Early indigenous aircrafts of India

Many budding defense enthusiasts are under the misconception that LCA Tejas is the first indigenous aircraft built by India. They are probably unaware of the indigenous fighter bomber - The HF-24 Marut which India has already built and operated fighter bombers way back in early 60's.



Designed by famous German designer Kurt Tank and built by Hindustan Aeronautics, now HAL, the Hindustan Fighter HF-24 Marut was India's first jet aircraft, flying first on 17 June 1961. Even though it was designed as a supersonic aircraft, it was never flown in its full potential because of the lack of suitable power.


After the first nuclear tests by India in 1974, international sanctions prevented India from acquiring suitable engines to power this aircraft at supersonic speeds. Even the spares for the existing engines were difficult to obtain because of the international denials. This forced IAF towards the early retirement of the aircraft from the service.


Even though lack of power heavily curtailed the potential of this aircraft, it received laurels from the pilots because of its excellent flight characteristics and is liked by all pilots.It was used in combat in the ground attack role, where its safety features such as manual controls whenever the hydraulic systems failed and twin engines were looked upon favorably and increased survivability.


Taking to this favorable features, a total of 147 aircraft are built for IAF. Last Marut in IAF colours flew in the year 1990 before getting retired from active service. Plans were also drawn to build HF -73, an uprated and reheated version of its predecessor HF-24. This new aircraft is supposedly shared many design features of Su-25 of soviet except that it does not have variable geometry wings. However, it was never productionized as the test flight of reheated HF-24 with a new engine failed miserably when it crashed killing the test pilot. This made the plans of building HF-73 to remain at drawing boards. Later on, IAF went ahead and ordered Soviet origin MiG-21's to fill that role.

Two decades later, India again started folding sleeves to build a modern, supersonic jet fighter to replace aging MiG-21's and to add punch to its arsenals, The LCA Tejas. Even though India doesn't have any technological sanctions on it when new plans are drawn, it is still a difficult task as it has to close the technology gap created over the two decades. This proved to be a daunting task and when everything looked fine, the second round of nuclear tests have again created hindrances for acquiring critical technologies which further delayed LCA. LCA, is now currently undergoing rigorous flight tests and is again facing the same problem of low engine power as its older cousin Marut.

Now that they are planing to rechristen LCA Tejas as HF, lets pray to God that it gets only the name and not the fate.


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