Indian Navy's LCA to be ready in two years: Admiral Arun Prakash

Mumbai, Apr 4 (UNI) The naval version of Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) is expected to be ready in two to two-and-a-half years and would be fully inducted in the blue-water navy in another few years, Chief of Naval Staf Admiral Arun Prakash today said.

Interacting with the mediapersons here after flagging off a naval sailors' adventure expedition to Cochin, Admiral Prakash expressed satisfaction over what he saw during his recent visit to Bangalore where the naval variant of the LCA was being developed, saying LCA would provide more teeth to the Navy.

Asked about the recent reports in the US media suggesting the visit of an Iranian naval team to India possibly coming as one of the obstacles in the passage of the Indo-US nuclear accord through the Capitol Hill, Admiral Prakash described such reports as ''totally misplaced due to some misunderstanding.'' In fact, the Iranian cadets had come here on a goodwill visit only.

Replying to queries about recent controversy over the World-Wide Web (WWW) search engine 'Google' making public, the details of defence-related sensitive sites in India, he said these were already known and were merely ''five to six month old images''.

The difference was that Google provided them for free while others interested got it for a fee.

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