To meet needs of space, defence, nuke power programs

Mishra Dhatu Nigam ( MIDHANI ), the defence public sector undertaking, flagged off consignment of titanium and superalloy products to Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) for Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) and Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH) programmes.

The consignment was flagged of by MIDHANI chairman & managing director S.K. Jha and the HAL chairman & managing director R. Madhavan in the presence of senior officials including N. Gowri Sankara Rao of MIDHANI on Thursday.

The firm has been supplying various critical raw materials and products of titanium alloys, speciality alloys, super alloys and special steel to meet the strategic need of HAL, space, defence and nuclear power programmes.

An official spokesman informed that MIDHANI had developed more than 50 high performance alloys used in manufacture of fighter aircraft and helicopters for HAL and the Indian Air Force (IAF) which were earlier procured from foreign vendors by Indian companies.

These alloys are developed and manufactured with active support of airworthiness agencies like CEMILAC and DGAQA meeting the specific quality and technical requirements considering its critical applications. A titanium alloy airframe for the Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) was also recently supplied and developed for the first time in the country

Both firms have been working together in setting up a joint facility for development and production of composite raw materials to be used for projects for not only LCA, ALH but also for Light Combat Helicopter (LCH) and Light Utility Helicopter (LUH) which are currently being imported, he added, in a press release.