First squadron of LCA to be stationed in Sulur base: DRDO

The first squadron of Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas would be located at Sulur Airbase near Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, a senior DRDO official said.

Twenty LCAs would be stationed at Sulur in the first phase by early next year and as many aircraft would be added to the squadron subsequently, RDO Chief Controller (R&D) W. Selvamurthy said, adding, requisite facilities including hanger and runway were being put in place.

Similarly another fleet of 40 LCAs, designed by DRDO and manufactured by the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, would be stationed at an airbase near Dindigul in Tamil Nadu by the second half of next year, he told reporters on Tuesday.

The Defence ministry had already attested initial operation clearance last year and LCA's Air and Naval variants had already been rolled out. He said DRDO was also planned to develop unmanned aerial vehicle in four versions and prototype models had already been made. The fifth version of Agni cruise missile with a 5,000km range is likely to be demonstrated by January.

Selvamurthy, who is also in-charge of international cooperation wing of DRDO, said several pacts were envisaged with countries like USA, UK, France, Israel and Belarus to develop Joint Ventures for production of ultra modern weapons and equipment for Defence purposes.

He said an Indo-US joint technology group has been set up to develop foliage penetration radars and ground penetration radars which would help in anti-terrorist and anti-insurgency operations.

A two-year time frame had been set to design and develop the related products. Earlier, addressing the students of National Institute of Technology here, he said DRDO would recruit a minimum of 5,000 people, including 3,000 scientists, in the next six months.

DRDO with over 50 laboratories across the country has a headcount of 30,000 including about 8,000 scientists.

He said orders worth Rs20,000 crores have been received for AKASH cruise missiles from different defence establishments in the world.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/97490" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: &lt;a&gt; &lt;em&gt; &lt;strong&gt; &lt;cite&gt; &lt;code&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;ol&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;dl&gt; &lt;dt&gt; &lt;dd&gt;</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-e255b8efbea029e2f66bed15bbc2d496" value="form-e255b8efbea029e2f66bed15bbc2d496" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="85672505" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>

No Articles Found

No Articles Found

No Articles Found

I want to begin with a little story that was told to me by a leading executive at Aptech. He was exercising in a gym with a lot of younger people.

Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen didn’t make the cut. Neither did Shaji Karun’s Piravi, which bagged 31 international awards.