The Hindu Business Line : ‘Aeronautics sector needs sops’

The country’s aeronautics sector urgently needs a policy direction and incentives similar to the semiconductor industry’s package if it has to arrive on the world civil aircraft map. It should not miss the big global aviation market opportunity that is emerging, according to Dr Roddam Narasimha, renowned atmospheric scientist and former director of National Aerospace Labs.

A nodal national aeronautics commission should be set up under a 20-year mission mode. Such a body should re-focus the R&D activities of various in civil and military aviation space, without disturbing the existing structures, he said at the two-day conference on aerospace science and technology that opened here. “The future of aeronautics is not technology-limited but policy-limited. It is waiting for a vision,” Dr Narasimha said at the event marking the 50th year of formation of NAL, a CSIR lab.

Mr G. Madhavan Nair, Chairman of ISRO, also said the various agencies pursuing their own aviation projects – among them Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd, Aeronautical Development Agency and National Aerospace Labs - should sit together and evolve a coordinated indigenous aeronautical development programme.

HAL makes military fighters, trainers and multipurpose helicopters and is pursuing a transport plane; civilian lab NAL is testing a 14-seater plane and wants to enter the 70-seater space; defence lab ADA has made the indigenous fighter, LCA.

Mr Nair said, “We have to mount our efforts in the R&D area. We cannot rest on our laurels. It is high time the aeronautical science community woke up.”

With the projected need at 1,000 aircraft in ten years and a domestic market worth several hundred crores, the aim should be to capture at least 10 per cent of it with indigenously built aircraft, he said.

According to Dr Narasimha, , the aviation market is projected to touch $ 10 billion [around Rs 43,000 crore] by 2010 and the country would need 1,000 aircraft worth $80-90 billion in ten years, despite the current oil shock. The former President, Mr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, urged scientists to come out with turbo-jet and turbo-prop aircraft that can cost and operate at 25 per cent less; can be maintained at 50 per cent less and with far lower emission.

Mr Kalam proposed a ‘virtual collaborative grid for aerospace’ to design, develop and make any type of aircraft or aerospace systems for defence, space and civilian applications.

It would be a seamless broadband enabled network linking the country’s academia, industry and labs.

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