The Start Of Multiplicity...

The Start Of Multiplicity:The Make-In-India Single Engine/Double Engine Fighter

The massive delay in implementing the medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) procurement has thrown up a multiplicity of "silver-lining" options.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his foreign policy, has demonstrated that he favours bilateral dealings with all perceived strategic partners, cutting across tension lines and interest blocks to do so.

This has vastly improved, within a short time, India’s engagement with a great deal more of the world.

Likewise, the erstwhile buy-in defence procurement is morphing into manufacturing, and similar benefits are starting to accrue, and not least because it is seen as a major driver of both foreign investment and manufacturing- based employment.

The Lockheed-Tata announcement at the Paris Air Show that it will make F-16 fighters in India, comes on the eve of Prime Minister Modi's visit to meet President Trump in Washington on the 25-26th of June.

President Trump on his part, is setting the stage, by tightening the screws on Pakistan with regard to its sponsorship of international terrorism, particularly in Afghanistan and India.

Indian preparation to meet its security challenges has already led to an evolution into joint ventures and collaborations with the US, Russia, Israel, South Korea, and France, spread across missiles, submarines, aircraft-carriers, helicopters, howitzers, drones, helmets, assault rifles, protective gear, night vision goggles, and on the “software” side, vital “intelligence” sharing.

The Modi Government scrapped, in 2015, the complex, one-sided, and monolithic, winner-takes-all MMRCA tender.

It was the biggest of its kind before it was aborted by the Modi Government spot-purchasing, on order, 36 of the French Dassault Rafale twin-engined fighters.

This pipped the aspirations of the Eurofighter Typhoon, American options such as Lockheed's F-18, and Boeing's F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet and Russian MiG-35s.

That they lost in technical trials to the Dassault Rafale notwithstanding.

Can the rejected suitors, and others too, come forward again under Modi's  vastly liberalised defence manufactring “Make-in-India” clarion call? Why, in principle, not?

If they can offer new versions, capable of taking on the advantages of the Rafale, and willing to manufacture in India, that is.

The competition, along transparent and known parameters, will keep everyone in the renewed fray honest and nimble.

Meanwhile, in the less expensive single-engined fighter stakes, the indigenously developed (but largely made with foreign componentry) Tejas,has at last made a relatively low-cost entry- albeit in its first rendition. This version is on order already for squadron strength numbers.

Future generations of the new, improved, Tejas, will be inducted into the Indian Air Force (IAF) too.

While India has spoken only in terms of adding just another line of single-engined fighters, so far, given the immense delays and glitches in the Tejas project, this policy may be modified towards a multiplicity instead.

With local plants, maintenance and spares will be far less problematic, even from multiple vendors.

For now, The Tata-Lockheed F-16 Block 70, will likely compete for custom with the Saab-Adani's Gripen-E.

Both are keen to set up their production lines in India in anticipation of future orders.

With over 200 aircraft on the shopping list, both in single and double-engined formats, there is certainly enough to go around.

India is working up its air power up to a minimum strength of 44-45 squadrons, from the grossly inadequate 32 squadrons of mostly old aircraft at present.

The real need is to replace practically the whole fleet, save the Sukhois.

So we may need over a 1,000 aircraft eventually, comprising of squadrons of 24 aircraft, in several "flights" each. And this is without counting the Navy, Army, and other agency requirements, in a scenario when every fighting arm wants its own airborne fire power.  

Making these planes in India, particularly in numbers, will be much less expensive and strategically secure.

Theoretically, both the Gripen-E and the F-16 could each get enough orders initially to make their local ventures economically viable, besides catering to export demand for aircraft, spares, refurbishments, customisation.

All this, while vastly increasing India's strategic military manufacturing depth.

The present squadrons of single-engined MiG-21's,that make up 75% of the IAF, are superannuated. They frequently crash, even during routine sorties, killing highly-trained pilots and civilians. And this is not because of being single-engined. Causes point towards pilot error and inferior, locally made parts.

Russia has more or less stopped making parts for these half century old planes from the Soviet era.

In the wings, there is also discussion on the Indo-Russian joint venture development of the Sukhoi 50, yet another advanced, state- of-the-art twin-engined fighter.

The single-engined fighters tend to perform as well, if not better than twin-engined aircraft in “dog-fights”.

The twin-engined aeroplanes are marginally faster, with greater thrust and acceleration, but are better suited to ground attack sorties.

In an aerial fight, they suffer from significantly greater wind drag, and the tail fuselage, where the twin-engines are located, together for combined thrust, tends to waggle.

And since the twin-engines are invariably bracketed together, in all global fighters designed so far, both tend to flame out, if one is hit. This nullifies any superior airworthiness for having a second engine. 

Also, in the unlikely event one engine does survive, the lop-sided thrust not only cuts speed by 50%, but the overall combat efficiency drops by a crippling 81%.

Single-engined fighters are smaller, lighter, faster, move better, are easier to maintain, and consume less fuel. In rare cases, they have even managed to land without an engine.

India can induct single and twin-engined fighters from multiple manufacturers, all with production facilities in India.

It is important to not put all ones' eggs in the same basket, given the vagaries of the ongoing arms race with China and Pakistan.

The F-16 in its latest Tata-Lockheed version, though not new like the single engined F-35, is also not experiencing problems of pilot debilitation from oxygen deprivation at the tissue level, for which they have actually been grounded in the US.

It is a far more experienced aircraft than the Rafale, and can work at high altitude, alongside the Gripen -E.

The F-16 beats the twin-engined F-18 in combat situations.

Concern that the Indian plant would have to service Pakistani orders, owners, along with a number of other countries of some 3,200 of this aircraft, can be easily bypassed, via Texas, the home base of the F-16.

Multiple vendors on the ground supplying large number of India manufactured aircraft over the coming years will also trigger price and technological competition. 

And provide strategic depth in case production needs to be sharply ramped up at any stage.

For: ABP Live

(1,081 words)

June 20th, 2017

Gautam Mukherjee