Off late, it has become extremely fashionable to refer to the MoD-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) as a ‘strategic asset’ and shed crocodile tears about the ‘diminishing status’ of India’s premier and oldest aerospace manufacturing corporate entity. However, a fact-check reveals that those very political parties and their ‘netas’ who are today crying hoarse over HAL receiving step-motherly treatment were in the yesteryears the very ones responsible for subjecting HAL to multi-phase castrations which have since proven to be catastrophic for HAL today.
Phase-1 Of Castration: The 1960s
During this period, the process of castration started soon after the 1962 Sino-Indian border war, when a confused India refused to heed the well-intentioned advice of the US (which, as the quiet but steadfast ally of India) to devote her limited financial resources on the creation of an indigenous combat aircraft development-cum-manufacturing capability. While the US had advised India to import only limited quantities of combat aircraft of foreign origin, it had also offered to bear the cost of developing the indigenous, supersonic HF-24 Marut medium multi-role combat aircraft (M-MRCA).
The US had proposed for the Indian Air Force (IAF) the importation of highly subsidised (as part of a military assistance programme) Douglas F-4D Skyray, equipped with a Westinghouse APQ-50A search radar and 16,000lb thrustPratt & Whitney J57-P-8 turbojet. This combat aircraft was designed exclusively for the high-altitude interception role, with a high rate and angle of climb. It had set a new time-to-altitude record, flying from a standing start to 49,221 in 2 minutes and 36 seconds, all while flying at a 70-degree pitch angle. The proposed F-5D Skylancer was derived from the F-4D and was intended to be a Mach 2-capable successor to the Skyray when powered by a General Electric J-79 turbofan.
However, for reasons that have only been partially explained to date, India refused to procure either the Douglas F-4D Skyray or the Northrop F-5A Freedom Fighter, and instead kept on insisting on the need to procure off-the-shelf up to three squadrons of Lockheed F-104G Starfighter interceptors, along with the parallel importation of MiG-21PF interceptors and the subsequent licenced-manufacturing of follow-on variants of the MiG-21. It was this lack of clarity-of-thought that sealed the fate of the HF-24 Marut, as explained by the slides below.
The HF-24 Marut was conceived to meet an IAF Air Staff Requirement (ASR) that called for a multi-role aircraft suitable for both high-altitude interception and low-level ground attack. The specified performance parameters called for a speed of Mach 2 at altitude, service ceiling of 60,000 feet, and a combat radius of 805km. Additionally, the ASR demanded that the basic design be suitable for adaptation as a lead-in fighter trainer, an all-weather combat aircraft and for ‘navalisation’ as an aircraft carrier-based aircraft.
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India’s first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal ‘Chaachaa’ Nehru tried to attract leading aeronautical designers from the West to develop the HF-24. It was to his credit that he convinced Dr Kurt Tank from Germany to take up this assignment along with his able deputy Engineer Mittelhuber. Both arrived at HAL in Bangalore in August 1956. As head of the design team it was Tank who gave the design shape and substance. A full-scale representation (wooden glider) of the projected HF-24 was ready by early 1959. A flight-test programme was initiated with this glider on April 1, 1959. The design was given the designation of Hindustan Fighter 24 or simply HF-24.
Assembly of the first HF-24 prototype (HF-001) commenced in April 1960 and after a comprehensive three-month ground-test programme, HF-001 (later re-numbered BR-462), with the late Wing Commander (later Group Captain) Suranjan Das at the controls, flew for the first time on June 17, 1961. The HF-24 was then powered by twin Bristol Siddeley Orpheus 703 Mk.1 turbojets each rated at 21.57kN thrust. The wings were designed to carry four pylons rated at 454kg each. In addition, each wing carried about 700 litres of fuel in the integral tanks. An integral tank means the internal space within the wing is sealed up and filled with fuel floating between the structural members. This means each wing carried a payload of about 1,425kg of fuel and weapons. All this was achieved within a commendably short period of 15 months from starting of design to assembling a flightworthy airframe and finally, to the maiden flight.
On June 27, 1961 the BR-462 prototytpe was shown to Prime Minister Nehru. By November 1961, a structural test airframe had been completed and was subjected to extensive structural and functional tests in rigs designed and fabricated by HAL. On October 4, 1962 a second prototype (BR-463) joined the flight-test programme and the two prototypes were extensively tested by Das and a team of three IAF test pilots for aerodynamic stability, engine operating protocols, armament stowage, instrumentation, emergency procedures, etc. HAL and the IAF conducted 1,800 test-flights between 1962 and 1967 to iron out the defects of the Marut. In April 1967 No.10 ‘Flying Daggers’ Squadron became the first unit to be equipped with India’s first indigenous MRCA. The Marut eventually equipped three IAF Squadrons: No.10 Sqn, No.220 ‘Desert Tigers’ converted in May 1969 and the No.31 ‘Lions’ in March 1974. India thus became the sixth country to design and fly a homegrown supersonic combat aircraft after the US, UK, USSR, France and Sweden.
The design of the HF-24 had been based around the expected availability of the afterburning Bristol Siddeley (later Rolls-Royce) Orpheus BOr.12 engine rated at 30.29kN dry and 36.34kN with afterburning, which Rolls-Royce had planned to develop. Unfortunately, the British requirement for this powerplant was discarded and the Indian Govt of India under the then Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri in a shortsighted decision declined to underwrite its continued development even though the developmental budget (which the US had offered to provide) was only £13 million. This catastrophic decision was to bedevil the Marut programme permanently.
The HF-24’s design team was consequently forced to adopt the non-afterburning Orpheus 703 Mk.1, which also powered the Folland Gnat L-MRCA, as the permanent solution. Although HAL did develop an afterburning version of the Orpheus 703 Mk.1, and called it the HJE-2500 (rated at 25.44KN thrust with reheat), the IAF refused to service-induct the HF-24 Mk.1R variant using such engines. Though the IAF considered the prospect of using the Tumansky RD-9F turbojet (rated at 37kN with afterburner, it was ultimately rejected on grounds of surging and limited MTBO.
Phase-2 Of Castration: The 1980s
As revealed below, the IAF had a detailed plan for up-sizing the Folland Gnat as a contemporary L-MRCA with the help of HAL and friendly international; aerospace OEMs like BAE Systems (then British Aerospace, which had proposed to co-develop with HAL a digital fly-by-wire flight-control system for both the Jaguar IS interdictors of the IAF as well as for the projected L-MRCA) and SNECMA Moteurs, whose turbofans were available for import.
However, all such well-intentioned roadmaps were junked by India’s then gullible, ill-informed and ignorant political leadership and instead, the programme for indigenously developing the ‘Tejas’ light combat aircraft (LCA) was initiated in August 1983, when the MoD sanctioned an interim development cost of Rs5.6 billion for carrying out the project definition phase (PDP). The MoD consequently split the programme into the Technical Development Phase and Operational Vehicle Development Phase. The DRDO subsequently obtained feasibility studies from three leading aircraft companies (British, French and German). Use was made of these studies in presenting a case to the Govt of India for indigenously designing and developing the LCA. In an unusual step, a ‘Society’ was set up to oversee the LCA’s developmental process. At its apex was and still is a 15-member General Body, whose President is the Defence Minister. The next rung is a 10-member Governing Body, whose Chairman is the Scientific Adviser to the Defence Minister and Secretary DRDO. The third rung is a 10-member Technical Committee, headed by the Director of the DRDO’s Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA), which was established on June 16, 1984. In October 1985, the IAF issued the LCA’s ASR. The projected requirement then was for 220 LiCAs (200 single-engined combat aircraft and 20 tandem-seat operational conversion aircraft), with service-induction commencing by 1994. On January 7, 1986 at a conference room in Delhi’s South Block which houses the offices of the MoD, officials of ADA unveilled detailed plans for developing and manufacturing the LCA. Subsequently, the Project definition (PD) phase commenced in October 1987 with the help of Dassault Aviation as project consultant, and the PD phase was completed in September I988. So, what went wrong and why? It is all explained in the following slides.
And where do matters now stand? The slide below illustrates how GE Aero Engines had in mid-1987 envisioned the LCA Mk.1’s airframe to be.
Instead, this is how it has turned out to be!
Phase-3 Of Castration: The 1990s
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This decade was the most critical and disastrous. What was required was long-term strategizing, which was to have been followed by the articulation of an industrial roadmap catering to both military and commercial aviation requirements. Instead, that decade turned out to be all about lost opportunities and ill-conceived decision-making processes. For instance, while the IAF had decided in the mid-1980s itself that it would require basic turboprop trainers (BTT), advanced jet trainers (AJT) and lead-in fighter trainers (LIFT) for its future fixed-wing flying training requirements, there was no corresponding industrial roadmap conceived for indigenously meeting such requirements. Despite this, the HTT-35 BTT’s full-scale mock-up, was designed and fabricated in-house by HAL in the late 1980s and rolled out in the early 1990s—all in all a four-year effort.
The objective at that time was to team up with a global avionics supplier (most probably THALES) and co-design the semi-glass tandem cockpits and offer the aircraft for evaluation by the IAF by 1998. However, after 1994 the HTT-35 disappeared, literally! One can only speculate on what exactly happened to this full-scale mock-up, or on why did the MoD or the IAF develop a coordinated ‘memory loss’ on the need to series-produce the HTT-35 almost a decade ago! For it was realised as far back as 1998 that the induction of fourth-generation combat aircraft would force the IAF sooner than later into undertaking a critical revision of its flying training practices that included basic flying training, advanced flying training, and lead-in fighter training (LIFT).
Despite this, the HTT-35 BTT was scrapped (only to be reborn in the following decade as the HTT-40), and instead of calling for the development by HAL of the HJT-36 as a swept-wing AJT, the IAF in its all-knowing wisdom wrongly decided 19 years ago to have the HJT-36 as an intermediate jet trainer (IJT). This perhaps explains why the IAF has, since 2008, been maintaining sustained silence over HAL’s inability to develop the HJT-36.
On September 29, 2009 the MoD cleared the acquisition of 181 BTTs for the IAF and on May 24, 2012 a contract worth US$640 million (Rs 3,780 crore) was inked with Switzerland-based Pilatus Aircraft Ltd for procuring off-the-shelf 75 PC-7 Mk.2 BTTs, together with an integrated ground-based training system and a comprehensive logistics support package. Concurrently, the MoD decreed that HAL develop the indigenous HTT-40 BTT, for which an order for 106 units was promised. However, the MoD on February 28, 2015 approved the IAF’s move to exercise options for procuring an additional 38 PC-7 Mk.2s, thereby reducing the number of HTT-40s to be acquired to 68. HAL was required to set up a production line in Bengaluru with a rated output of two HTT-40s in the first year (2017), followed by eight in the second year and 20 aircraft from year-three onwards. By 2012 HAL had sanctioned Rs.177 crore ($30 million from its own internal funds for the preliminary design phase and detailed design phase activities.
The first HTT-40, powered by a Honeywell Garrett TPE 331-12B engine, was first rolled out in February 2016 and was first test-flown in May. On October 29, 2015, the MoD decided to carry on with the HTT-40’s development despite the IAF stonewalling HAL’s detailed project report (DPR). The IAF stated that while an imported PC-7 Mk.2 would cost Rs.38.3 crore, the HTT-40 would be 25% more expensive, or Rs.43.59 crore at 2011 prices. The extra cost per HTT-40 includes Rs.1.81 crore as the cost of production; and Rs.7.11 crore as the cost of design and development, of which the IAF is required to pay 80%. A 16% rise in the cost of foreign exchange at that time added another Rs.1.97 crore per aircraft, taking the price up to Rs.43.59 crore. To this was to be added another 4.5% annual inflation costs to, which were on a 2011 base. That raised the HTT-40’s per-unit cost to Rs.59.31 crore in 2018 and Rs.64.77 crore in 2020.
Added finally to all these was the direct operating costs of maintaining the airworthiness of two separate types of BTTs equipped with two different types of turboprop engines and avionics suites—a luxury no other air force in the world enjoys! All such headaches could have been avoided had the HTT-35 BTT been developed and ordered by the late 1990s.
Similar was the case the HAL-developed HJT-36 IJT, whose development was sanctioned in 1999 with an initial funding of Rs.180 crore. On March 7, 2003 the first HJT-36 prototype made its maiden flight, following which the Cabinet Committee on National Security in March 2005 approved an order for 12 limited series-production HJT-36s, which were slated for rollout by 2008 and service-induction by 2011. In mid-2005, HAL and Russia’s Rosoboronexport State Corp signed a $350 million contract to licdence-build 250 NPO Saturn-developed AL-55I turbofans, with an option for 1,000 more. HAL had then estimated that the per-unit price of each HJT-36 would be around $10 million for a 225-unit order.
The first batch of AL-55Is began arriving two years later than scheduled in June 2008 and the first HJT-36 prototype equipped with it undertook a 30-minute flight on May 9, 2009. HAL was, however, not able to fit the standby generator on the aircraft. The HJT-36 prototypes subsequently met with accidents in February 2007, February 2009 and April 2011, causing further setbacks.Eventually in August 2014, the MoD admitted in Parliament that the project was well behind schedule, while HAL admitted that the HJT-36 was overweight and suffering from serious aerodynamic problems that have implications for air safety due a design flaw.
The AL-55I, which initially had a time-between-overhauls (TBO) of only 100 hours, subsequently had its TBO increased to 300 hours, with its total technical service-life (TTSL) being pegged at 400 hours. But the IAF wanted the TBO be about 1,200 hours, since an IJT is required to fly six to eight sorties daily, clocking around 10 hours. If the TBO is just 100 hours, the turbofan will have to be replaced every 10 days. This will require more engines and overhauls, apart from the IJTs sitting on ground for longer periods.
In all, the project to develop the HJT-36 has proven to be a total waste of the Indian taxpayers’ money, since the IJT requirement became redundant and unnecessary from the day (March 26, 2004) the MoD had inked the contract with BAE Systems for procuring an initial 66 of 123 Hawk Mk.132 AJTs (including 17 for the Indian Navy). The final nail in the coffin of the GJT-36 was struck on May 24, 2012 when the initial 75 PC-7 Mk.2 BTTs were contracted for.
The 1990s also witnessed total lack of clarity when it came to commercial aviation industrial developmental activities. What was required was a holistic approach that encompassed not just the co-development and series-production of a family of regional commuter jetliners (starting with 30-seaters, and then stretching the airframe to include 40-seaters and 50-seaters as had been done by Brazil’s Embraer and Canada’s Bombardier Aerospace), but also the domestic production of a range of aircraft cabin interior fixtures and upholstery, plus the localisation of periodic maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) activities for those airliners that were being imported from Boeing and Airbus (such activities, to this day, are outsourced from MRO centres located in Malaysia, Singapore and Sri Lanka).
By the early 1990s, while HAL had settled down to licence-build more than 100 Dornier Do-228 19-seat STOL twin-turboprop aircraft for both commercial and military customers in India, the time was then ripe for HAL’s Aircraft Research & Design Centre (ARDC) to be expanded for undertaking the co-development and co-production of another new-generation product from Dornier—the 33-seat Do-328 was designed and initially series-produced by Germany’s Dornier Luftfahrt GmbH (in 1996 that firm was acquired by the US-based Fairchild Aircraft Inc and the resulting corporation, named Fairchild-Dornier, continued series-production of the 328 family in Germany, and also developed and produced the follow-on 44-seat 428JET variant of the regional commuter jetliner).
Instead, HAL was ONCE AGAIN totally sidelined and the then Govt of India in May 1998 created the Centre for Civil Aircraft Design & Development (C-CADD) as the nodal point of the National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL) under the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), with a mandate to play a lead role in the design and development of small and medium sized civil aircraft. So henceforth, NAL became the lead designer-cum-developer for civil aviation aircraft, with HAL merely acting as the prime industrial contractor. Consequently, NAL, being essentially a laboratory like ADA with no available human resource expertise required for designing and developing any type of aircraft, quickly began the process of making erroneous decisions, starting with the attempt to develop a 14-seat twin turboprop-powered commuter aircraft called ‘Saras’.
The ‘Saras’ had already been developed in 1991 as the ‘M-102 Duet’ by Russia’s JSC V Myasishchev Experimental Machine Building Plantwhich later opted out of the project due to financial constraints and offered to sell all IPRs of this project to C-CADD in June 1998. The then NDA Govt’s Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs in June 1999 approved sanction for the C-CADD to complete the M-102 Diet’s developmental process, following which in September 1999 the project was renamed as ‘Saras’. Russia’s Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute TsAGI and Gromov Flight Research Institute (GFRI) were roped in as project consultants. NAL next received an order from the IAF to supply 15 ‘Saras’ aircraft, whose delivferies were to begin in 2014 and conclude in 2017.The first HAL-built prototype (PT-1) was powered by two Pratt & Whitney PT6A-66 turboprop engines and its maiden flight took place on May 29, 2004. The ‘Saras’ was originally proposed to have a weight of 4,125kg but it increased by about 24% to 5,118kg. Two prototypes have been produced to date. The second prototype (PT-2) was built by HAL with composite materials to decrease its overall weight by 400kg compared to that of the PT-1. PT-2 was powered by twin uprated Pratt & Whitney PT6A-67A engines and it made its maiden flight on April 18, 2007.This prototype crashed near Bidadi, situated 30km away from Bengaluru, in March 2009 during a routine flight-test.
Another consultancy contract was inked between the C-CADD and TsAGI and GFRI on February 18, 2011 under which the two Russian parties were required to assist C-CADD in weight-budgeting and aerodynamic optimising the airframe of the ‘Saras’ (by conducting wind-tunnels tests at TsAGI), plus assistance for ensuring the certification of airworthiness of the aircraft, since India’s state-owned Directorate General of Civil Aviation is only an endorser of foreign CoAs and it does not possess the kind of human resources required for undertaking any CoA-related tasking of an industrial nature.
Thus, as a result of Russian assistance, the C-CADD was able to make the following modifications to the airframe of PT-1N: significant reduction of control forces, optimisation of nacelle design (for the engine mounts), modifications of the environmental control system and cabin pressurisation system, installation of an automatic stall-warning system, modification of linear flap-tracks and trim-taps on the elevators, enhancement of rudder area for better controllability, modification of flight-test instrumentation, modification of electrical systems for reducing voltage losses, and provision of nose boom for the air-data system for redundancy, .Apart from above modification on the aircraft, the following additional safety measures have also been ensured by the team.
Despite all this, the project’s funding was terminated in 2012, but was revived in 2016 following which NAL assembled a young team of 40 engineers and technicians for working on the project for the next nine months.The modified PT-1N prototype made its maiden flight on January 24, 2018 from the IAF’s Aircraft & Systems Testing Establishment (ASTE) in Bengaluru. According to C-CADD, the production version of ‘Saras’ will be a 19-seater and will undergo both civil and military certification processes for which two Limited Series prototypes will have to be built at a cost of Rs.500 crore. If all goes well, then the first series-produced ‘Saras’ will be handed over to the IAF. The C-CADD has estimated a total domestic requirement for 160 ‘Saras’ aircraft. What, however, eludes an answer is what exactly will the ‘Saras’ be able to offer that the 19-seat HAL-built Do-228 STOL commuter aircraft cannot? And why was C-C-CADD tasked to develop a 14-seater twin-turboprop commuter when HAL had already begun licence-producing 19-seater twin-turboprop commuters more than a decade earlier? Why was the development or co-development of a 30-seater twin-turboprop or twin turbofan-powered commuter not considered at all?
Phase-4 Of Castration: The Previous Decade
(to be concluded)