Rs 26k-crore order for building Tejas Mark 1A to open door for Mark 2

The first of a two-part series focuses on how Tejas Mark 1A will act as a bridge between the Tejas Mark 1 and the Mark 2 fighter

After months of negotiations, the Indian Air Force (IAF) and Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) have fixed the price of the Tejas Mark 1A light combat aircraft (LCA) at about Rs 310 crore per fighter, say Ministry of Defence (MoD) sources involved in the negotiations.

Now HAL is awaiting a formal contract, worth some Rs 26,000 crore for building 83 Tejas Mark 1A fighters that the MoD has already green-lighted for purchase. According to the agreed schedule, delivery of the Mark 1A will begin 36 months after the contract date. If the order is placed at the start of 2020, Tejas Mark IA deliveries will start in 2023. With 16 fighters to be delivered each year it would take another five years to deliver all 83 fighters – that is by 2028.

“We should be signing the contract very soon”, IAF boss, Air Chief Marshal RKS Bhadauria, had said on October 4. That is now imminent. Girish Deodhare, chief of the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) – the Defence R&D Organisation (DRDO) agency responsible for the Tejas programme – spoke exclusively to Business Standard about the Tejas Mark 1A fighter. He described it as a bridge between the current Tejas Mark 1 and the Mark 2 fighter that ADA is developing. He says the latter will be, from the standpoint of size, sophistication and capability, far superior to the Mark 1 fighter.

While the Mark 1A light fighter will have the same fuselage and General Electric (GE) F-404 engine as the Mark 1, the Mark 2 will be a significantly larger medium fighter with the more powerful GE F-414 engine.

Indian navy spurns homemade warplane, latest blow to push for self reliance

It is hunting for a new fighter jet after rejecting an indigenously made aircraft as too heavy

India's navy is in the hunt for a new foreign fighter jet after rejecting an indigenously made aircraft as too heavy, the latest sign of the struggle to get Asian militaries to buy locally to grow their defence industries. | TODAY HOT NEWS

The navy last month invited manufacturers to pitch for 57 planes for its aircraft carriers, a multi-billion dollar order the government had hoped would go to the state-run producers of India's Tejas, a combat aircraft 33 years in the making.

India, South Korea, Taiwan and other Asian buyers are expected to intensify efforts this year to develop indigenous warplanes, military officials said, due to anxieties that the United States may be less engaged in the region under President Donald Trump.

But their hopes of manufacturing state-of-the-art warplanes could still be decades away as countries need more time to master the technology, experts said.

"It's been long on ambition short on success," Richard A. Bitzinger, senior fellow at Singapore's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said of the drive.

"These things are being done because of techno-nationalism. They are done because these countries perceive of themselves as rising powers."

As part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "Make-in-India" campaign, scientists will showcase the Tejas warplane at an air show opening in Bengaluru on Tuesday. But the jet remains a work in progress, with only three in service with the air force.

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