India’s HAL Sets Up Second Production Line to Double Tejas Aircraft Production by 2019

Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) of India has set up a second production line to increase the yearly production of the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas aircraft from the current 8 per year to 16 per year.

To achieve this aim, HAL has decided to outsource about 70% of production work to 85 Indian companies.

Presently, HAL is manufacturing LCA Mk1 to execute an Indian MoD order for some 100 aircraft.

"Major sub-assemblies such as front fuselage, centre fuselage, rear fuselage, wings et al, have been outsourced to private industry. The orders have been placed and they need about a year to supply these. Soon, nearly 70% will be made by our industry," a senior official part of the LCA project was quoted as saying today by Times of India.

About 85 vendors, mostly privately owned firms will be involved in the production of LCA including Dynamatic Technologies  (front fuselage); VEM Technologies (centre fuselage); Alpha Tocol (rear fuselage); L&T (wings); while the tail fin and rudder will be supplied by National Aerospace Laboratory and Tata Advanced Materials.

HAL has established a second line series production of Tejas to expand the Tejas production to 16 fighters.

The number 45 squadron (Flying Daggers) of the Indian Air Force (IAF) has already taken possession of five LCA Tejas aircraft and will soon have the sixth one. "The sixth one is expected to fly in the next three days and the seventh in about 10 days. By end of March 2018, we hope to deliver 11 planes (including the five delivered)," the official was quoted by Times of India.