[RM Motorsports]

First-Ever Crash Of Tejas Fighter Jet In Rajasthan's Jaisalmer.

One Tejas aircraft of the Indian Air Force met with an accident at Jaisalmer, today during an operational training sortie. The pilot ejected safely. A Court of Inquiry has been constituted to find out the cause of the accident

https://www.firstpost.com/india/lca-...-13748062.html

[skanchan95]

Originally Posted by RM Motorsports

First-Ever Crash Of Tejas Fighter Jet In Rajasthan's Jaisalmer.

Unfortunate, but was bound to happen one day or the other. I only hope this doesn't give an excuse for the import lobby to start maligning the Tejas. The fact that the Tejas had a crashless safety record for 23 years, speaks volumes about how good our homegrown jet is...far, far better than our pesky neighbour's Junk Fighter-17!!!!

[directinjection]

From a look at the video of the Tejas crash in circulation, I'm wondering why the pilot wasn't able to take the plane away from populated area (the usual practice in such emergencies)? This plane crashed into the wall of a hostel. The plane wasn't on fire before the crash and looks quite normal in the video; couldn't the pilot have made it glide a bit longer? Unlike the dart shaped MiG 21, Tejas has huge wings - wouldn't they have helped in gliding? The cause of the crash is said to be engine failure but we do not yet know if the same was caused by bird ingestion. The official court of inquiry should reveal the reasons.

https://youtu.be/UPmTdPzDfF8?si=uhgv9FSlg_HkezBC

https://youtu.be/iGj10rOdr08?si=pLxe_HWrTLZfjeO1

[fhdowntheline]

Originally Posted by skanchan95

Unfortunate, but was bound to happen one day or the other. I only hope this doesn't give an excuse for the import lobby to start maligning the Tejas. The fact that the Tejas had a crashless safety record for 23 years, speaks volumes about how good our homegrown jet is...far, far better than our pesky neighbour's Junk Fighter-17!!!!

It would be immaturity of the highest order to assume that something like this will not happen sooner or later. In fact I am wondering if IAF has been handling the type with kid gloves thus far.

[Asoon]

It is a strange incident; no smoke form engine (no bird issue or engine failure), plane seem stable post ejection, landing gear are out (no malfunction there). Either controls failed, engine stopped or pilot ejected by mistake.

[handsofsteel]

Originally Posted by Asoon

It is a strange incident, no smoke form engine (no bird issue or engine failure), plane seem stable post ejection, landing gear are out (no malfunction there), either controls failed, engine stopped or pilot ejected by mistake

Pilot ejected by mistake? Are you an aviator/trained pilot sir? If yes, kindly elaborate on situations leading to the above speculation. If no, let’s please avoid such (IMHO) puerile thoughts.

[Gaur]

Looks like the plane was on descent, about to land and the engine stalled for whatever reason.

Possibly because of the planned landing the plane was already flying low the pilot didn't have enough room to navigate it away from residential zone.

[Aditya]

First-ever crash Of Tejas Fighter Jet in Rajasthan's Jaisalmer - Posts moved to a new thread.

[fhdowntheline]

Fighter aircraft are complex machines, combat pilots are highly specialized aviators, I am sure the Court of enquiry will investigate and take corrective and preventive steps as applicable. In my view, there isn't much to discuss unless something "interesting" is revealed to the public, if ever, considering this is military stuff.

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by handsofsteel

Pilot ejected by mistake? Are you an aviator/trained pilot sir? If yes, kindly elaborate on situations leading to the above speculation. If no, let’s please avoid such (IMHO) puerile thoughts.

Thank you Brother @handsofsteel. I could not have said it better. There is something about an aircrash that brings the arm chair experts out in the sun with 101 opinions.

Originally Posted by directinjection

The plane wasn't on fire before the crash and looks quite normal in the video; couldn't the pilot have made it glide a bit longer? Unlike the dart shaped MiG 21, Tejas has huge wings - wouldn't they have helped in gliding?

The ability of an aircraft to glide with zero power is a function most of all of three factors amongst others - (a) the aspect ratio of the wing. A high aspect ratio like the wing of an ATR turboprop airliner facilitates gliding. A low aspect ratio wing like typically of any fighter is not friendly to gliding be it a MiG-21 or a Tejas. Apples to apples you are right the Tejas' bigger thicker wing would have better glide abilities {given speed & altitude} than the MiG-21's smaller, thinner & more sharply swept wing. (b) The stall speed of the aircraft and how close to that was the machine at the time of the incident. (c) The altitude at which the incident occurs. If the aircraft was coming in to land i.e. flying slow and at a low altitude then gliding a fighter is all but impossible.

Pilots do try and avoid crashing in built up areas but if he had 1.5 seconds to figure out what was happening and what to do then that might be tough. Also we do not know what control authority he had over the flying surfaces. Low and slow is a bad time for an engine failure.

Originally Posted by skanchan95

The fact that the Tejas had a crashless safety record for 23 years, speaks volumes about how good our homegrown jet is...far, far better than our pesky neighbour's Junk Fighter-17!!!!

Thank you Sandesh. Very proud of the Tejas.

It is a great pity we are not producing it in larger numbers. All great Airforces and Navies were built painstakingly by marrying a compromise between the ideal specs the Airforce (or Navy) desired versus what the nation's industry is capable of designing and manufacturing. The IAF finally, IMHO, has started to learn this with some solid prodding by the current MoD. In the 1970s when the Indian Navy embarked on its long, well thought through and eventually highly successful journey of designing and building our own warships they looked at what the nascent Naval design office (internal to the IN) could design, what MazDocks was capable of producing and what they ideally wanted. And the compromise of the three factors was the Godavari class frigates followed by the Brahmaputra class which are still in service. China has long followed this policy in the development of its armament industry. While the IAF is finally waking up the Army still seems lost if you look at their assault rifle specs put out sometime back.

[directinjection]

Originally Posted by Asoon

It is a strange incident; no smoke form engine (no bird issue or engine failure), plane seem stable post ejection, landing gear are out (no malfunction there). Either controls failed, engine stopped or pilot ejected by mistake.

Originally Posted by handsofsteel

Pilot ejected by mistake? Are you an aviator/trained pilot sir? If yes, kindly elaborate on situations leading to the above speculation. If no, let’s please avoid such (IMHO) puerile thoughts.

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Thank you Brother @handsofsteel. I could not have said it better. There is something about an aircrash that brings the arm chair experts out in the sun with 101 opinions.

@handsofsteel; @V.Narayan: Let us not be so critical and unforgiving of a question asked in good faith; Asoon did not claim to be an expert! Aren't we all learning something new everyday?

At the end of the day, pilots are also humans and as they say, to err is human! Pilot mistake CAN include ejecting from the plane when it isn't really warranted by the situation. This could be because of a false alarm or malfunction that makes the emergency look real. The Tejas that crashed did not look in the video like it would crash. As rightly pointed out by Asoon, the plane LOOKED perfectly normal with no smoke from the engine, undercarriage down, drop-tanks intact and no abnormal descent, at least in the video. Therefore, it is not entirely unreasonable to ask such questions.

Regarding pilot ejecting by mistake, here is an interesting example from 1989 in which a Soviet MiG 23 flew westwards for 900 kilometers AFTER the pilot had ejected, causing the western forces to think that Russia had launched an attack!

On 4 July 1989, a pilotless MiG-23 jet fighter of the Soviet Air Forces crashed into a house in Bellegem, near Kortrijk, Belgium, killing one person. The pilot had ejected over an hour earlier near Kołobrzeg, Poland, after experiencing technical problems, but the aircraft continued flying for around 900 km (600 mi) before running out of fuel and crashing into the ground.

The incident started as a routine training flight. Colonel Nikolai Skuridin, the pilot, was to fly a MiG-23M from the Bagicz Airbase near Kołobrzeg, Poland. During takeoff, the engine's afterburner failed, causing a partial loss of power. At an altitude of 150 m (500 ft) and descending, the pilot elected to abandon the aircraft and ejected safely. However, the engine kept running and the aircraft remained airborne, flying on autopilot in a westerly direction.

The unmanned aircraft left Polish airspace, crossing into East Germany and then West Germany, where it was intercepted by a pair of F-15s from the 32nd Tactical Fighter Squadron of the United States Air Forces Europe, stationed at Soesterberg Air Base in the Netherlands. The F-15 pilots reported that the MiG had no crew. At that stage the aircraft was potentially heading towards the UK so a live armed Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) RAF Phantom of 56(F) Squadron was scrambled from RAF Wattisham in Suffolk and instructed to fly at maximum subsonic speed to the Kent coast and be prepared to shoot the MiG down if it crossed the English Channel.

The MiG-23 crossed into Dutch airspace and continued into Belgium. The escorting F-15s were instructed to shoot down the plane over the North Sea, but as the MiG ran out of fuel, it started a slow turn to the south, prompting the French Air Force to put its fighters on alert. After flying over 900 km (560 mi), the MiG eventually crashed into the house at 273 Doorniksesteenweg, in the town of Bellegem, near Kortrijk, some 5–10 km (3.1–6.2 mi) from the French border, killing local teenage resident Wim Delaere.

More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Belgium_MiG-23_crash

Videos here:

https://youtu.be/S8yCGQ5we74?si=Kv1pjlzyLPSjfwWw

https://youtu.be/MB2W1HtYY50?si=Ct7PsW-QUu7lbULY

https://youtu.be/hA3yqNQlz9Y?si=yhuIs0nDev98jGy7

Closer home, on October 14, 2014, a Sukhoi Su30MKI of IAF crashed near Pune after "the fighter's ejection seats fired without reason, leaving it without either of its two pilots!"

The Indian Air Force (IAF) has released disturbing details of why a Sukhoi-30MKI fighter crashed on October 14 near Lohegaon Air Base in Pune, while coming in to land after an uneventful flight. According to IAF, the fighter's ejection seats fired without reason, leaving it without either of its two pilots.

"In my 40 years of flying, I have never heard of such an incident of automatic ejection. For the morale of the pilots who fly the Su-30MKI, the cause of this crash must be found and remedial measures transparently instituted," says Air Vice Marshal Kapil Kak (retired), a veteran who has extensively flown the Canberra light bomber. Fortunately, both the pilots (in the Su-30MKI, one is designated pilot and the other is a weapon systems operator) parachuted down safely. The IAF has stated that, "No loss of life or damage to property was reported." Miraculously - and fortunately for the investigation - the aircraft survived the unpiloted crash without major structural damage.

More here: https://www.business-standard.com/ar...2300003_1.html

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

The ability of an aircraft to glide with zero power is a function most of all of three factors amongst others - (a) the aspect ratio of the wing. A high aspect ratio like the wing of an ATR turboprop airliner facilitates gliding. A low aspect ratio wing like typically of any fighter is not friendly to gliding be it a MiG-21 or a Tejas. Apples to apples you are right the Tejas' bigger thicker wing would have better glide abilities {given speed & altitude} than the MiG-21's smaller, thinner & more sharply swept wing. (b) The stall speed of the aircraft and how close to that was the machine at the time of the incident. (c) The altitude at which the incident occurs. If the aircraft was coming in to land i.e. flying slow and at a low altitude then gliding a fighter is all but impossible.

Pilots do try and avoid crashing in built up areas but if he had 1.5 seconds to figure out what was happening and what to do then that might be tough. Also we do not know what control authority he had over the flying surfaces. Low and slow is a bad time for an engine failure.

Thank you sir for your valuable inputs!

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Very proud of the Tejas.

It is a great pity we are not producing it in larger numbers. All great Airforces and Navies were built painstakingly by marrying a compromise between the ideal specs the Airforce (or Navy) desired versus what the nation's industry is capable of designing and manufacturing. The IAF finally, IMHO, has started to learn this with some solid prodding by the current MoD. In the 1970s when the Indian Navy embarked on its long, well thought through and eventually highly successful journey of designing and building our own warships they looked at what the nascent Naval design office (internal to the IN) could design, what MazDocks was capable of producing and what they ideally wanted. And the compromise of the three factors was the Godavari class frigates followed by the Brahmaputra class which are still in service. China has long followed this policy in the development of its armament industry. While the IAF is finally waking up the Army still seems lost if you look at their assault rifle specs put out sometime back.

Couldn't agree more!

[sandeepmdas]

Originally Posted by directinjection

@handsofsteel; @V.Narayan: Let us not be so critical and unforgiving of a question asked in good faith; Asoon did not claim to be an expert!

Regarding pilot ejecting by mistake, here is an interesting example from 1989 in which a Soviet MiG 23 flew

I too think by "by mistake" what Asoon intended to say was unintentional or uncommanded. But then the Tejus comes equipped with Martin Baker, which is the gold standard for ejection seats.

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by directinjection

@handsofsteel; @V.Narayan: Let us not be so critical and unforgiving of a question asked in good faith; Asoon did not claim to be an expert! Aren't we all learning something new everyday?

Fair point, well taken. In the MiG-23 case the pilot ejected for good reason. The aircraft continued to fly in a straight line regardless due to the extraordinary straight line aerodynamic stability the MiG-23 was known for. That very stability gave it exceptional acceleration and poor maneuverability.

[sagarpadaki]

Slightly off topic. I came across this article describing the NPP Zvezda ejection seats.

It talks about the crash of Su 30 MKI in Paris airshow is 1999. I did not know about Indian Su30 crashing in Paris air show till now!

[skanchan95]

Originally Posted by sagarpadaki

It talks about the crash of Su 30 MKI in Paris airshow is 1999. I did not know about Indian Su30 crashing in Paris air show till now!

It was a Russian owned prototype of Su-30MKI ( it was actually called Su-30MK at that point in time)that crashed in 1999. The first Su-30MKIs were inducted in the IAF in 2002 ( No. 20 Sqdn "Lightnings").