President Kalam calls for aggressive market for LCA

Bangalore, Dec 18 (UNI) President A P J Abdul Kalam today exhorted the Aeronautical Development Agency and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited to aggressively market the indigenously developed Light Combat Aircraft.

Inaugurating a three day International Conference on Trends in Product Lifecycle-Modeling, Simulation and Synthesis-PLMSS 2006 here, he said the important capabilities in the manufacturing of the LCA reflected the level of maturity of capability that were needed for competitive aircraft system production. The digital fly-by-wire control system and the control laws developed for LCA with the formation of national team, made the aircraft state-of-the-art, he observed. The programme demonstrated the Indian capabilities in many areas such as aircraft design, advanced composites, safety systems and operational standards, Dr Kalam added.

He said the LCA had been successfully flight tested and was going to the production phase. ''It is time HAL and ADA have top aggressively market the LCA aircraft. With the technologies involved in the making of LCA, the next generation medium combat aircraft was bound to take shape,'' he noted, saying that the aeronautical community had crossed a major milestone when the first prototype of LCA had completed its successful demonstration.

Dr Kalam observed that during the period 1987-2000, LCA programme transformed itself into an exporter of software for composite parts from a Computer Aided Design Software importer. ADA should take necessary steps to convert a number of software, developed in the LCA programme, into marketable products to the aerospace industries, he exhorted.

UNI SR VD KN1527