The Invisible Technology That Makes a Fighter Truly Indian

India’s journey from developing indigenous flight-control laws for Tejas to exploring advanced semiconductor materials reveals what strategic autonomy really means.

A fighter aircraft can look completely Indian from the outside and still depend on technology it does not control.

The airframe may be designed locally. The engine may be assembled domestically. The aircraft may carry an Indian roundel and fly from an Indian airbase. Yet deep inside the machine, a foreign flight-control algorithm, sensor module, processor, or power device can determine what the aircraft is truly capable of — and how vulnerable it is to political pressure.

This is the less visible side of aerospace power. It is also the story behind India’s long effort to develop indigenous flight-control systems for the Light Combat Aircraft, now known as Tejas, and its growing interest in advanced semiconductor materials.

The central lesson is straightforward: strategic autonomy is not achieved merely by building a platform. It is achieved by owning the intelligence that allows the platform to think, respond, and survive.

The ghost inside an unstable aircraft

Modern fighters are not naturally easy to fly. Many high-performance aircraft are designed with aerodynamic characteristics that improve agility but make them unstable or difficult to control without continuous computer assistance. The pilot moves the control stick, but the aircraft’s flight-control computers interpret that request, calculate the correct response, and command the control surfaces within fractions of a second.

These instructions are governed by flight-control laws — mathematical rules that define how the aircraft responds to pilot input, speed, altitude, angle of attack, engine conditions, and changing combat situations. They determine whether an aircraft feels smooth, precise, forgiving, and responsive, or unpredictable and dangerous.

A digital fly-by-wire system replaces many direct mechanical connections with electronic signals and computer-controlled actuation. Instead of the pilot physically moving a control surface through cables and rods, the pilot provides an instruction. Sensors measure the aircraft’s condition, computers interpret the instruction, and actuators move the elevators, ailerons, rudder, and other surfaces.

That may sound like a simple substitution of wires for cables. It is not. A modern fly-by-wire system is a tightly integrated combination of aerodynamics, software, hardware, sensors, redundancy, testing, and certification. A small error in the control law can produce a large error in the aircraft’s behavior.

Why the Tejas journey mattered

India’s development of indigenous flight-control capability for the LCA Tejas was therefore far more significant than the installation of a new piece of equipment. It represented the development of national expertise in one of the most sensitive parts of a combat aircraft.

The program required Indian researchers and engineers to understand the aircraft’s aerodynamic model, design control laws, develop the computing architecture, test the system in simulators and test aircraft, and prove that it could remain reliable under a wide range of conditions. Public accounts of the program describe a dedicated effort to develop indigenous fly-by-wire expertise through India’s aerospace research institutions.[1]

The experience also carried a geopolitical lesson. After India’s 1998 nuclear tests, international sanctions and technology restrictions exposed how quickly access to foreign equipment, technical assistance, and intellectual property could become uncertain. It would be too simplistic to say that one event instantly created every Indian capability. The reality was slower and more difficult. Restrictions increased pressure on Indian institutions to solve problems domestically, while years of research and testing turned that pressure into engineering knowledge.

That knowledge could not be switched on overnight. It had to be built through failed experiments, wind-tunnel work, simulation, hardware-in-the-loop testing, flight trials, and painstaking software validation.

The result was not merely a rudder that moved when commanded. It was a national ability to define how an Indian aircraft should fly.

The difference between ownership and assembly

The distinction between assembly and ownership is important in defense technology. A country can assemble an aircraft under license while remaining dependent on foreign design authority, software updates, replacement parts, or export permissions. Such an arrangement may provide valuable industrial experience, but it does not provide complete freedom of action.

Indigenous flight-control laws change that equation. When the control logic, computing hardware, and actuation architecture are developed and maintained domestically, engineers can adapt the aircraft to new weapons, sensors, mission profiles, and future upgrades. The country also retains greater control over sensitive intellectual property.

This is why the “brain” of an aircraft cannot be separated from its strategic identity. A locally built airframe with externally controlled software is not equivalent to a platform whose critical design knowledge is held at home.

From flight-control sovereignty to semiconductor sovereignty

The next challenge lies in the electronics that support the aircraft’s sensors, communications, and power systems. Gallium nitride, or GaN, has become an important wide-bandgap semiconductor for high-frequency and high-power applications. It is associated with radar, communications, and other systems that need power density and efficient operation in compact packages.

India’s work on indigenous radar and avionics illustrates the value of building competence in these technologies, although the exact semiconductor configuration of each Indian radar should not be assumed without an authoritative source. In defense electronics, technical details are often classified, evolving, or publicly described inconsistently.

Beyond GaN, researchers worldwide are investigating gallium oxide, or Ga₂O₃. Its ultra-wide bandgap — commonly reported at approximately 4.8 to 4.9 electron volts — gives it strong theoretical potential for high-voltage and high-power devices.[2] [3]

That could eventually matter to aircraft power systems, pulsed-power equipment, electronic-warfare architectures, and other demanding applications. A device that can withstand a stronger electric field may help engineers design more compact power-conversion systems or handle larger voltage swings.

But gallium oxide is not an “unburnable” material. Its low thermal conductivity creates a significant heat-management challenge, particularly when devices operate at high power density.[2] [3] This is a crucial distinction. A wide bandgap can improve electrical performance, but it does not eliminate the need for cooling, packaging, reliability testing, and careful system design.

For that reason, gallium oxide should be described as a promising research frontier — not as a deployed miracle technology. Publicly available evidence does not establish that India already operates a gallium-oxide radar or that Ga₂O₃ alone can make a sensor immune to jamming. Electronic-warfare performance comes from the full system: antennas, waveforms, signal processing, software, power management, electronic-support measures, and operational tactics.

The opportunity for Indian IP

India’s opportunity is larger than producing one advanced chip. It is to develop the entire chain around advanced materials: crystal growth, wafer preparation, device fabrication, modelling, packaging, thermal design, testing, and system integration.

That chain is difficult because a laboratory demonstration is only the beginning. A military component must survive vibration, temperature swings, radiation, electrical stress, manufacturing variation, and years of maintenance. It must also be reproducible in a factory rather than merely impressive under controlled experimental conditions.

The same discipline should shape public discussion of future programs such as Tejas Mk2 and AMCA. It is reasonable to expect these aircraft to benefit from increasingly indigenous sensors, software, flight controls, and power systems. It is not responsible to claim that a specific aircraft will use gallium-oxide radar hardware unless an official program source confirms it.

The strongest form of technological nationalism is not the loudest claim. It is the patient accumulation of capabilities that outsiders cannot easily switch off.

The real meaning of strategic autonomy

The story that begins with a flight-control law does not end with a fighter aircraft. It leads to a broader definition of sovereignty.

A country is strategically stronger when it can design its own control algorithms, build its own processors, develop its own sensors, fabricate critical semiconductor devices, package them for harsh environments, and maintain the systems throughout their service life. It becomes stronger still when universities, public laboratories, private companies, and the armed forces can turn research into dependable production.

Gallium oxide may become a major part of that future, or it may remain one material among several competing technologies. Either way, the research matters. It encourages India to look beneath the visible platform and focus on the atoms, code, and manufacturing processes that determine real independence.

The ghost inside the machine is no longer invisible. It is the software, the sensor, the semiconductor, and the engineering knowledge that make an aircraft controllable and intelligent.

If those elements are Indian-designed, Indian-tested, and Indian-sustained, then strategic autonomy is no longer a slogan. It becomes an operating capability.

Do you believe semiconductor sovereignty is as important to national security as indigenous aircraft design? Share your view: should India prioritize scaling proven GaN and silicon-carbide technologies, or invest more aggressively in emerging materials such as gallium oxide?

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Primary keyword: indigenous flight control system India

Secondary keywords: Tejas digital fly-by-wire, India defense electronics, semiconductor sovereignty, gallium nitride radar, gallium oxide semiconductor, ultra-wide-bandgap technology, Indian aerospace technology, AMCA technology, strategic autonomy

Suggested Medium tags: #Technology, #India, #Defense, #Semiconductors, #Aerospace

References

[1]: https://drdo.gov.in/drdo/en/search/node?keys=tejas&page=6 “Defence Research and Development Organisation, public Tejas search resources”

[2]: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1944/16/24/7693 “Maimon and Li, Progress in Gallium Oxide Field-Effect Transistors for High-Power and RF Applications, Materials”

[3]: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1674-4926/40/1/011803/meta “Zhou et al., A Review of the Most Recent Progresses of State-of-Art Gallium Oxide Power Devices, Journal of Semiconductors”

[4]: https://arpa-e.energy.gov/programs-and-initiatives/search-all-projects/optically-cascoded-ultrahigh-voltage-gallium-oxide-devices-modular-multi-converter “ARPA-E, Optically Cascoded Ultrahigh Voltage Gallium Oxide Devices for Modular Multi-Converter”

[5]: https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/6.2020-3117 “AIAA research paper discussing AMCA and indigenous UTTAM AESA radar”