Decision on MRCA likely by September

(India Strategic) Bangalore. India should select the Medium Multi Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) by mid-2011, or latest by September.   Releasing the Aero India special edition of India Strategic defence magazine  on the opening day of the Aero India 2011 here, Chief of Air Staff of the Indian Air Force, Air Chief Marshal P V Naik, said that the progress of the evaluation process was going on satisfactorily and that he expected the decision by the middle of this year, or latest by August or September. The Indian Air Force had completed the technical trials and submitted the report on time, and the process of evaluating the Transfer of Technology, Offsets and pricing was moving forward in the Ministry of Defence (MoD) appropriately, and he expected commercial negotiations also to begin very soon. The first meeting of the commercial negotiations committee is likely to be held next month, he indicated. But he did not say if any one or more aircraft had been down-selected or short-listed. Air Chief Marshal Naik described the Tejas Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) as a milestone in developing indigenous aerospace capabilities. India Strategic’s Aero India edition also quotes DRDO’s Chief Controller and Distinguished Scientist Dr Prahlada as saying that the next step in developing the indigenous capability was the Medium Combat Aircraft (MCA), which should be operational in the next decade. Preliminary design work on this aircraft had already begun.
The edition also quotes Chairman and Managing Director Ashok Nayak of HAL as saying that the current model of LCA, of which the IAF had orderd 40, was “jampacked with avionics, pipelines and wiring” but its Mark II version would be longer by a meter with room to “reallocate” systems. “It will have a fresh internal design with more wiring , bus and whatever although it would be a replica of its predecessor in looks.”