First Combat Drill With Tejas In 3 Months

PHOTO / ADA
India’s indigenous Light Combat Aircraft Tejas will be put to play in its first ever combat exercise in February 2013. The IAF’s Iron Fist exercise over Rajasthan’s Pokhran range will see a pair of Tejas limited series production fighters fly, drop bombs and perhaps fire weapons alongside IAF Su-30s, Mirage-2000s and MiG-21s. The type is scheduled to achieve the second phase of its troubled initial operational clearance (IOC-2) by September 2013.

In separate information made available today by the IAF chief, the air force’s four MiG-27 squadrons will be retired by 2016-17, while two MiG-21 Type 96 squadrons currently committed to fast jet training will revert to full operational duties next year as the BAE Hawk fleet fully integrates with the IAF lead-in training syllabus. By 2020, the upgraded MiG-29 Fulcrum will be the only MiG series aircraft left in IAF service (the Indian Navy will operate its MiG-29Ks well beyond 2020).

11 thoughts on “First Combat Drill With Tejas In 3 Months”

  1. Hopefully it does well in these tests. Would be a major dissapointment if it performs poorly. I am also looking forward to seeing the Mk. 2 and other aircraft HAL and DRDO makes.

  2. Did anyone hear the Chief mention that a radar is going to be integrated into the Jaguar ?

    Does that mean all the IS/ITs are going to get a nose job and look like the IMs ?

    If so is it the MMR planned for the LCA that is going to go in or the EL/M-2032 that is in the LCA and Sea Harrier currently.

    Anyone hear anything else ?

    DARIN III, new engines, radar and the Litening pods. New precision strike aircraft?

    Sounds like a good idea to boost deep interdiction capabilities in a hurry while we wait for the MMRCA to be inducted in the numbers needed.

  3. Good to get rid of the Migs.

    India can afford 40 plus squadrons only if half of them are Tejas or variants.

    In a war with China, this bird will shine while rest of the foreign stuff (SU-30,Mirage-2000…) will be out of action within a month due to spares or other issues.

    Learn from Kargil. Repeating the same mistake is been STUPID !!! And Stupid people end up been on the street or slaves!

  4. The Tejas has a very nice "finish" to it-sign of good manufacturing! The IAF needs at least 100 LCA-1 and 250+ LCA-2's. I believe the LCA-1 should complement the LCA-2 and not be replaced by it. Over the course of time, an AESA could be retrofitted to the LCA-1 in place of the MMR. BTW, are the wake tests done as yet?

  5. The LCA has not been flying for some months.The prognosis is that finally ADA has learnt to keep its mouth shut.This is ,probably ,too good to be true but one hopes…..

    The other dreadful possibility is some snag has been found and as is usual in certain styles of development managements it is proving to be difficult/impossible to fix. One hopes not but in this project the fear is less than baseless.At this stage the eight LSPs should be burning rubber down to the tyre cords getting the SOPs written into documents.

  6. Production should increase, instead of losing space for license manufaturing BAE HAWKS or su-30s, it should be used to produce the tejas!!

  7. if one doesn't even know what could have been possibly gone wrong on LSP-8,why drage ADA's name into it.Also The IAF can ask it's test pilots and ascertain what could have gone wrong.After a leak in fuel lines all LSps were grounded for 7 months and all fuel lines were reworked and that is the delay for LSP -8 it seems.

  8. HI Shiv

    i see this photo ..it looks like the R-73 infrared on the wingtip and is that the popeye missile from israel on the inside or ew pod?

    superb integration i must say if that is so

  9. Looks battle ready in all respects. If we can make a fully loaded aircraft like this, why buy raflae pafle? to fill swiss accounts?

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