UPA's major goof up: Tejas inducted

NEW DELHI: First, it was the NDA regime which was in a hurry to christen it ‘ Tejas’ , with the then PM, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, doing the honours in 2003. Now, it’s the UPA II government’s turn to declare that the indigenous fighter has already been “inducted’’ .

In a major goof-up , the ‘Report to the People’ released by PM Manmohan Singh on Tuesday evening to mark UPA II’s third anniversary in office lists the “induction of Light Combat Aircraft Tejas into IAF’’ as a “major milestone’’ in the defence arena.

Competitive politics apart, the simple fact is that Tejas is still at least two years away from becoming fully operational despite being almost three decades in the making after first being sanctioned in 1983 at a cost of Rs 560 crore.

The entire development cost of the Tejas project, including the naval variant and trainer as well as the failed Kaveri engine, in fact, has now zoomed to Rs 17,269 crore. With each Tejas to cost an additional Rs 200 crore, India will end up spending well over Rs 25,000 crore on the programme.

It’s critical that India has its own home-grown fighter jet but the continuing hyperbole over the single-engined Tejas leaves IAF and others bewildered . On January 10, 2011, for instance, the Aeronautical Development Agency, Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd and Defence Research and Development Organisation had all got together to loudly proclaim
that Tejas had got initial operational clearance (IOC) at the hands of defence minister A K Antony.

But it became clear later that Tejas had only achieved partial IOC. It would have to be followed by IOC-II to certify the fighter was fully airworthy. Moreover, it would require the final operational clearance (FOC), with integration of all weapons and other systems, before it could be deemed combat-worthy . HAL and DRDO have set a December 2012 deadline for the FOC. But, sources say, Tejas will be ready for induction only towards mid-2013 at the earliest. Consequently, the actual induction of the first 40 Tejas jets is likely to begin only in 2014, with the first two squadrons up and running at the Sulur airbase (Tamil Nadu ) by 2015 or so.

IAF, in fact, feels Tejas is not even a fourth-generation fighter at present. The planned six squadrons of Tejas will initially serve just to arrest the sharp fall in the number of IAF fighter squadrons (each has 14 to 18 jets), which is down to just 33 at present.

The number of squadrons will further fall to 31 over the next three to four years with phasing out of the aging MiG variants, further impacting IAF’s combat capabilities, before it slowly begins to pick up with new inductions. Projections show IAF will have the required 45 squadrons only by 2032.