Recently, India suffered an unfortunate incident when its domestic fighter jet crashed.
According to reports, at the time, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was watching the military exercise, a domestic fighter named "Tejas" crashed.
Plane crashes are not uncommon in India; in fact, they seem to be a regular occurrence.
According to India's own website, nearly 2,000 aircraft have crashed in the country since its founding in 1950.
These planes not only caused heavy casualties among their pilots, but even nearly killed Ecuador's president during a military parade.
Moreover, whether it is a test flight or actual combat, or even a military parade, it is difficult to escape the fate of the crash.
This frequent plane crash, to India's aviation industry has brought great trouble, but also can not help but think: India's aviation industry in the end what the problem, even become the "world king"?
The fighter, named Tejas, is described as India's indigenous supersonic fighter.
However, although it has been 23 years since its first flight in 2001, it has not escaped the fate of the crash, which is not unusual in the history of Indian aircraft.
After all, crashing a few planes each year seems to have become the norm in India. In November last year, Modi even flew in the Tejas fighter jet for 30 minutes.
After the experience, Modi praised the aircraft as "the pride of India" and made a promotional pitch.
However, although the aircraft has made some progress in technology, there are few international orders.
There are two main reasons for this: First, the price tag for this fighter is unacceptably low at $85 million.
This does not include additional costs such as logistics, supplies, ammunition, training and upgrades.
In terms of performance, the flight time of the "Tejas" fighter is only 40 minutes, and the bomb load is only 4 tons, which is far less than the F-16, Su-35 and other heavy aircraft.
Compare that with the F-35 production version, which costs $80 million, and it's not hard to see where to go.
Second, there are doubts about the stability of the Tejas.
Although India claims that this is 100% domestic manufacturing, but from research and development to parts assembly, in fact, "glory" is more like a "patchwork monster", at best can only be regarded as India's domestic assembly.
The engines came from the United States, the radar and radio systems from Israel, the United Kingdom provided the refueling tube, the cockpit canopy and the ejection seat, France provided the cockpit and avionics equipment, and Russia provided the GSH-23L twin-barrel gun.
More than 40 percent of the parts of the entire Tejas are imported.
It can be said that the designer may be better at the design, but the manufacturing process is quite difficult.
Despite the fact that so many important parts are readily available and imported, it still took India 34 years to complete the piecing together of the aircraft.
At the beginning of the design, the plan was to introduce the Tejas into the use of aircraft carriers, but after testing by the Indian Navy, it was found that the aircraft was too heavy and underpowered to take off from the short deck of an aircraft carrier with a full load of fuel.
Although Modi had pressured the Indian Navy to buy Tejas, the navy warned that training pilots was not easy and was reluctant to put them at risk.
India's carrier-based aircraft also frequently crash accidents, which is largely related to India's unruly.
Carrier deck space is extremely limited, dozens of carrier aircraft weapons, refueling, as well as takeoff and landing need to be completed here, so carrier aircraft scheduling is a very complex problem.
However, India has adopted a simple and crude way to replace a valuable carrier-based aircraft tractor with a tractor of tens of thousands of dollars.
Although this approach seems to solve the problem, it has great security risks. The parking of carrier-based aircraft requires extremely high accuracy and stability, and tractors are difficult to meet this requirement.
In addition, the internal structure of modern warplanes is very complex, and the loss of any part during production and maintenance can lead to serious consequences.
However, India's production
The process is rough, and there are often more or less parts installed, which has significantly increased the accident rate of aircraft produced and maintained in India.
Although Hindustan Airways still holds a leading position in the country, the situation is thought-provoking.
If India does not strengthen its industrial strength and get rid of the name of the "king of the world", then the so-called domestic equipment strategy will always be just an empty phrase.
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