My Experiences

Both Navy and Indian Air Force are going to need a fighter jet to secure our skies both near land borders and maritime coast. This can be the  main peace time  workhorse to guard Indian skies.   Navy calls its version Twin Engine Deck Based Fighter (TEDBF) , while Air Force can call it as Medium Weight Fighter (MWF) or Omni Role Combat Aircraft (ORCA). Here, the need is to make a fighter using the existing research on Tejas Mk2 and AMCA. We are reaching the goal of making our own Multi-role fighter with Tejas Mk 2. At present it has been designed to be a single engine jet with General Electric F414-GE-INS6 turbofan, 58.5 kN thrust dry, 98 kN with afterburner. The present expected weight of Tejas Mk2 is as follows: 1. Gross Weight: 11,300 kg 2. Max Take Off Weight: 17,500 kg. That means payload capacity is 6,200 kg. But, Tejas Mk2 being a single engine fighter cannot be used by Navy as Twin Engine Deck Based Fighter. Similarly, Air Force cannot make Mk 2 in larg...

Jointness at the top is a need that is long overdue. But Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) is just the beginning. At present there are 19 total commands in Indian Defence Forces including the two tri-services commands as below: 1. Strategic forces  2. Andaman & Nicobar Rest of the India and military is handled by the Army, Air Force and Navy operating as separate entities and the operations are executed independent of each other, at least in peace time. Normally there are three broad situations in which the military operates: 1.  Peace  - One can at least dream about it. 2.  Constant warfare  - Small scale conflicts and skirmishes as in the present situation of 2020. 3.  Full scale war  - Law of averages making it more and more possible.   Indian history started with full scale war with Pakistan, followed by brief peace, more wars and now constant warfare situation with both China and Pakistan. This has made creating and optimizing the theater...

Till now Pinaka has been considered as attack weapon for blitzkrieg attack on surface to surface, but land based targets. But with Pinaka II and later having satellite based navigation available their accuracy can be increased. The CEP (Circular Error Probability) can be decreased to such an extant that individual targets can be hit effectively. This makes them ideal to use not only on land but to attack high value targets on sea. For 1000+ islands of India and 7000 km maritime border, we need an indigenous coastal defense system. This need has been fulfilled till now with imported systems like Russian Bal coastal defense system. This uses missiles like  Kh-35E to attack sea targets like enemy ships at a range of more than 100 km. With above facts in mind, Pinaka can be customized to hit enemy ships near Indian shores from Western and Eastern Ghats. The relatively higher ground will give ideal view to defend coastline from enemy sea based attacks. The large areas can be ...

Indian Armed Forces are undergoing rapid modernization with latest indigenous and imported weapons and defense equipment. One of the most basic role played in protecting the soldier and increasing the offensive capability is the uniform worn by him or her. We have seen a variety of combat uniforms being used by various units of our military and para-military forces. Our soldiers are wearing a diverse set of uniforms, sometimes with no or conflicting camouflage on hats/bulletproof jackets. This defeats the purpose of camouflage. Another basic purpose of a soldier's uniform is to distinguish friend from foe. With possibility of conventional wars with Pakistan or China, we need to keep using uniforms which are quite distinct from those of these two military forces.  Indian army uniform is a disruptive pattern uniform and is called  Jungle Dress . Most of the armies of the world have already faced the disruptive pattern off. China has new starry sky unifor...

Pinaka is India's fully indigenous multi barrel rocket launcher (MBRL) or multi launch  rocket   system (MLRS). At present a single Pinaka battery can neutralize an area of 1 sq km at a range of 40-100 km depending upon the version of Pinaka. A Pinaka battery, presently is made up of 2 command posts, 6 rocket launchers and a DIGICORA MET radar. The rocket launchers are mounted on 6 different BEML trucks, with each carrying 12 Pinaka rockets. Also loading vehicles are provided for each launcher. The whole battery can fire a single salvo in 44 seconds. So it can protect a boundary of 1 km and destroy the enemy behind it.  Now a regiment of Pinaka consists of 3 such batteries so in total 6 command posts are part of it. This is an overkill as the ratio of launchers to command posts is just (6*3)/6 = 3. This is not a productive usage of our radar equipment. This means a regiment can attack just 3 km of boundary of enemy with a depth of 1 km of enemy resources. Recently an...

We are reaching the goal of making our own Multirole fighter with Tejas Mk 2. At present it has been designed to be a single engine jet with General Electric F414-GE-INS6 turbofan engine. This engine has 58.5 kN (13,200 lbf) dry thrust and 98 kN thrust (22,000 lbf) with afterburner. The present expected weight of Tejas Mk 2 is as follows: 1. Gross Weight: 11,300 kg 2. Max Take Off Weight: 17,500 kg. That means payload capacity is 6,200 kg. Now this  General Electric F414  engine has a dry weight of 1,110 kg. Its thrust characteristics are sufficient for our expected Tejas Mk 2 aircraft. But if we have a twin-engine version then the range and reliability of the aircraft can be increased along with its size. The present wing area is 44 sq.m. Let us consider if we use our own Kaveri GTX-35VS engine. Its weight is 1,236 kg. With two engines total weight of engines will increase to 2,472 kg. While total thrust will be 104 kN dry to 162 kN with afterburner. This makes the max t...

In the previous article , the strength of Indian AirForce has been discussed. Let us analyze the Indian Navy strength in this article: 1. Ships : At a high level, we need to have sufficient number of ships to patrol our coastline, not considering the numerous islands like Andaman & Nicobar. This puts required number of ships to 467. Here it is assumed that each ship has speed of 30 km/h and 2 ships patrol together over the 7,000 km coastline. The available ships are only 90 as others are just small patrol boats. So the ratio between required vs available is 467 vs 90 i.e. 5. 2. Attack helicopters: Assuming 3 attack helicopters are required for every 2 ships, this comes to a need for 751 attack helicopters. We have only 110 attack helicopters available in 2020. So the ratio between required vs available is 751 vs 55 i.e. 14. This is a critical shortcoming of Indian Navy. 3. Destroyers: Assuming each destroyer operates 12 hours at a speed of 30 km/h, patrolling the maritime bord...

In the previous article , the strength of Indian Army has been discussed. Let us analyze the Indian Air Force strength in this article in 2020: 1. Fighter aircraft: A fighter aircraft covers around 2,400 km in 2 hours of flight time. With a patrol mission involving 3 aircraft covering our total boundary, the required number for 24 hours of protection is 333. By providing redundancy of 40% availability due to maintenance,  this number rises to 832. We have about 575 fighter aircraft involving Rafale, Mirage 2000, MiG 29, Sukhoi-30 MKI, Jaguar, MiG 21 and LCA Tejas Mk 1. So, the ratio between required vs available is : 832 vs 576 i.e. 1. So we have slightly less fighters and need to increase the number of our fighter pilots, as our enemy fighter strength increases. Also most of the fleet needs to be upgraded within the next 10-15 years. So, there is a need to involve private players to help HAL scale up production of LCA Tejas and other fighter jets like MWF, Tejas Mk 2 and S.P.O.R.T...