India Made Light Combat Aircraft 'Tejas' Ready To Strike

Indian Air Force (IAF) is now equipped with Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) "Tejas", the first advance Fly-by-wire (FBW) fighter aircraft designed, developed and manufactured in India. 

Tejas is widely conceived as a MiG-21 replacement, the aircraft has been designed and developed by Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) and produced by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). 

Tajas will be first inducted into  a squadron named as "Flying Daggers" and will operate from Bangalore for nearly two years before it moves to its designated location at Sulur near Coimbatore.

The Prime Minister, Narendra Modi,  said “Induction of indigenously made Tejas fighter jet into the Air Force fills our hearts with unparalleled pride and happiness. I laud HAL and ADA on the induction of Tejas fighter jet. This illustrates our skills and strengths to enhance indigenous defence manufacturing".

The defense ministry in its statement said Tejas is a 4th Plus generation aircraft with a glass cockpit and is equipped with state of the art satellite aided Inertial Navigation System. It has a digital computer based attack system and an autopilot. It can fire air to air missiles, bombs as well as precision guided munitions. 

It is to the credit of its designers, manufacturer, technicians and test crew, that LCA has flown more than 3000 sorties / 2000 Hrs till date without any accident, Ministry added in its statement. 

The "Tejas", which means radiance in Sanskrit, was given by former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The commissioning of the Indian-made fighter plane Tejas comes over three decades after LCA went into development.

The Tejas aircraft is also capable of dropping unguided bombs with much higher accuracy due to highly advanced indigenous mission computer. The FOC aircraft would incorporate Beyond Visual Range (BVR) missiles, improved and better stand-off weapons and air to air refueling capability. 

The Ministry further said, the IAF is also pitching for additional LCA Mk 1A which would incorporate new generation Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) Radar with simultaneous air to air and air to ground capability, an integrated advanced Electronic Warfare Suite, advanced versions of air to air and air to ground weapons and maintainability improvements.