point?

    Yes, the major issues faced by our engineers while reverse engineering is the lack of facilities for precise manufacturing. As someone said above, a fan-blade for example. We cannot make such blades in India yet because the tolerances required for such blades is minimal (I think he mentioned it going to 100 microns or less). However, such machines are available in India with private players. Some of the scientists had the foresight to ask the govt. to involve private players to atleast lease out their machines, but the Govt., for some reason. refused.

    Anyway, coming back to my point, DRDO should concentrate and deliver on the LCA instead of starting work on the MCA. Let us take the LCA to its logical conclusion which is inductment into the IAF and performance to IAFs satisfaction. That way, the IAF shall trust the DRDO with future equipment too!

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