Putting his personal stamp of approval on the indigenous Tejas fighter, which will become the mainstay of the IAF in the years ahead instead of foreign jets, PM Narendra Modi flew in a twin-seat variant of the Tejas light combat aircraft for a 30-minute sortie last week.
“The experience was incredibly enriching, significantly bolstering my confidence in our country’s indigenous capabilities, and leaving me with a renewed sense of pride and optimism about our national potential. A flight to remember! Tejas is India’s pride, a manifestation of the strength and skills of 1.4 billion Indians,” said Modi, after becoming the first PM to fly in a fighter jet.
The Tejas trainer in which he flew was piloted by Group Captain Debanjan Mandal, with IAF chief Air Chief Marshal VR Chaudhari present at the HAL airport in Bengaluru.
The capabilities of the light-weight, multi-role 4.5-generation Tejas were demonstrated to the PM during the flight, and it comes at a time when the defence ministry is set to give preliminary approval to an order for 97 more LCAs to add to the 123 already contracted earlier.
President Droupadi Murmu recently flew in a twin-engine Sukhoi-30MKI, as did her predecessors APJ Abdul Kalam and Pratibha Patil. Some defence ministers, including Rajnath Singh, Nirmala Sitharaman, Manohar Parrikar and George Fernandes have also flown in fighters and trainers. Modi, in turn, made his debut in the single-engine, homegrown Tejas. Modi, who has been pushing for “Make in India” in defence production, also visited the Tejas hangar at HAL’s Bengaluru complex and appreciated efforts by the PSU and its team.
Tejas, designed by the Bengaluru-based DRDO lab Aeronautical Development Agency, has had a long and tortuous development saga. But the all-weather fighter is now flying high, though HAL will have to work hard to step up its production rate from eight a year to 16 by 2025, and then 24 annually. Of the first order for 40 Tejas Mark-1 jets, which was to be initially completed by December 2016, HAL has delivered 32 single seat fighters and two of the eight twin-seat trainers to the IAF so far.