State-owned defence and aerospace major Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) is all set to operationalise an all-new dedicated plant to manufacture Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas fighter jets in Bengaluru and the facility is likely to be inaugurated by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh tomorrow (2 February), reports Times of India.
The development gains significance as the new unit will have the capacity to manufacture 16 LCA jets a year. This would be in addition to the jets manufactured at the existing LCA manufacturing plant and the company's Aircraft Division which has also begun to manufacture LCAs.
This comes after the Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi led Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) recently approved the procurement of 83 LCA Tejas Mark-1A fighter jets for the Indian Air Force (IAF) at a cost of Rs 46,898 crore.
The order includes 73 fighter jets and 10 trainer jet, and the Mark-1A platform will boast of 43 improvements over the Mark-1 jets for which the IAF has already placed orders before.
The manufacturing of the Mark-1A platform involves contributions from a host of private sector companies which include the likes of VEM Technologies, DTL, Larsen & Toubro, Alpha Toccol, TAML, Data Patterns, Pendios, Compupower and many others.