EXPLAINER: India’s quest for indigenous transport aircraft gains momentum
The inauguration of TATA Aircraft Complex today by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Spanish counterpart Pedro Sanchez in Gujarat's Vadodara marked a significant milestone in India’s aviation sector. However, it also highlighted the country’s struggle to design and develop its own transport planes. While India has made strides in developing fighter aircraft like Tejas, helicopters like Dhruv and Prachand, and trainers like HTTP-32, Kiran, and the Advance Jet Trainer, projects like Saras and Regional Transport Aircraft (RTA) face challenges.
The complex will assemble the European consortium C-295 tactical aircraft, making it the first private facility in India to manufacture aircraft. This development follows the public sector Hindustan Aeronautics Limited’s (HAL) assembly of the German Dornier Do-228.
The Indian Air Force (IAF) relies heavily on its transport aircraft fleet for war-fighting capabilities, disaster management, and airlifting relief teams. The fleet consists of over 200 Russian, US, and European origin aircraft, categorised into strategic, tactical, and VIP transport.
India’s tryst with transport aircraft began with the Douglas Dakota that made its mark in World War II. Soviet planes began entering the IAF service in 1955 with the IL-14, followed by the An-12 in 1961. Soviet machines thereafter dominated the transport fleet with the procurement of the IL-76 strategic freighters and the AN-32 tactical transporters in the mid-80s. By then the western aircraft had retired barring the 1960s vintage Avro-748 twin-engine tactical aircraft, some of which continue to remain in service and are being replaced by the C-295.
In the earlier part of the previous decade, the IAF again inducted western aircraft, with the Lockheed C-130J Super Hercules special operations aircraft joining the fleet in 2011 followed by the Boeing C-17 Globemaster heavy-lift aircraft in 2013.
The IL-76 and the C-17 greatly expanded the IAF’s airlift capability. Besides giving a fillip to air maintenance to the northern sector, these enabled the Army to position T-72 tanks and BMP armoured combat vehicles in Ladakh against China. The IL-76s were first employed strategically in 1988, when Special Forces were airlifted from Agra to Maldives for thwarting a coup attempt. These were also used to ferry troops, tanks and vehicles to Sri Lanka for the Indian Peacekeeping Force during “Operation Pawan”.
During the 2020 military confrontation with China, it was the C-17 that enabled airlift of the latest T-90 tanks to the Himalayan frontier as given their weight, the use of IL-76 was not feasible. The C-17s, of which 11 are in service, along with IL-76 and other aircraft such as C-130, AN-32 maintained a constant air bridge to Ladakh to build up troop concentration and stock up war supplies.
Over the past years, the serviceability of the Russian transport aircraft has become an issue due to their depleting technical life and difficulty in sourcing spares. Some of the IAF’s AN-32 were upgraded in Ukraine a few years ago and more aircraft are being upgraded by HAL at its Kanpur plant. The IAF is also looking at extending the life of the IL-76 of which 14 are in service along with another six IL-78 mid-air refuelers that can double up as conventional transport aircraft.
Given the supply-chain issues, the IAF has been, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, laying great focus on indigenising aero-spares to keep aircraft fly worthy, with thousands of critical components and sub-systems now being manufactured by the local industry with support from the Air Force. This has now resulted in laying the groundwork for an aviation eco-system.
In 1991, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research’s National Aerospace Laboratory (NAL) in Bangalore embarked on a project to design and develop a twin-engine light 19-seater transport aircraft but technical issues, including excessive weight cropped up. Two prototypes were built out of which one crashed in 2009, killing two pilots and a flight engineer.
The project was cancelled in 2013 over lack of funds, but later revived in 2017 with a new design, called Saras PTN-1. The reconfiguration included structural changes, replacing the two rear-facing fuselage mounted engines near the tail to forward facing wing mounted engines, new avionics and sub-systems and reducing the cabin capacity to 14 seats.
The new variant first flew in 2018 and trials are still underway. A 19-seater and an ambulance version is also on the cards. The IAF as well as the Indian Navy are potential customers for the Saras, with an initial requirement of 60 aircraft.
HAL and NAL are also engaged in designing a 90-seater aircraft, referred to as the Regional Transport Aircraft (RTA), that would have a range of about 2,500 km and be capable of operating from short runways.
The RTA project was launched in 2007 and several conceptual and technical changes were suggested thereafter, including the use of jet turbofans instead of a turbo-prop. It was only in 2021 that final go-ahead for developing a propeller aircraft was given by the government and 2026 is the probable year for its first flight. The aircraft, primarily intended for civilian use, would have to be adapted and modified to meet the operational requirements of the defence forces.
Aircraft exclusively for the military can be adapted for civilian use and vice-versa. The Dornier, which was originally built as a civilian aircraft, has been adapted for military use by HAL in collaboration with the IAF by incorporating several additional features and capabilities, including carrying weapons. Two years ago, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation certified the use of HAL-made Dorniers for civilian use in India. The IL-76 is another example of a military aircraft being used by several overseas civilian operators for commercial cargo flights.
