In a major boost to India's indigenous defence sector,Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will be flying in the Light Combat Aircraft(LCA) Tejas in Bengaluru on September 19, 2019. Singh will take to the skies ina twin-seater version of the Tejas combat aircraft, which arm the Indian AirForce No. 45 Squadron ‘Flying Daggers' based at Tamil Nadu's Sulur Air ForceStation.

Tejas, designed and developed by the Hindustan AeronauticsLimited and Aeronautical Development Agency, is India's home-grown single-enginemultirole light fighter to replace the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 Bison aircraft.Tejas, the soon-to-be-inducted French Rafale and Sukhoi Su-30 MKIs will be thebackbone of IAF for the next several years. The IAF had in December 2017 issueda request for proposal (RFP) to HAL for the 83 Tejas jets at an estimated costof almost Rs 50,000 crore. Out of the 83 Tejas aircraft, 10 are likely to thetwin-seater version to be used for training the pilots.

The Final Operational Clearance (FOC) standard certification,which means the aircraft is combat-ready, was issued by the Defence Researchand Development Organisation (DRDO) to Tejas on February 21, 2019, during theAero India show in Bengaluru. Tejas has already been equipped with mid-airrefuelling, active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar, electronicwarfare suites, several different types of bombs, missiles and weapons.

T Suvarna Raju, the HAL Chairman and Managing Director, hasalready pointed out that Tejas is a four-and-half generation fighter and can bemodified to make it a much more lethal jet.

Just a few days back on September 13, 2019, the navalversion of Tejas achieved a major landmark when the plane was successful inmaking a wire-arrested landing at Goa's Shore-based Test Facility (SBTF) INSHansa. The DRDO called the wire-arrested landing by Tejas flown by Chief TestPilot Commodore Jaideep A Maolankar a "golden letter day" in thehistory of Indian Naval Aviation.