As you already admitted, you are full of your pride BS, that's why you don't see the reallity. Dhruv and LCA developments were completelly different, IF we had done LCA as Dhruv, it would be a success now!
Dhruv was designed by foreign partners, it used foreign core systems at first which were replaced with indigenous systems later, we formed JVs and co-developments (for Shakti engine for example) with foreign partners to gain know how and get modern techs according to our requirements. All this was sadly not done for LCA, because ADA and DRDO thought they could do it all alone.
That's exactly the reason why I am saying, that it's in our interest to keep things simple and constantly increase our capabilities, instead of dreaming big and failling even bigger!
But as long there are people like you that simply buy their promises and nobody takes them to account for their failures and mistakes, they will continue to do same mistakes on and on.
I am more than happy that the DM and the air Chief used Aero India to publically put more pressure on them and to showed the reality. Just like they are not as naiv as you are and pushing more and more for participation of our industry with foreign companies, be it the government owned or the privat once. Just like they understood the importance of ToT and offsets to imporve our industry, because if we remain with nothing but HOPE on our industry alone, we will remain to be disappointed.
Go through this thread
http://www.defence.pk/forums/indian-defence/233416-alh-dhruv-truth-first-hand.html
I am just highlighting the important points:
1. Against these very high benchmarks and somewhat sweeping and futuristic expectations, the Government set up a Negotiations Committee to explore the possibility of collaboration with Aerospatiale (France) or MBB (Germany).
2. The fact remains that some of the futuristic design options put forth by MBB were initially resounding failures. The project that was supposed to have progressed smoothly under the tutelage of advanced German technology, instead stumbled badly to almost a point of no-return and required extreme effort by our indigenous teams to recover, re-develop from basic design stages and optimise for production.
3. It would also appear that MBB had either over-estimated their capabilities or perhaps had even attempted to experiment the feasibility of some of these concepts at the cost of our project.
4. Abrupt Departure of MBB. During 1994-95, MBB’s involvement in design consultancy of the project abruptly ceased as their contract had expired and was not renewed for any further period. This period was crucial, as flights of the first prototypes were well underway and all the design related problems were showing up on test-benches, Ground Test Vehicle (GTV) and on the prototypes. Issues pertaining to repeated and early failures of the MGB, failures of the ARIS, weight increase, etc had very clearly manifested during this period. Whatever the imperatives of that decision were, the fact remains that this abrupt and untimely departure of MBB resulted in a whole lot of very problematic design issues relating to various complicated systems suddenly being tackled solely by designers of HAL. This was compounded by the fact that our designers did not have any previous experience. All this resulted in an iterative approach in attempting several design alternatives for rectification that sometimes did not work, usually required repetitious testing and almost always contributed to delays.
Main Gear Box(MGB)
(a) The MGB is designed to be compact, light-weight, yet capable of handling the high power output of the two turboshaft engines. It comprises only a two-stage reduction, with a large diameter central collective gear that has a titanium stub-shaft directly bolted onto it. The large diameter was mostly dictated by the need to run the control rods inside the rotor shaft. The stub-shaft in turn is attached to the titanium centre-piece that has the main rotor blades attached to it. The compact, squat and light-weight MGB frees up huge amounts of cabin space below, which is essentially the secret to the ALH’s excellent cabin volume. The project to develop the MGB was sub-contracted by MBB to ZF (Zahnradfabrik Friedrichshafen), Germany, a drive-train specialist that had previous aviation experience limited to developing and building gear boxes for the smaller MBB’s BK-117 and Bo-105 helicopters.
(b) Although ZF’s BK-117 MGB also uses a two-stage reduction, it has important differences in layout and geometry of the bevel and collective gears. Also, it handles only about half of the power of the ALH MGB. The first series of ALH MGBs were spectacular failures – these would not even last one hour of ground run on the Ground Test Vehicle (GTV). After every ground run, shed gear material would be found on the magnetic plugs indicating commencement of gear teeth failures. Initially ZF’s MGBs stubbornly refused to improve despite various efforts and this threatened to bring the whole project literally and figuratively to a grinding halt. After MBB (and ZF) left, it took our dedicated in-house transmission team many years of sweat and hard work, to recover the situation by going back to the drawing board, experiment with several remedial measures and introduce numerous modifications, so as to gradually bring the MGB to production standard. Obviously, this caused severe delays in the project.
ARIS Vibration Dampers
(a) Based on MBB’s recommendations, it had been decided to introduce a new high-tech three-axis vibration damping system to attenuate main rotor vibrations. There are four ARIS (Anti Resonance Isolation System) dampers and the MGB is mounted on these to isolate vibrations developed by the main rotor from the fuselage. Like the MGB, the initial ARIS design by MBB was another spectacular failure. All four ARIS failed halfway through the first flight itself and on return, all the four ARIS’s composite diaphragms were found cracked. Like the MGB, the ARIS proved to be another extremely difficult design failure to correct. Despite initial modifications, the ARIS springs used to routinely fail within 10 hours of flight. Again after MBB left, it was another herculean task again taken on by our in-house vibration analyses group to re-design, experiment and gradually bring the ARIS to a standard suited for production aircraft.
(b) Subsequently, it was learnt that MBB had worked in parallel on another version of vibration isolators and had installed a simpler two-axis SARIB vibration dampers on their Tiger attack helicopter, which uses a main rotor similar to the ALH. During an informal interaction many years later with MBB’s then chief designer for ALH in India, he candidly indicated to this author that the ARIS in his opinion was not an easy concept to implement and should not have been used for a first-time project like the ALH. Here it would appear that there was an attempt by MBB to experiment with an uncertain high-risk design option on our project.
Subsequently, it was learnt that MBB had worked in parallel on another version of vibration isolators and had installed a simpler two-axis SARIB vibration dampers on their Tiger attack helicopter, which uses a main rotor similar to the ALH. During an informal interaction many years later with MBB’s then chief designer for ALH in India, he candidly indicated to this author that the ARIS in his opinion was not an easy concept to implement and should not have been used for a first-time project like the ALH. Here it would appear that there was an attempt by MBB to experiment with an uncertain high-risk design option on our project.
This is the negative side of JV when other partner knows that you have no indigenous project of your own.
As far as LCA is concerned HAL+DRDO+ADA is responsible for only 30 % in delay, 50% responsibility lies with Air Force who from time to time tried to sabotage the project (not whole Air Force but a specific lobby) and rest 20% due to external factors like sanctions.