TEJAS
India's Light Combat Aircraft (LCA)

LCA taxi trial The Light Combat Aircraft or LCA is one of the most ambitious aircraft projects to be taken up in India. It is an agile, fly-by-wire aircraft with artificial stability, designed as a tailless double delta. The 17 years that elapsed between concept and first flight resulted from the need for a quantum jump in design and fabrication technology in India.

The photograph on the right, taken during taxi-trials show the "double delta" wing configuration. The LCA is designed to be supersonic at all altitudes, and as a multi-role combat aircraft wrth BVR intercept capability and smart attack weapons.

The LCA's first flight took place on 4th January 2001. The picture below is of the first two prototypes taking off together (courtesy Sanjay Simha) at a function in which the LCAwas formally naled "Tejas", meaning "Radiance".
















LCA video clip Click on the animated graphic at right to see an MPEG video clip (32 sec, 373 KB) of the LCA's first take off and landing.




Tejas Weapons

The picture on the left shows the range of armament that the multirole Tejas will carry. This includes standoff air to surface precision guided weapons, Beyond Visual Range air-to-air missiles, dumb bombs and rockets and cannon armament.


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