Tejas flies with India-made digital flight control computer for first time

This will connect the older Tejas fighter's analogue ports and cabling with new digital world

In 1993, when development work began on the Tejas Mark-1, the Bengaluru-based Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) – the Defence R&D Organisation (DRDO) laboratory set up to oversee the Tejas light combat aircraft (LCA) project – took on the challenge of making the new fighter highly manoeuvrable and safe.

These conflicting features were achieved through world-class avionics that combined an unstable design (which continuously tended to throw the aircraft out of the sky); with a quadruplex fly-by-wire flight computer that continuously stabilised the fighter.

The skills that went into this sophisticated design had been cultivated since the early 1960s when Hindustan