KOLKATA: When defence minister AK Antony handed over the Release to Service Certificate of India's Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas to Indian Air Force chief Air Marshal NAK Browne at Bangalore on Friday, there were some in Kolkata who heaved a sigh of relief. They are researchers at the Jadavpur University (JU) who have been closely associated with the development of India's indigenous aircraft of international standards. By the end of 2014, nearly a squadron of Tejas MkIs will have joined the IAF. Gradually, these aircraft will replace IAF's aging Mig-21 fleet.

"We are certainly happy. We have been closely associated with the development of the Tejas. However, it wouldn't be right to divulge details," a source at JU said. One of the departments of JU that collaborated with the Aeronautical Development Agency was the Centre for Knowledge Based Systems. This centre was entrusted with independent verification and validates of Flight Control Law Software for the LCA. The grant for this project was Rs 40 lakh.

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, have also been associated with the LCA project along with those from the IITs at Kanpur and Mumbai. Their contributions have been extremely hush-hush affairs though.

"The development of the LCA would not have been possible without the active support of academic institutions like JU and the IITs. The IAF chief pointed out during the day that the progress of such a challenging experimental project without any accident or major incident is unprecedented in the history of aviation. We have close tie-ups with these academic institutions for other projects as well and the progress has been phenomenal," a DRDO official said.

Friday's drill is known as the Initial Operational Clearance - II. Effectively, this is the last clearance before an aircraft joins the IAF fleet. Nearly 500 flights were completed by the Tejas this year, Antony noted. They operated from bases like Jaisalmer, Uttarlai, Gwalior, Goa, Leh and Pathankot. According to the defence minister, in some cases the same aircraft was flown thrice on the same day to prove its operational reliability.

"The IAF will now put the aircraft through its paces. It will carry out air superiority and offensive air support missions with the aircraft apart from all weather multi-role operations, electronic counter measures and night flying. The Tejas is capable of flying non-stop to destinations over 1,700 km away. This is known as the Ferry Range. Its Radius of Action is up to 500 km depending upon the nature and duration of actual combat," an IAF officer said.

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