Tejas: India's First Indigenous Fighter Aircraft

 One of the most common aircraft in the Indian Air Force, Tejas is the first supersonic fighter jet developed indigenously in India. First inducted in 2016 in the Air Force, this faithful jet has been serving in the IAF for 7 years. Until now, there are three variants of tejas that have been developed; Tejas Mark-1, Tejas Mark 1A and Tejas trainer.

Design of Tejas

Tejas is a single-engine, delta wing, Light Combat Aircraft(LCA). It has specially been designed for manoeuvrability and agility and its flexibility allows it to carry out interception, air to surface and anti-ship roles in a single mission. The design of Tejas has enabled it to have minimal transonic and supersonic wave drag along with a low wing cube loading.

Fig. 1- Tejas

The Mark-1 variant also has a mid-air refuelling probe in the front of the fuselage which increases the potential range of this aircraft to infinity.

Airframe of Tejas

The body of the Tejas is mainly made up of aluminium-lithium alloys, titanium alloys and carbon-fibre composite materials. The naval variant has a nose droop to increase visibility during landings on aircraft carriers. The naval version also has a stronger undercarriage, a stronger landing gear along with an arrestor hook which is used for rapid deceleration while landing aboard aircraft carriers.

Avionics of Tejas

The computer of Tejas has been developed by ADE and is manufactured by BEL. It has the indegenously developed Uttam AESA radar and can also carry pod-based radars like the Forward Looking Infrared Radar(FLIR) and the Rafael Litening lll targeting/reconnaissance pod. It also has a virtual reality assisted cockpit and night vision windshield. It also has hands-on-throttle-and-stick arrangement which reduces the workload on the pilot.

Propulsion

The Tejas aircraft was to be powered by the Kaveri afterburning turbofan engine, developed by the Gas Turbine Research Establishment(GTRE), a part of DRDO. However, due to some setbacks in its development, the F404-GE-F2J3 afterburning engine was used for the initial aircraft after some modifications.

Armanment of Tejas

The Tejas aircraft can accomodate the following weapons-

• 1x 23mm twin barrel GSh-23 cannon.
• S-8 rocket pods
• Air-to-air-missiles: R-73, I-Derby/ER, Python-5 and Astra Mark-1
• Air-to-surface-missiles: Kh-59ME, Kh-59L, Kh-59T, AASM-Hammer and the proposed BrahMos-NG
• Anti-ship missiles: Kh-35, Kh-59MK
• Bombs: Precision-guided bombs: Spice, Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM), HSLD-100/250/450/500, DRDO Glide Bombs, DRDO SAAW and Tactical Advanced Range Augmentation (TARA)
• Laser-guided bombs: KAB-1500L, GBU-16 Paveway II, Sudarshan and Griffin LGB
• Unguided bombs: ODAB-500PM, ZAB-250/350, BetAB-500Shp, FAB-500T, FAB-250, OFAB-250-270 and OFAB-100-120

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That is all for this post on HAL Tejas. Follow this blog to get more mindblowing info on technology.

Cheers,

Aarav Iyer

References:

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_Tejas#Variants

(2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgB8TjNKmSI