Address At The 54th Annual General Meeting Of The Aeronautical Society Of India

ADDRESS

I am indeed delighted to participate in the 54th Annual General Meeting of the Aeronautical Society of India. My greetings to the aerospace community of India. I was thinking what thoughts I can share with my friends here. Focus of my presentation is going to be the status of aerospace technology today in India and what it will be in the first two decades of this millennium. I will also discuss how India has to graduate itself for newer technologies and newer aerospace vehicles. Finally I will present how the subject of aerospace technology transcends beyond national borders and enriches each other mutually. The aerospace technology is a beautiful gift to humanity. At no time aerospace community should allow geopolitics to come in the way of the growth of this technology.

India's Aerospace Technological Strength

India has reached the capability to design, develop and lead to production of strategic missile systems. BrahMos - a supersonic missile system for which flight trails have commenced. The Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH) has entered into our Services. Light Combat Aircrafts (LCA) has gone into a series of flight trials. Further, India has achieved the capability of designing, developing and launching our own Polar Satellite Launch Vehicles (PSLV) and operationalised world class remote sensing satellites. The aerospace community in India has 10000 experienced scientists and one hundred thousand members spread over multiple R&D labs, academic institutions and industries.

The LCA is a low cost and high combat performance aircraft. Above all, it is the only aircraft having a committed user and definite production requirements. The indigenously developed power plant KAVERI for LCA has a thrust-to-weight ratio of 8. Five Kaveri Engines are under evaluation and are accumulating test hours in test beds. Through LCA program composite development of co-bond co-cured composite structures, digital fly by wire systems, avionics based on open system architecture and most important servo actuators design and development have commenced. The aerospace program in the country has concurrently established multiple state-of-the-art technologies and test facilities. It has built capabilities in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), development and production of gigaflop supercomputers, real time software, motion simulators and virtual reality laboratory. Hence, in the current decade, India will see its own productionised combat aircrafts, and advanced missiles, space launchers, satellites, RPVs and aeronautical systems in air and space. Our creativity in software and designs have been internationally acknowledged. The aerospace technology together with software engineering forms a critical mass for future aerospace growth in India.

The path ahead

In continuation of ALH, LCA, certain types of missiles, their variants and derivatives, newer missions will be born. A twin engine, long range, low RCS, Medium range Combat Aircraft (MCA) for military applications is in the design phase. In Military aviation, significant funding has been made for development of LCA, ALH, missiles and RPVs. This technology base could be deployed for the development of a 120 seater cum freighter transport aircraft to meet the requirements of defence and civil aviation. This programme needs to take the strengths of DRDO, HAL, NAL, Civil Aviation and Indian Air Force. It should be a joint programme of Defence and Civil Aviation departments. There is a demand from the aerospace community and users to increase orbital payload by an order of magnitude for a given take off weight. In order to meet this challenge, the Indian aerospace community has come out with the design of Hyperplane which incorporates a novel concept of inflight mass addition. This design has brought out that a transatmospheric vehicle having 100 ton take off weight can launch a 12.6 ton payload. It is a programme for consortium of nations. A technology demonstrator Aerobic Vehicle for Advanced Transatmospheric Application & Research (AVATAR) which is a scale down version of the Hyperplane is taking shape and is within the technological reach. While a reusable missile configuration and technology has not yet emerged in the world, Indian technologists have started working on reusable hypersonic cruise missile system. This missile system is an integrated design of multiple technologies derived from UAV, Aircrafts and Missile systems.

Universal Aerospace

Large passenger jets are being built on both sides of Atlantic. I visualise a situation where, if there is no international market these aircraft industries will face problems to grow. When India launches a remote sensing satellite it generates data on resources which if needed could be made available for the whole world. Similarly, a communication satellite launched by India can meet the requirements of global communication and international weather prediction. In such an environment I believe, partnerships in aerospace technology has all the ingredients for virtual organisation and knowledge management. Such a structure adopts work centres beyond organisational and physical boundaries. The world aerospace community should work to ensure that geo-politics in the form of technology denials and economic sanctions does not come in the way of such universal aerospace missions.

Conclusion : Future of Aerospace technologies in India.

For the 21st Century, particularly for the decade I visualise in the Indian scene, five major technological revolutions taking place in the sky:

1. Integration of multiple technologies of supersonic aircraft, missiles, and spacecraft to transform into an unmanned supersonic long-range and low radar cross section vehicles. This will replace manned fighter aircraft.

2. India will progress the design of a hyperplane - a reusable hypersonic missile as well as a cost effective launch vehicle (15% payload factor in place of present 3%).

3. Anti ballistic missile with its satellite network, to protect land and airspace, will become an integral part of the national defence. This will have capability to kill nuclear weapons.

4. Supersonic cruise missiles will replace the current generation of subsonic cruise missiles. These missiles are low radar detective will be difficult to detect and will give very short reaction time for the enemy's defences.

5. Information warfare will dominate the future war with adversaries trying to break into each others computer network to gain control of the vital resources. Information Warfare with knowledge products will be more lethal compared to Nuclear tipped career vehicles. India is well placed in the field of Information technology for multiple applications.

I am sure that our the aeronautic community in this AGM will decide to evolve and promote the National Aeronautics Policy and lead to national passenger jet aircraft design development production and deployment.

My greetings to you all.