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The Hindu
13 hours ago
- Business
- The Hindu
On a wing and a prayer
On April 4, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research – National Aerospace Laboratories (CSIR-NAL) announced that it had entered into a 'historic agreement' with a private company, Pioneer Clean AMPS Pvt Ltd, to manufacture the upgraded version of the Hansa-3, called the Hansa-3 NG (Next Generation). This two-seater trainer aircraft gives trainee pilots the opportunity to practise within India while undergoing their basic flying training. Touted as 'India's only government R&D organisation in civil aircraft development', CSIR-NAL is in Bengaluru and was established in 1959. 'While we have had a successful track record, we have now managed to seal a partnership with a private company, which will manufacture these planes,' N. Kalaiselvi, Director-General, CSIR, had said at the launch event held in Delhi. It was also presided over by Union Minister for Science and Technology Jitendra Singh and Minister for Civil Aviation Ram Mohan Naidu. Pioneer Clean AMPS Pvt Ltd is three years old and expected to set up manufacturing facilities as well as handle marketing, servicing, and after-sales. NAL will be closely involved in the initial years to help the company with various aspects of manufacturing and operations, says Abhay Pashilkar, Director, CSIR-NAL. Kishore Patel, founder and managing director of the Mumbai-based company, says his experience in business lay in the chemicals and automotive sector, but he decided to venture into aircraft manufacturing because of the opportunities and untapped potential. In the past year, he has organised a team of experts from the aviation sector, including engineers and scientists from organisations such as Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd — India's workhorse producer of defence aircraft — to be able to manufacture the Hansa-3 (NG). 'The aviation sector is rapidly growing and with that, the demand for trained pilots. We expect locally manufactured aircraft trainers to be cheaper and offer quick turnaround time for maintenance than foreign planes,' he said on the sidelines of a press event to announce the technology transfer. The making of a plane The NAL, a cluster of buildings spread out on a verdant campus of centenarian banyan and peepal trees, was intended to be away from the city. Few public labs in India can boast of having their own runways. Among these, the CSIR-NAL runway — a bluish grey rectangle of tarred road improbably laid out in a vast grassy field — is unique. It isn't your everyday airstrip intended for the private planes of the privileged. It is meant for planes imagined, designed, crafted, welded, and assembled on the campus. Even a small plane going awry mid-flight can be an aerial coffin for the pilot, and at worst, a crashing inferno of a public hazard. Therefore, every plane, when it flies for the first time, is a nerve-wracking experience for the engineers, designers, and technicians behind it because of the many things that could go wrong. It's inevitable that a runway and a surrounding vista, far from a bustling city, be built into a facility made to make planes. In one of these buildings is a cavernous workshop. There is a smattering of plane-parts: fuselage, wings, cockpit, propeller in various degrees of assembly, with none having reached their denouement. Like the baking moulds used to create cookies or cakes in assorted shapes, the fuselage — or the main spindle-shaped body of the plane where passengers and pilot are seated — is made by layering multiple layers of 'composites' like glass fibre, carbon fibre, and aluminium over spindle-shaped moulds. Depending on whether the plane will be a two-seater or a five-seater, the placing of the plane's engines, the positions where the wings will be, different fuselage is employed. There are large 'layup' machines housed in various locations of the workshop. Like the handlooms that spin out fabric, these machines can spin out the 'composites' used to make wings or any other parts. 'You can have up to 70 layers of composite depending on which part of the plane is involved and how they must be attached to the fuselage,' explains Abbani Rinku, Chief Scientist and the person in charge of CSIR-NAL's flagship Hansa (Swan) category of planes. First flight On May 11, 1998, three nuclear tests were conducted deep in Rajasthan's Pokhran desert, the first time such bombs had gone off since 1974, in a move by India to 'announce' its status as a nuclear power. It's the reason that India annually commemorates this day as Technology Day. Nearly 2,000 km away in Bengaluru, another tech event took place: the inaugural test flight of the Light Trainer Aircraft Hansa-3 Prototype II. Speaking in Parliament on June 8, 1998, then Education and Science Minister Murli Manohar Joshi said, 'This aircraft is a prototype designed, developed, and manufactured by National Aerospace Laboratories, Bangalore.' The production of the aircraft was to be taken up towards the end of 1998 by a private sector company in Bengaluru. The expected cost of production was ₹30 lakh per aircraft. NAL had entered into an agreement with Taneja Aerospace and Aviation (TAA), which had a manufacturing base in Hosur, Karnataka, to make the plane. Out of the 14 Hansa planes that were manufactured, one was made by TAA, says Rinku. However, he doesn't explain why more planes weren't manufactured by the company. They have all been given to flying clubs used by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and were being used as trainer-aircraft for pilots in training. The upgraded version of the Hansa-3 that will be made by Pioneer is a far more evolved variant of the one from Joshi's time. The aircraft offers a digital display (glass cockpit) system and is powered by an advanced fuel-efficient Rotax 912 iSc3 Sports engine and bubble canopy with a cabin width of 43 inches. It is equipped with electrically operated flaps to meet the user's requirements. It can fly up to 620 nautical miles and has 7-hour endurance and maximum cruise speed of 98 knots calibrated airspeed (KCAS). All of this also translates to the Hansa costing around ₹3 crore, a 10-fold spike. Pashilkar says it is still half the cost of an equivalent imported plane, and with the manufacturing and repairs expected to be handled locally, have a lower 'down-time' than comparable ones. Moreover, he added, the real draw of the plane is that many more pilots can be trained within India (today, several must go abroad for their licences). It will meet what Naidu projected as an 'explosive' demand for planes and pilots in India. The country will need 30,000 pilots in the next 15-20 years, with 1,700 planes to be added to the fleet, he had said. Manufacturing blues The CSIR-NAL is a research agency. Its mandate is in designing new planes. This means experimenting with every component of the aircraft — wings, fuselage, tail, propeller — and figuring out new ways of making planes lighter and more durable. They are also expected to design planes for a range of purposes, for instance as air-ambulances, or transporting cargo, or chartered planes, or fuselage of varying lengths to run smaller planes that can be used in towns and cities, sans full-sized airports. These new designs can then be taken up by private manufacturing companies that can make these planes in bulk, service them, find new markets, export, and most importantly establish the complex chain of intermediary manufacturers and suppliers of the complex hardware that must all be integrated into the manufacture of an aircraft. Despite successfully designing two-seater planes such as the Hansa and a 14-seater plane, Saras, the NAL hasn't yet been able to successfully rope in an Indian company that will manufacture its planes. In 2018, the CSIR-NAL made significant upgrades to the Hansa-3, including integrating a glass-cockpit as well as significantly improved avionics and instrumentation. It announced a partnership with Mesco Aerospace Pvt Ltd to design and manufacture the Hansa-3 NG. The 'targeted' cost of manufacturing the plane would be ₹80 lakh-₹100 lakh, an accompanying press release had said then. Rinku says while Mesco showed interest in producing the NG plane, the firm couldn't continue beyond one year. 'There were reportedly some internal issues (with the company) but nothing to do with the aircraft or its design. While we had signed an agreement to be involved right from the stage of designing the aircraft, we didn't progress to the stage of production,' he adds. This forced NAL to look for a new partner to design the Hansa-3 NG, and after four years of search found a partner in Pioneer. It isn't because the manufacturing of plane parts, assembling them, or establishing workshops is technically daunting that only research institutions like the CSIR-NAL or the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (which makes defence aeronautical systems) are capable of. In America, Pashilkar says, the Hansa category of planes would come under the 'home-built' category. The Hansa has its origins in a category of planes called the Light Canard Research Aircraft (LCRA), a Long-EZ aircraft developed by pioneering American aerospace engineer and designer Burt Rutan and put together in 1985 at NAL by a team led by Rustom Damania. Over the 300 hours that the plane was flown in its lifetime, engineers and scientists discovered practical challenges, including the use of composites. 'We simply imported it as a knock-down kit, assembled it ourselves, then flew it. Even today, these are categorised as home-built planes and so in theory can be built by anyone. Despite all the know-how and potential, it is challenging to get a private manufacturer,' says Pashilkar. Among the concerns that potential manufacturers raised were the availability of trained and skilled manpower. 'There's huge attrition in this industry. Yes, setting up the facilities to manufacture plane parts aren't that challenging, but it requires extremely skilful people.' For a plane like Hansa, it is essential that every component be made to the exact weight specifications. 'We can now make it to within a kg of the required weight. Few organisations in India can do that. Take welding. While it sounds simple, only a few organisations — like HAL — have been approved by aviation regulators to be able to weld components. Aviation is a highly regulated sector, and you can't go to a corner shop,' explains Pashilkar. 'A car, if it malfunctions on the road, can be taken to the roadside for fixing. You can't do that for an aircraft. Hence, the making and manufacture — given the risks — of even the smallest part is tightly regulated. This deters private sector participation.' Then there's the challenge of importing the raw material to make the composites. 'With so few manufacturers, nobody produces these materials in India. And because nobody makes enough of this, there are few manufacturers, necessitating imports. You add up all the demand for civilian planes — an existing fleet of about 800 with 1,200 in the next five years — and it still doesn't make commercial sense for a private manufacturer to set up a foundry (to make raw materials) in India,' Pashilkar reckons. Another challenge is finding pilots. The NAL does not have pilots of its own, and given that these are test planes, it depends on pilots from the Indian Air Force. 'Whether it is Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd, or us, there is always a shortage of pilots. Because there are different certification requirements for civil and military aircraft, we face delays in flying our test aircraft,' rues Pashilkar. By the rules under which NAL works, any private manufacturer has to first replicate NAL's manufacturing facilities. 'Following this, they can come to our facilities and get help with making the first prototype; then we can go to theirs for the next one,' explains Pashilkar. 'This time, we've reduced technology transfer fees and given them two-year access to our facilities. Aircraft manufacturing is full of challenges in India, but we persevere.' Edited by Sunalini Mathew
Economic Times
27-05-2025
- Business
- Economic Times
India to develop two-seater electric trainer aircraft: Jitendra Singh
India has commenced developing the Electric Hansa (E-Hansa), a two-seater electric trainer aircraft, spearheaded by CSIR-NAL, Bengaluru. Expected to cost around Rs 2 crore, it's significantly cheaper than imported alternatives. E-Hansa aligns with India's green aviation goals, promoting clean energy fuel in aircraft and offering a cost-effective, indigenous pilot training solution. Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads India has initiated the process to develop Electric Hansa ( E-Hansa ), a next-generation two-seater electric trainer aircraft , Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh said on Tuesday. Singh said it is a matter of pride that the new aircraft is being indigenously developed by the CSIR-National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL), E-Hansa trainer aircraft is expected to cost significantly less than imported alternatives, possibly around Rs 2 crore. This is roughly half the price of a comparable imported trainer aircraft, Singh said during a monthly meeting to review the progress of various science departments.E-Hansa is part of the larger HANSA-3 (NG) trainer aircraft programme, which is designed to be a cost-effective and indigenous option for pilot training in India , an official statement E-Hansa aircraft will also mark a key step towards India's green aviation goals and the use of green or clean energy fuel in running aircraft in the country, the minister said.
Time of India
27-05-2025
- Science
- Time of India
India to develop two-seater electric trainer aircraft: Jitendra Singh
India has initiated the process to develop Electric Hansa ( E-Hansa ), a next-generation two-seater electric trainer aircraft , Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh said on Tuesday. Singh said it is a matter of pride that the new aircraft is being indigenously developed by the CSIR-National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL), Bengaluru. The E-Hansa trainer aircraft is expected to cost significantly less than imported alternatives, possibly around Rs 2 crore. This is roughly half the price of a comparable imported trainer aircraft, Singh said during a monthly meeting to review the progress of various science departments. E-Hansa is part of the larger HANSA-3 (NG) trainer aircraft programme, which is designed to be a cost-effective and indigenous option for pilot training in India , an official statement said. Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Óculos militar, perfeito para pescarias, dirigir, caminhadas Óculos Max Saiba Mais Undo The E-Hansa aircraft will also mark a key step towards India's green aviation goals and the use of green or clean energy fuel in running aircraft in the country, the minister said.
Time of India
12-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
‘Lucknow unit will play key role in design, development of BrahMos NG': Former BrahMos Aerospace CEO & MD Sudhir Kumar Mishra
Distinguished scientist, former director general (BrahMos), DRDO, and former CEO and MD of BrahMos Aerospace, Sudhir Kumar Mishra, in an interview with Arvind Chauhan, shared details about the BrahMos manufacturing unit in Lucknow. Excerpts: Why BrahMos manufacturing unit in Lucknow? BrahMos Aerospace already has units in Hyderabad, Nagpur and Pilani, with its headquarters in Delhi. The new Lucknow unit has been established to meet the increasing requirements of the Indian armed forces, as capacity at existing sites is already saturated. Three years ago, I met chief minister Yogi Adityanath to request land for the new unit. He asked me to survey available land and assured me that if I didn't like it, another location would be considered. Operation Sindoor 'Our job is to hit target, not to count body bags': Air Marshal Bharti on Op Sindoor Precautionary blackout imposed across parts of Rajasthan, Punjab 'Indian Navy was in position to strike Karachi': Vice Admiral on Operation Sindoor The then additional chief secretary Awanish Kumar Awasthi, who was also head of UPIEDA, showed the land and promised swift allotment. Over 200 acres were allotted within two weeks. Present leadership of Uttar Pradesh is very progressive and proactive. If you go to other states, you will realize that there are problems of land, manpower and a quick response from the administration. What can we expect from BrahMos manufacturing unit? Will it also produce NG version? Initially, the Lucknow facility will roll out existing BrahMos missile to meet increased demand, but its specific purpose is to manufacture BrahMos NG (next generation) missile. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Click Here To Read More - micro segmentation software Expertinspector Click Here Undo The BrahMos NG will have a range of 300km, equal to the current missile, but will be significantly lighter, at 1.2 tonnes (1,200 kg) compared to the existing model's 2,900kg. BrahMos NG would be integrated on Sukhoi 30. Currently, Su-30 can integrate only one missile, but with NG version, five missiles can be integrated: four on Light Combat Aircraft. On land and ship versions, instead of three missiles, six or eight can be packed, thanks to the reduced size. This approach maintains effectiveness while increasing numbers and reducing costs, ensuring steady supply to the armed forces. Will the Lucknow unit also participate in the design and development of BrahMos NG before starting its mass production? The Lucknow facility will be central to producing BrahMos NG. The missile system is under development, with the Lucknow unit participating in design, development and manufacturing. The Lucknow facility will become a major integration centre for the missile and will require a robust supply chain. Tier 1, 2 & 3 suppliers are expected to move operations to Lucknow and join the defence corridor. Industries such as the PTC industry, and many more are expected to join. These industries are spread over Noida, Greater Noida, Kanpur and other places. What's the scope of employment generation at BrahMos manufacturing facility in Lucknow? The facility will require mechanical, electrical, civil and software engineers, both directly and for vendors. For every 100 jobs created at the facility, about 1,000 jobs are expected to be generated through vendors, due to the supply chain ripple effect. Each engineering job in manufacturing can create up to 20 downstream jobs in transport, communication, food and support services. We projected around 400 direct jobs at the facility, which could create employment for at least 25,000 people over five years, with an expanded impact on families. The credit goes to defence minister and Lucknow MP Rajnath Singh for his support and belief in the city's capabilities. We appreciate Lucknow's culture which is soft and decent. Get the latest lifestyle updates on Times of India, along with Mother's Day wishes , messages , and quotes !
India.com
11-05-2025
- Business
- India.com
India's deadly supersonic cruise missile is five times deadlier and more dangerous now for enemy, the missile is..., it can now...
BrahMos Next Generation: The BrahMos Next Generation (NG) supersonic cruise missile, being developed for the first time in India, will enhance the strike capability of all three armed forces. It will weigh less than half of the current BrahMos missile in terms of weight and cost. More missiles can be loaded onto the Su-30 fighter aircraft than before. The first batch of the most advanced BrahMos-NG will be ready in the next year. Meanwhile, the first BrahMos missile currently in use has been completed. Its delivery will take place on Sunday, 11 May 2025. Dr. Sudhir Mishra, the then MD and CEO of BrahMos Aerospace, played a crucial role in setting up the BrahMos production unit in Lucknow. He is currently an advisor at DRDO. Dr. Mishra told about the features of this center while talking to Dainik Jagran. The production of BrahMos-NG is being undertaken as a joint venture between India and Russia. The existing BrahMos missile weighs 2900 kilograms, while the missile with NG technology will weigh only 1260 kilograms. With the modification, the Sukhoi aircraft will be able to load up to five missiles instead of one. Its range will be 300 km. The Army's system will be able to load six missiles instead of three at a time. The capacity of naval warships will also increase. Currently, BrahMos is produced in Thiruvananthapuram, Nagpur, Hyderabad, and Pilani. Lucknow will be its fifth production unit, but the NG technology missile will only be produced in Lucknow. Currently, 80 to 100 existing missiles are produced every year. In the next year, 100 to 150 NG missiles will begin to be produced. Then a total of 250 missiles of both types will be able to be produced each year. To meet the increasing demand for this missile from all three units of armed forces, the plan for establishing another production center was made and work commenced in December 2021.
