Hyderabad: In a significant contribution, the city’s aerospace industry has manufactured essential parts of supersonic fighter TEJAS Light Combat Aircraft (LCA). VEM Technologies will be handing over the centre fuselage to Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) representatives at its facility at Bachupally industrial area on Monday. The centre fuselage has been assembled with 1,595 mechanical and composite parts.

VEM Technologies’ V Venkat Raju said, “We are production partner of HAL. This is the first time a complete complex centre fuselage section for a supersonic fighter aircraft has been built by a private company in India.”

“We have been working with HAL for the past two decades on all their major platforms. HAL quality agencies inspected our production at every stage of manufacturing before the final assembly. For the final assembly, our colleagues were trained by HAL in Bengaluru,” he added.

“Around 30 engineers and 20 technicians were trained at HAL for a year. On July 26 (Monday), we will hand over the centre fuselage to HAL at our facility in Hyderabad in the presence of R Madhavan, chairman and MD, HAL,” he disclosed.

Defence experts said that it was important milestone in the city’s aerospace and defence manufacturers’ eco system. Also, this development comes less than a week after Tata Boeing Aerospace Limited (TBAL) delivered the 100th fuselage for the AH-64 Apache combat helicopter to Boeing from its facility in the city.