Nikita GF-23 Vetala

Nikita GF-23 Vetala
Role	Multirole fighter
Manufacturer	Nikita Corporation
First flight	1997 (V1), 2012 (V2)
Introduction	2015
Status	In active service
Primary user	Tennai
Number built	155+
Program cost	NS$ 63 billion
Unit cost	NS$ 50 million

The Nikita GF-23 Vetala is a Tennaiite single-seat, twin-engine, stealth all-weather multi-role fighter aircraft. It is produced by a public-private joint venture between the Defense Research and Development Organization, Nikita Corporation, Tennai Aerospace Industries, Cheppali International, and other private Tennaiite companies.

Nikita GF-23 Vetala can perform air superiority, ground attack, bombing, intercepting, strike and other types of roles. It combines supercruise, stealth, advanced AESA radar, supermaneuverability, data fusion and advanced avionics to overcome and suppress previous generation fighter aircraft along with many ground and maritime defenses. It complements the TAI GF-20 Berunda and the Cheppali GF-19 Garuda in the air force service and the GF-19 Garuda in the naval service. The aircraft, along with its naval variants, is intended to provide the bulk of the manned tactical air power of the Royal Tenniite Air Force and Navy over the coming decades.

Development

Modular approach

Vetala uses a modular approach in its design, development and production. Most of the assembly and equipment are outsourced to both private firms and public sector undertakings. A consortium of more than 140 firms are taking part in the program. This is a major departure from Nikita's previous aircraft which used in-house production with minor outsourcing. Additionally, Vetala uses a modular method of production in order to reduce the time required for development and production. This method of production also results in increased on-schedule delivery resulting in an increased rate of production. Firms participating in the programme include Nikita as the prime contractor, while sub assembly is carried out by Defense Research and Development Organization, Tennai Aerospace Industries, Cheppali International, Kaveri Electric, and KES. Sub-assembly carried out by sub-contractors includes the wings, tail, tail fins, raydome, rear fuselage and landing gear.

The development and production of the aircraft is carried out by four types of firm:

• Design team – ADA as the prime designer and developer of the aircraft.
• Core team – DRDO agencies carrying out primary development.
• External agencies – Various institutes, universities and other firms of domestic origin.
• Manufacturing team – Manufacturers and assemblers

Design

Overview

The Vetala is a multirole fighter aircraft, with shoulder mounted diamond shaped trapezoidal wings, a profile with substantial area-ruling to reduce drag at transonic speeds, and an all-moving Canard-Vertical V-tail with large fuselage mounted Tail-wing. Flight control surfaces include leading and trailing-edge flaps, ailerons, rudders on the canted vertical stabilizers, and all-moving tailplanes; these surfaces also serve as Air brakes. The cockpit features a single seat configuration which is placed high, near the air intakes and wings of the aircraft to provide good visibility to the pilot with a single bubble canopy construction. The aircraft features a tricycle landing gear configuration with a nose landing gear leg and two main landing gear legs. The weapons bay is placed on the underside of the fuselage between the nose and main landing gear. The Vetala is designed to produce a very small radar cross-section, to accomplish this it features serpentine shaped air-intakes to reduce radar exposure to the fan blade which increases stealth, uses an internal weapons bay and features the use of composites and other materials. The flight control surfaces are controlled by a central management computer system. Raising the wing flaps and ailerons on one side and lowering them on the other provides roll.

A leading-edge root extension (LERX), which is a small fillet, is situated on the front section of the intake and wings of the aircraft. It has a typically roughly rectangular shape, running forward from the leading edge of the wing root to a point along the fuselage. Also, the Vetala has an In-flight refueling (IFR) probe that retracts beside the cockpit during normal operation.

The Vetala will be capable of operating in manned as well as in unmanned modes. According to the Royal Tennaiite Air Force chief Mandara Abira, the Vetala will have sixth generation characteristics added in the future.

Airframe

Stressed ducts in s-shape are locked with airframe with the loaded bulkheads which are made of composite materials spanning the aircraft from air intake to engine shafts. The radome which holds radar is made of advance composite and construction, which result in allowing only the operating frequencies of the mated radar to transmit from the dome, while blocking other radars.

Flight surfaces and controls

Since the Vetala is a relaxed static stability design, it is equipped with a quadruplex digital fly-by-optics flight control system to ease pilot handling. The Vetala's aerodynamic configuration is based on a diamond shaped trapezoidal-wing layout with shoulder-mounted wings. Its control surfaces are electro hydraulically actuated and digitally controlled using fiber-optic cables. The wing's outer leading edge incorporates three-section slats, while the inboard sections have additional slats to generate vortex lift over the inner wing and high-energy air-flow along the tail fin to enhance high-angle of attack stability and prevent departure from controlled flight. The wing trailing edge is occupied by two-segmented elevons to provide pitch and roll control. The only empennage-mounted control surfaces are the Pelikan tail with single-piece rudder which includes two airbrakes located in the upper rear part of the Pelikan tail, one each on either side of the tail. The Vetala feature a highly evolved integrated control laws for flight, propulsion, braking, nose-wheel steering and fuel management and adaptive neural networks for fault detection, identification and control law reconfiguration. Flights controls of the aircraft are both highly integrated and independent of each other which includes flight controls, engine controls, brake and landing controls, and other systems this is possible due to the active controls gears systems (ACGS).

The digital FBW system of the aircraft employs an advance next-generation distributed digital flight control computer (DDFCC) made by Jala Aerospace comprising four computing channels, each with its own independent power supply and all housed in differently placed LRU. The DFCC receives signals from a variety of sensors and pilot control stick inputs, and processes these through the appropriate channels to excite and control the elevons, rudder and leading edge slat hydraulic actuators. DFCC provides raising the wing flaps and ailerons on one side and lowering them on the other provided roll. The Pelikan-tail fins are angled at 27 degrees from the vertical. Pitch is mainly provided by rotating these pelikan-tail fins in opposite directions so their front edges moved together or apart. Yaw is primarily supplied by rotating the tail fins in the same direction. The Vetala is designed for superior high Angle of attack (AoA) performance. Deflecting the wing flaps down and ailerons up on both sides simultaneously provided for Aerodynamic braking.

Propulsion

The Vetala is a twin-engined aircraft which is powered by two Kaveri Electric F136 afterburning turbofans producing 25,000 lbf (110 kn) thrust dry and 40,000 lbf (180 kn) thrust wet with thrust vectoring nozzles. The Kaveri Electric F136 engines allow the Vetala to supercruise with a speed of Mach 1.82 with both engines.

Stealth and radar signature

The Vetala is designed to be difficult to detect by radar and other electronic measures due to various features to reduce radar cross-section include airframe shaping such as planform alignment of edges, fixed-geometry serpentine inlets that prevent line-of-sight of the engine faces from any exterior view, use of radar-absorbent material (RAM), and attention to detail such as hinges and pilot helmets that could provide a radar return. Efforts have been made to minimise radio emissions and both the infrared signature and acoustic signature as well as reduced visibility to the naked eye. Alignment of wings, tail, flaps and other edges increases radar and visual stealth. The Vetala also features a Diverterless Supersonic Intake, which helps improve its stealth capabilities.

The Vetala's internal weapons bays.

Radar absorbing structures and radome, body conformal antennae surface hard aperture, flush air data sensors and frequency selective surface (FSS) radome are used to reduce radar detection. Stealth ability is enhanced by the use of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) during the construction of the airframe and in the airframe and instruments. Vetala's design prevents detection of the aircraft from L band, C band and X band radars. The aircraft's thrust vectoring nozzle reduces infrared emissions to mitigate the threat of infrared homing surface-to-air or air-to-air missiles. Additional measures to reduce the infrared signature include special paint and active cooling of leading edges to manage the heat build up from supersonic flight.

Armaments and standards

The Vetala features an internal weapons bay and it can be equipped with 14 hardpoints in a non-stealth configuration. The internal weapons bay has a capacity of 2,200 kg (4,900 lbs) and the external hardpoints have a capacity of 9,000 kg (20,000 lbs). The aircraft can be equipped with beyond visual range missiles, close combat missiles, standoff weapons, precision weapons and laser guided bombs. Directed energy weapons are also planned to be equipped on the Vetala.

Avionics and equipment

The aircraft's avionics suite has IRST and advance situational oriented electronic warfare systems and all aspect radar warning receiver (RWR), Self-Protection Jammer(SPJ), CMOS, laser warning receiver (LWR), missile warning suite.

Kolvam Electronic Systems (KES) designed and developed a next-generation network-centric aircraft management system (including weapons). This system includes various features such as data fusion, Cooperative Engagement Capability, decision aids, integrated modular avionics, and intern signature control with sharpening for low observability. The aircraft uses integrated modular avionics for real time computing, and the fiber optic cables used on the aircraft feature photonic crystal fibers technology for faster exchange of data and information. The Vetala has a distributed processing system employing fast processors and smart subsystems and is electronically controlled via a "central computational system connected internally and externally on an optic-fiber channel by means of a multi-port connectivity switching module". This results in using the IEEE-1394B-STD a departure from MIL-STD-1553B data-bus standard.

Radar and sensors

The Vetala is equipped with a variant of the ML/M-2052 AESA radar mounted on a mechanically steerable mount. An onboard condition monitoring system is included in the Vetala.

Cockpit

The Vetala's cockpit features a panoramic active-matrix display, with the switches, bezels and keypads replaced with a single large multi-functional touch screen interface supported by voice commands.

Operators

• Tennai

Specifications

General characteristics

• Crew: 1
• Length: 17.2 m (56 ft 5 in)
• Height: 4.8 m (15 ft 9 in)
• Wing area: 39.9 m² (429 sq ft)
• Empty weight: 11,000 kg (24,251 lb)
• Gross weight: 18,000 kg (39,683 lb)
• Max takeoff weight: 25,000 kg (55,116 lb)
• Fuel capacity: 6,500kg internal fuel
• Powerplant: 2 × Kaveri Electric F136 afterburning turbofans, 110 kN (25,000 lbf) thrust each dry, 180 kN (40,000 lbf) with afterburner

Performance

• Maximum speed: 3,025.26 km/h (1,880 mph; 1,634 kn)
• Maximum speed: Mach 2.45
  • Supercruise: Mach 1.82
• Range: 3,240 km (2,013 mi; 1,749 nmi)
• Combat range: 1,620 km (1,007 mi; 875 nmi)
• Ferry range: 5,234 km (3,252 mi; 2,826 nmi)
• Service ceiling: 20,000 m (66,000 ft)
• Rate of climb: 350 m/s (69,000 ft/min)

Armament

• Guns: 1 × 27 mm Kala 212 rotary cannon
• Hardpoints: 14 with a capacity of up to 9,000 kg (20,000 lb) (non-stealth confguration)
  2,200 kg (4,900 lb) in two internal weapons bays (stealth configuration),
• Rockets:
  
  • Rocket pods
• Missiles:
  
  • Air to air missiles
  • Air to ground missiles
  • Anti-shipping missiles
  • Cruise missiles
  • Standoff missile
• Bombs:
  
  • Laser-guided bombs
  • Precision-guided munitions

Avionics

• ML/M-2052 AESA radar
• KES-2214 Modular Aircraft Management System
• Razor 112 Helmet-mounted display system
• IRST
• RWR
• SPJ
• CMOS
• LWR
• missile warning suite
• conditon monitoring system

See Also

Aircraft of comparable role, configuration, and era

• MDA EF 662 Vampyr - Acrean fifth-generation fighter
• MDA EF 650 Striga - Acrean fifth-generation fighter
• AFASF-13 Wyvern Air Superiority Fighter - Cacertan fifth-generation fighter
• NSF-14 Colibri Strike Fighter - Cacertan fifth-generation fighter
• T-37 Gailtean - Ossorian fifth-generation fighter
• Aeolus - Syaran fifth-generation fighter