By IANS
New Delhi : India’s aircraft industry will take upwards of five decades to evolve an indigenous combat jet of the variety the Indian Air Force (IAF) now intends to purchase or co-develop, a top military commander said Thursday.
If the IAF’s induction plans are crafted up to 2020 with the medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) and the fifth generation fighter aircraft (FGFA) that have a 40-year life cycle, “we are looking at 2060 for D&D (design and development) objectives,” IAF chief Air Chief Marshal Fali Homi Major said.
India’s current projects for manufacturing combat jets revolve around the transfer of technology, licensed-manufacture or joint venture routes, he noted.
Major was delivering the inaugural address at the 2nd International Conference on ‘Energising Indian Aerospace Industry: New Partnerships, New Opportunities’, organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
Pointing to the “technology gap” in India’s aircraft-manufacturing capabilities, the air chief said: “We have to move forward. The government can help with a technology roadmap linked to a national security policy.”
Expanding on the “technology gap”, he said there were associated issues of availability and costs, “enhanced by long gestation and rapid obsolescence”.
“Clearly, we cannot simply follow footsteps in our quest for indigenous technology. We must identify core technologies with the maximum potential to indigenise and those we must pursue vigorously,” Major maintained.
“We must also develop core-competencies in metallurgy, avionics, and simulation,” he said, adding: “It is also imperative to identify emerging technologies and develop them to secure a lead in that niche area.”
“Presently, our D&D is relatively limited, which is ok for licensed-manufacture, but not beyond. We must involve the private sector in D&D too, not merely in production,” the air chief added.
Expanding on the production aspects, Major said: “In supplying to the arsenals, timelines & ORs (operational requirements) must be adhered to.
“There is also need for greater quality consciousness. Maybe, we should create pure R&D organisations; or fund existing ones, such as IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology), and take off from there.”
“We do have a large brain-bank. A lot is already being done and our R&D infrastructure is growing steadily. But more growth, some reorientation and reorganisation are necessary,” the air chief maintained.
In this context, he said the offsets policy on defence purchases, “combined with the anticipated growth in Indian aerospace power, make us a very valuable customer.”
“We must extract the many dividends and obtain the necessary technology. We must also be ready to receive and assimilate it; with areas of infusion identified, business plans worked out, local partners identified.”
“Or else the offsets may get frittered away,” Major noted.
According to the air chief, D&D, production agencies and private players “are all interdependent” and there is “definitely a need” for greater governmental and user support”.
“We do not as yet have industrial players with deep enough pockets, infrastructure, or clout to swim the oceans of aerospace R&D and manufacture on their own.
“We must evolve our own model and it will have to be a combination type – a collaborative and participative one,” Major maintained.
At the same time state-owned defence manufacturing units “in turn, must groom the smaller private players,” the air chief said, urging a study of global business models – government-controlled ones, private contractor driven ones and combinations of the two – to ensure greater public-private partnerships.