By IANS,
Some facts about India’s indigenously-developed Tejas fighter jet
* The Tejas is a light fighter aircraft developed by India.
* It will replace the MiG-21 series of aircraft.
* A single seater, single engine aircraft, Tejas boasts of many stealth features which prevent the aircraft from being tracked.
* Lacking a horizontal tail plane, and with a single vertical tail fin, this fighter is designed for enhanced manoeuvrability.
* Made of composite materials, which weigh less than a fifth of metal, it has a gross weight of just about nine tonnes.
* All weapons are carried on one or more of seven slots, with total capacity of around 4,000 kg.
* It is also most cost effective with price ranging between Rs.170 and Rs.180 crore, almost a third of similar fourth generation aircraft.
* Tejas seeks to mark India’s entry into the 10-tonne aircraft category, and marks India’s entry into a select group of nations that can build such flying machines from scratch.
* The project has been developed at a cost of nearly Rs.10,000 crore.
* It is likely to go into series production and be inducted into the Air Force in the first half of 2014.
* Equipped with GE engines, efforts are on to use Indian Kaveri engines on it.
* Tejas is the second supersonic fighter developed indigenously by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) after the HAL Marut.