I am not here to collect thanks. Then you tell me which country took 25 yrs to develop such a tiny 4th gen fighter. Its soo small that even if it does get inducted, I don't find anything to be proud off. Do you??? Will you proudly say in 30 yrs we built a 5 tonne single engined fighter that still cant fire missiles.
I don't agree with you, but it's a nice and honest post! In 50 years from now I hope to say that LCA served our forces as a good fighter and that it sets the base for an aero industry that today (2062) is more than able to compete with the counterparts from any top nation. That's enough for me, because I don't want to be proud of the fighter, I just put my hope on it as a good low end fighter, that hopefully is more reliable than the Migs it will replace and in the fact that our aero industry needs to start somewhere.
It was clear that it wouldn't be easy and we did a lot of mistakes (making LCA A2G capable before the radar and missiles are inducted is another one, but speakes volume about the mismanagement of the development), but the fact that we made mistakes on the way, doesn't make the whole project a bad one!
Similarly, only because the engine and radar developments failed, it doesn't mean that the whole fighter development has, because that are only sidenotes, that should have been de-linked earlier. We hopefully will learn from these mistakes and won't do it in the next development and if that is the case (although I'm not sure about it), it will be worth it at the end.
Blame it on the bloody bucking system...
I say blame it on our mentality! We want to be "proud" and show off what we achieved with it, although it's "just" a light class fighter. That's why the companies that build it, wanted to do anything alone, although it was clear that they couldn't do it. That's also why IN want it as a carrier fighter, because like any Indian, we want what our neighbor has as well...
With this kind of a mentality, you have to loose sight of what is important and what is not, of what should be the aim and what is the fastest way to achieve it. You simply want more and more, aim higher and higher, while you still are not able to do the basics.
Bottom line is, it was right to develop it, it is important to stick with it until it is in operational service, but even more important is to analyse the mistakes that was done and to learn from them. Because besides providing our forces a low cost, but reliable fighter with good potential (not a super duper high end best in the world...fighter like many believe), learning and increasing knowledge was the main aim behind the development!