Naval LCA spotted with Tail Hook

Source: Defense Barta

After years of speculation about the future of the naval variant of the LCA where the so called intellectuals termed it as a dead project, since it was grounded without any activities or flights in recent months,  LCA is spotted with the Tail hook.

     The naval prototype NP2 or KH3002 has been spotted taking to skies with tail hook attached,  putting end to the speculation of its future,  tail hook assists in arrested landing of the aircraft on the short runways and also on the aircraft carriers,  after few nations, US, France, Russia, China India will the only country today that are producing carrier capable fighter jets, though there have been more countries in this list in the past but today it has shrunk to just these five countries.

     The software and hardware upgrades necessary have been carried out and the program is now progressing at finetuning the arrested landing, The two naval prototypes one and two have successfully cleared the skyjmp takeoffs successfully, now its the turn of arrested landing of the aircraft.

      Though the Naval chief showed no interest in the program citing the aircraft is underpowered  the technology that is developed will power the future of the naval aviation, apart from that the naval LCA variant can be postitioned in the Andaman and Nicobar islands and can be used on short runways with arrested landings where the islands in smaller sizes can also field these tejas aircraft.  

     If developed successfully it has potential to power the philiphines and the vietnam countries with shortrunways and arrested landing techniques where long runways may not possible,   it gives quick scrambling of fighter aircrafts to counter the common adversary the China.

     LCA program was designed to counter the present and the future threat of the Chinese and the Pakistan,  the main forcus was on the heavy fighter the Chinese poses,  LCA in terms of its structure can be described as the semi stealth aircraft, and also the smallest in its category with capabilities beyond its category.

Navy is closely watching the MCW program or the TejasMK2 program which could also evolve into the naval variant and in future AMCA can also power the navy if possible even the FGFA can power the navy if India poses the INS Vishal in next ten years.