Is India Getting Ready to Build Its Own Stealth Fighter?

The AMCA program evolved out of the Medium Combat Aircraft (MCA) programme, was initiated to fulfil several requirements for a common fighter to replace different types of existing fighters aircraft which included Dassault Mirage 2000, Sepecat Jaguars, Mikoyan MiG-23 and Mikoyan MiG-27

In March 2010, the aircraft was renamed as Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) to be produced domestically by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited. Shortly afterwards, the Indian Air Force put in a serious addendum to the program: they wanted AMCA to be a stealth fighter, too.

For a while the AMCA project slowed down, as India invested $5 billion in the Russian Sukhoi PAK FA stealth fighter, intending to produce its own version called the FGFA. But then the PAK FA program began to suffer major setback, eliciting numerous complaints from the Indian military. Now, even Russia has only ordered production of twelve of the supermaneuverable stealth aircraft, and the future of the FGFA is unclear.

New Delhi’s interest in the HAL AMCA therefore kicked back into higher gear, with more than four thousand staff devoted to the project, according to a report in 2015.

the ADA had settled upon a final design involving a twin-engine, canted twin-tail configuration, with an overall profile similar to that of the American F-22 Raptor. Mock-ups of this design have already reportedly undergone wind-tunnel and radar cross-section tests.

The AMCA features two internal weapons bays which can carry four air-air missiles each. A total of eight missiles are carried in the internal bays. The weapons would likely compromise a mix of domestic, Russian and Israeli missiles.

AMCA would be equipped with an LRDE X-band AESA radar which is developed by Electronics and Radar Development Establishment (LRDE).The radar is a solid state type which uses gallium nitride (GaN), development for the radar was approved in March 2012. AESA radar which is slated to be used in AMCA will have three-dimensional target search ability.

First of all, India must find a way to develop and manufacture radar-absorbent materials (RAM), as well as the precision-manufacturing capabilities to create a stealthy hull. A protruding screw or a poorly fit metal plate can cause a stealth aircraft’s radar cross-section to blossom, so a high-fidelity manufacturing process is a must. Indian hopes to acquire radar-absorbent materials from France as part of a deal to purchase Rafale fighters have fallen through.

To enable the AMCA to perform in the air supremacy role, it includes several passive sensor systems. The front-sector Electro-Optical Targeting System (EOTS), developed by DLRL, is completely integrated within the aircraft and can operate both in the visible and infrared wavelengths.

The AMCA includes capabilities such as self-protection and self-repair with the help of self-diagnosing and self-healing systems that distribute the work load to other systems from affected to non-affected systems.

AMCA is a twin-engined aircraft which is powered by two GTRE K 9 + or K 10 engine which are successor to the cancelled Kaveri engine.The K 10 Program is a joint venture partnership with a foreign engine manufacturer. K 10 program engine will be final production standard Kaveri engine and shall have less weight and more reheat thrust along with certain other changes to meet the original design intent. Both the engines are designed by ADA and developed by GTRE. Full scale development of the K 9 and K 10 engine would be completed by 2019

Sources

1. Wikipedia.com 2.  nationalinterest