Tejas: Flight of Ambition

India's first 'Make in India' fighter aircraft grabs centrestage in India's pitch for defence exports at the Dubai Airshow. EPISODE #152

Dear Reader,

A very Happy Monday to you.

Last week I attended the biennial airshow in Dubai—the watering hole for all things aviation, including defence. Rubbing shoulders with the world’s best was India’s home grown Tejas and the range of powerful BrahMos missiles.

Not only was their presence at such a high profile event a tribute to India’s ability to gradually indigenise the country defence equipment at world class standards, it is also a tacit acknowledgment of the country’s growing international stature. Though I am no defence expert, I will pursue this theme for this week and try and unpack it significance. Do read and share your feedback.

The cover picture this week is that of the Tejas on display at the Dubai Airshow.

A big shoutout to Gautam, Surendra, Premasundaran and Ranjini for your informed responses, kind appreciation and amplification of last week’s column. Once again, grateful for the conversation initiated by all you readers. Gratitude also to all those who responded on Twitter and Linkedin. 

Unfortunately, Twitter has disabled amplification of Substack links—perils of social media monopolies operating in a walled garden framework. I would be grateful therefore if you could spread the word. Nothing to beat the word of mouth.

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Reaching For The Skies

This year’s biennial airshow in Dubai had an important Indian footnote: It showcased the BrahMos, the first supersonic cruise missile in service, and Tejas, the ‘Make in India’ light combat fighter aircraft (LCA).

For the LCA this was the second appearance at the Dubai airshow. Its first international exposure was in 2016 at the Bahrain airshow.

The theme for this year’s airshow in Dubai was the ‘Future of the Aerospace Industry’ and witnessed participation from over 95 countries. Having successfully produced products that can hold their own internationally, India is now looking to step up defence exports. And, hence Dubai was an obvious destination.

All the more, given the recent bonhomie between the India and the Middle East in general and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in particular.

You may recall that it was the first country to ink a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement with India. And more recently, the India-Europe economic corridor—inked on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Delhi—includes UAE as a key stakeholder with ships from India making landfall in Jebel Ali.

According to Indian officials, the exhibits—especially the sorties that Tejas carried out during the show—drew buyer interest, though no deal was inked.

Regardless, indigenisation ensures strategic advantage or at the least reduces the risks of depending on a foreign supplier—as we are seeing right now with both Russia and Israel, key defence suppliers to India, tied down in their own conflicts. In this sense too, the success with BrahMos and Tejas are important steps in securing India’s strategic advantage.

At the same time, indigenisation also provides an opportunity to create defence clusters across the country. Among other things it will also create economic opportunities.

The Tejas Way

It is a well established fact that the existing fleet of aircraft with the Indian Air Force (IAF) are rapidly ageing and need immediate replacement. Import dependency to bridge this deficit is strategically risky, especially when regional wars are spreading across the world.

One significant success in this respect has been India’s Tejas, produced by the state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). Billed as the world’s smallest and lightest supersonic fighter jet, it was inducted into the IAF in 2016.

I am not going into its troubled history, which is well documented. In case you do wish to read up on it please click this link. According to the piece written by Nitin Gokhale, the late Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar was instrumental in speeding up the process and inducting the home grown LCA into the country’s air force.

Instead, I want to flag the indigenisation strategy that has been adopted to manufacture Tejas. It draws inspiration from the very successful strategy adopted by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO); one, which entails growing an ecosystem of vendors to produce components—this has since been scaled to enable private players produce the final product.

For instance, the central fuselage of Tejas is produced by VEM Technologies, Hyderabad, the fin and rudder by TASL, Bangalore, rear fuselage by Alpha TOCOL, Bangalore, wing by L&T, Coimbatore, and front fuselage by DTL, Bangalore.

The map above captures the national footprint of vendors invested in the manufacture of Tejas. (This is an interactive graphic, so you will have to click on the map and then hover your cursor on each of the coloured states to obtain the number of manufacturers.)

Indeed, the vendors are concentrated in the South and West of India. Yet, we also find vendors in Uttar Pradesh, which in recent years had pitched and grabbed defence related investments.

A HAL spokesperson explained the logic of the decentralised production strategy.

“The development of a complex supersonic aircraft like the LCA Tejas is a testament to the collaborative efforts and capabilities of India's defence manufacturing ecosystem. It involves the cooperation of various agencies, organizations, and institutions across the country. More than 400 Indian business partners are involved in the development of the LCA Tejas.”

What this is doing is creating an organic domestic production structure to enable indigenisation. Consequently, in future, it will be easier to scale to higher versions—including the production of Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA), a fifth-generation stealth, multirole combat aircraft.

Defence Exports

Another upside of indigenisation is that this opens up the prospect of defence exports—which in turn only reinforces even better production capabilities and improving the level of domestic sophistication.

The thing about most defence and space technology is that they open up dual use opportunities, including civilian applications.

For example, India’s space capabilities have created a home grown navigation system, Navigation with Indian Constellation or NavIC. This ensures strategic independence in navigation, especially relevant in a dangerous world where it is difficult to distinguish between friend and foe.

Though India did create a buzz at this year’s Dubai airshow, no deal was closed at the event. The HAL spokesperson said:

“Official Delegations from countries covering MENA (Middle-East North Africa), SE-Asia and Africa regions visited HAL stall and evinced interest on LCA-Tejas, ALH-Dhruv and other platforms of HAL.”

I am sharing below the dazzling display of Tejas, sourced from YouTube. Nothing like witnessing it in person though, especially when the aircraft breaks the boom barrier.

The country had come close to closing a sale for Tejas with Malaysia, but was pipped at the post by its South Korean competitor. It is never easy to break into the market for defence exports.

As the spokesperson explained:

“Aviation platforms are capital intensive equipment generally have long gestation period. The efforts and initiatives towards promoting the aircraft in such international airshows enhances the branding and the awareness of platforms to the world.”

And then added that India was offering after-sales incentives, including soft loans to fund the purchase of Tejas.

“We are confident that some breakthrough is made shortly in securing orders for LCA, ALH and other major Indian defence products.”

This process got a leg-up at the airshow after Abu Dhabi-based EDGE, one of the world’s leading advanced technology groups for defence and beyond, announced the successful completion of its feasibility studies for the integration of the AL TARIQ long-range precision-guided munitions (LR-PGMs) on Tejas—extending the stand-off range from 45km to 120km.

Not only does this make Tejas—designed to perform different roles, including ground attack, air support, and reconnaissance—that much deadlier, a partnership with EDGE improves its prospects of exploring markets with a local partner.

In a press release, Theunis Botha, CEO of AL TARIQ, said:

“We are proud to be associated with HAL in this strategic campaign to offer high technology solutions to the Tejas customers in the region. We look forward to presenting the range of AL TARIQ’s mission-proven long-range precision-guided munitions to HAL Tejas customers around the globe.”

In the final analysis it is clear that India has proved its capability to engage in the manufacture of sophisticate avionics. Rightly so, it is dreaming big. Aiming for the skies as it were.

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Recommended Viewing/Reading

Sharing the latest post of Capital Calculus on StratNews Global.

In a few weeks from now the world’s high table, the Conference of Parties (COP), for battling climate change will converge in the United Arab Emirates.

This meeting holds the key to battling climate change. Especially in resolving the energy transitions to enable sustainable growth. How will the world negotiate these tough choices? Is there a way out? India, billed as the next biggest source of energy demand, be part of the solution to climate change?

To answer all this and more I spoke to Atul Arya, Chief Energy Strategist, S&P Global Commodity Insights, and one of the foremost experts in the world on energy transitions. Atul, very patiently laid out the choices and held out hope that the battle against climate change can be won.

Sharing the link below. Do watch and share your thoughts.

Till we meet again next week, stay safe.