The people whose names appear on aircraft types - Sukhoi, MiG, Mil, Antonov, Ilyushin, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, BAE, EADS - are known as systems integrators. They don't make planes in a factory where the nuts, bolts and composites are made; they call in assemblies, sub-assemblies and components from all over the world, subject to security and secrecy considerations, and put them together to a design. Sometimes, as in the case of the Russians, design and manufacture are separated, for greater integrity. Yes, the systems integrators and the designers, between them, retain the right to make changes in design and alterations and modifications, due to discoveries made during test flights, but this is the process.
Can you please sir throw some light on AESA development?
So you can gauge for yourself how ridiculous the entire agent provocateur post was.
Tyres have been made in Dunlop Sahaganj from the 50s; the legendary Suranjan Das' son was a Dunlop employee supervising smooth supply of these to HAL from the 70s onwards. Avionics, with which I have personal involvement, has been indigenous from the 70s and 80s onwards; the brilliant account of the DARIN conversion by T K Sen is a gripping story by itself. Composites were developed under the leadership of the technical genius Krishnadas Nair, whose lectures on composite technology drew packed audiences; his open lectures usually had a distinguished overseas delegation in attendance. The composite manufacturing effort was developed within HAL while he was Managing Director of the Bangalore Complex, well before his Chairmanship. Autocrat though he was, nothing should be subtracted from his technical contributions to the nation. The landing gear and its anti-skid braking software was developed by HAL engineers working within the ADA/ADE; my successor as CEO in the avionics firm was lead programmer for the ABS software.
I could go on and on, if not for the fact that we have gone into all this before. The crowning glory, however, was the writing of the flight control laws. It has led to a smooth, mellow flying machine which each and every one flying it has fallen in love with from the first flight onwards. Contrary to half-baked reports, the involvement of Lockheed-Martin was limited to intense technical discussions with a full team of Indian engineers, who started developing the control laws. They were locked out of their work-places literally at an hour's notice on the clamping of sanctions. All the work for the first version, which a member of the team says was slightly rough at the edges, typical for version 1.0 efforts, was left behind. The team went to work again from first principles, and the result is flying now. So much for Lockheed-Martin having built the control laws. For those who have read 'The Mythical Man-month', this illustrates the maxim that in a large software project, the first step is to make one to throw away.
There were failures. The worst was Kaveri, which was crippled by sanctions. Everything had been built around the supply of certain critical components. I am not sure that I should even talk about it. Another setback was the AESA radar development. And that was about it. For a ground-up effort, this was magnificent. Some tuppenny-ha'penny wet-behind-the-ears undergraduate should not cause such a storm of reaction unless we are ourselves actually ignorant about what happened. I am quite irritated at the slavish efforts still being made to try and convince those who have clearly set themselves up to have some fun at the expense of our more combustible members.
