The AMCA's empty cockpit

India begins an ambitious programme to build a fifth generation fighter jet, but risks repeating past mistakes.

The Indian Air Force is in a quandary. It needs a rush of fourth generation fighter jets to immediately bolster its shrinking fighter jet squadrons. It needs fifth-generation stealth aircraft to prevail over its adversaries to the west and north. Both programs are running years behind schedule.

On May 27, 2026, the Defence Ministry issued the Request for Proposals (RFPs) to three Indian consortia to make prototypes for the fifth-generation fighter aircraft. One of the three consortia, L&T-BEL-Dynamatic, Tata Advanced Systems Ltd and Bharat Forge-BEML-Data Patterns, will be selected to build the first five prototypes.

The selected consortia will have to fly the first prototype within 30 months of being awarded the contract. This is, however, only the first step in a development cycle that could last over a decade.

A fifth-generation fighter aircraft (FGFA) is an evolutionary response to the increasing range and lethality of ground-based air defence systems (GBADS) and long-range air-to-air missiles. A stealthy jet that’s hard to spot on radar is harder to lock on and shoot at. It thus has an increased chance of firing the first shot at the enemy.

These fighters by themselves, of course, are not silver bullets.

Air power is also about satellites, sensors, linking shooters, commanders and sensors in a fully networked environment. Nor are 5th-generation aircraft invincible, but in a dense Integrated Air Defence Systems environment marked by increasingly powerful ground-based radars and ultra-long-range air-to-air missiles, such fighters add an edge in an air war.

The US fielded the first fifth-generation fighter jets, the F-22 Raptor in 2005, and the F-35 in 2014. China followed with the J-20 in 2017 and Russia with the Su-57 in 2018. India’s fifth-generation fighter aircraft program has been a two-decade long struggle. A 2007 team up with the Russians to jointly develop the Su-57 collapsed after disagreements over technology sharing and the know-why.

The Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) launched by the MoD in 2010 with a Rs 90-crore sanction for feasibility studies, became the IAF’s sole hope.

The AMCA will field technologies that will make a 25-ton aircraft appear the size of a small bird on radar, advanced engines that will fly at supersonic speeds without firing (non-stealthy) afterburners, weapons that will be hidden in internal bays and not carried on external hard points (where they could be picked up by radar). AI-driven sensor fusion capabilities will integrate data from multiple sensors into a single coherent real-time tactical picture, to dramatically reduce pilot workload.

All these technologies are to be mastered and fielded in tight schedules. ADA’s 10-year development roadmap sees prototype rollout by late 2026 or early 2027, first flight in 2028, certification by 2032 and induction by 2034.

The first prototypes and the first two AMCA Mark 1 squadrons will be powered by GE-414 engines. This is the easy part. The challenge is to develop the AMCA Mark 2 which will fly with the 120kN thrust-class engine. The engine is the most critical element of the program without which the AMCA cannot claim to be a true FGFA.

A co-development program between GTRE and France’s Safran that will deliver the engine in the 2030s.

Jet fighter aircraft have followed an incremental development path over the last 50 years and four generations. A fifth-generation aircraft marks a radical break from the previous four. This is the reason the US, China and Russia are the only three countries with FGFAs in service.

China is projected to have close to 1,000 FGFAs in service by the early 2030s, aiming to overtake the US technology lead in fifth generation technologies through sheer numbers. Other countries are joining the race.

South Korea and Turkey flew their first fifth-generation prototypes in 2025 and 2026 respectively. India could be only the sixth country to develop its own FGFA.

ENDING HAL’S MONOPOLY

The AMCA is also India’s maiden attempt to hand over a major fighter jet development programme to private players. State-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) has been excluded from the initial prototype competition.

This is not the first time, however, that the defence ministry has chosen the private sector over a DPSU. In 1998, India chose Larsen & Toubro, a private sector heavy engineering firm, to build the 6000-ton hull of its first nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine, the INS Arihant.

The Indian Navy-driven Advanced Technology Vessel (ATV) project team excluded state-owned DPSU Mazagon Docks Ltd from the contract. L&T had never built a submarine, but had expertise in welding large pressure vessels (which is what a large submarine essentially is).

MDL had a HAL-type monopoly in the 1990s—it had license-built two West German Type 209, 1500- ton conventional submarines. This evidently did not impress the Indian Navy-driven ATVP and their decision became one of the turning points in India’s military industrial history.

The IAF is attempting to do the same with the AMCA. Between the IAF’s decision to exit the Indo-Russian FGFA in 2018 and the June 2025 Expression of Interest (EOI) which shortlisted three private-sector firms, lay a silent seven-year-long battle waged by the IAF.

This was one of the reasons for the delays in the AMCA.

The IAF was not convinced of HAL’s ability to build and deliver a fifth generation fighter. The IAF did not want to see a repeat of the LCA Tejas saga—as on June 2027, HAL is yet to deliver even the first of the Tejas Mark 1As to the IAF despite receiving six GE 404 engines.

The IAF had tried, unsuccessfully, to get a Project Management Team (PMT) staffed by its officers, into HAL to speed up the project. The IAF has embedded PMTs with ADA and Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL), but not with HAL.

The IAF’s dissatisfaction with HAL spilled into the open during Aero India 2025 when Air Chief Marshal AP Singh’s open-mic moment saw him criticising HAL for delayed deliveries. “We’re just not confident of HAL,” the Air Force chief said.

But for several years, the IAF had quietly been working on a Plan B. In 2018, top IAF brass travelled across the country inspecting capacities in the private sector, including the companies now shortlisted to build the AMCA. Interestingly, they also visited the highly-restricted Ship Building Centre (SBC) in Visakhapatnam, where the Arihant class boats are made.

In March 2024, the stalled AMCA moved forward with the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) grant of a Rs 15,000 crore sanction for full-scale engineering development. By 2025, it was clear that prototype development would only go to the private sector.

WHO STEERS AMCA?

The AMCA marks a break from previous development programs— prototype development is being carried out as per DRDO norms and not MoD procedures, which means prototypes get made faster. Program cost overruns will be reported directly to the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) rather than to the Defence Ministry.

Yet, the program suffers from one critical flaw— an empty cockpit. There is no single person to pilot the project. The project team exists as it has in for other projects like the LCA Tejas. ADA is the project custodian. Whether this DRDO laboratory has the heft to single-handedly drive the program is debatable.

The IAF is invested, but thus far, only with an embedded project team in ADA. It has taken 15 years to get to the basic prototype stage. The first flight will not happen at least until the early 2030s, which means it has taken at least three decades from conception to prototype flying.

Who will be answerable for further project delays ? It is not clear. Will it be the DG ADA? And most important of all— by keeping the Indian Air Force out of the development process, is India making the same mistake it did with the LCA Tejas ?

THE ATV CHALLENGE

In the mid-1990s, the project team of the Advanced Technology Vessel (ATV) stared at enormous technology challenges. The ambitious project, launched in 1984, aimed to make India only the sixth country to field nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs).

The biggest challenge was propulsion—to make and fit a compact light water nuclear reactor into a steel cylinder the height of a two-storey building. India was then only taking baby steps to building its own submarines, tanks, ballistic missiles and fighter aircraft. Compressing all of these technologies into an SSBN when India had built just two modest-sized conventional submarines, was a formidable ask.

The ATVP’s headquarters in New Delhi’s cantonment area was thus appropriately called ‘Akansha’ (ambition). Today, 26 years after cutting the steel on the first boat INS Arihant, India has four SSBNs in the water. The INS Arihant sailed out on a deterrent patrol in 2018—with a dozen missiles mated to nuclear weapons.

Two more SSBNs, the Arighat and Aridaman, have been commissioned since then. The fourth SSBN, the 7000-ton Arisudan, has an indigenous content of over 80 per cent, and is on sea trials. All major systems, including the nuclear propulsion plant, combat management system, high grade steel, sonars and ballistic missiles, are indigenous.

The program has created and energised an indigenous vendor base of 500 companies. This is because, as one former Director General – ATV Vice Admiral PK Bhasin told me in 2020, ‘the ATV Project was Atmanirbhar from inception’.

The ATVP is indeed India’s finest example of civil-military fusion, indigenous construction and an all-of-nation approach. Russian assistance was also crucial, a fact acknowledged by then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the launch of the Arihant in 2009.

The project’s secret sauce was to get the user service, the Indian Navy, in the driver’s seat. The Indian Navy had never built its own submarines when the project began, but it drew on its expertise of building the Leander class frigates in the 1970s, its first indigenously built warships. An entire generation of naval technical officers were trained on the Leander building program.

The navy also drew manpower from a small team of West German trained submarine technicians. Human resource management was key. There have been only eight DG-ATVPs since the program began, all of them retired Vice Admirals. Each DG has a five-year tenure to ensure stability and continuity (the DG-ADA has a two-year tenure).

The DG-ATV has financial powers equivalent to that of a Secretary to the government of India, a critical requirement in a hierarchical government set up. The DG-ATV is part of two apex committees which oversee the program, one of them headed by the Prime Minister, another by the NSA.

The DG-ATVP has one serving Vice Admiral and eight Rear Admirals under him. His organisation melds multiple stakeholders under one roof— the DRDO, the Atomic Energy Commission, private industry and DPSUs. It is thus one of India’s most complex silo-breaking organisations which works with surprising speed and efficiency.

However, given the ATVP’s classification as a top secret project , little of this project or its structure, is widely known or studied. That the project has delivered nuclear-powered submarines even as the navy struggles to build indigenous conventional submarines, is further testament to the ATVP’s engineering prowess and laser-focus on outcomes.

WHAT THE AMCA PROJECT MODEL COULD BECOME

What we know of the AMCA Program Execution Model formally approved by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on May 27 is that ADA, under DRDO, is the nodal agency for project execution. This is the path chosen for developing the LCA Tejas jets, but with tweaks like bringing in private sector partners.

The fifth-generation engine, inarguably the most crucial part of the project, is being developed by the GTRE-Safran consortium. The project has been declared a ‘National Mission Mode Project’.

A better course of action would be for an ATVP-like organisation headed by a suitably empowered three-star IAF officer and a directorate staffed with serving technical officers who understand aircraft design and engineering. This FGFA organisation could coordinate amongst the various organisations—DRDO, GTRE, the private sector partner and HAL—critical for developing the AMCA.

This idea is not new. Nearly two decades ago, one of the DG-ATVs offered to set up an ATVP-type organisation for the IAF to build its future Medium Transport Aircraft (MTA). The IAF politely turned down the offer. One could argue that the ATVP was an untested model back then — the Arihant was yet to be launched.

But two decades later, the weight of the project’s achievements tilts the balance in its favour. An IAF-run AMCA organisation is the only way ahead. Without such an organisation, the AMCA faces bleak prospects and much of the finger-pointing witnessed in previous projects. Further delays will make the Russian Su-57 more attractive as a large-scale import, over and above even the two squadrons that the IAF is reportedly considering buying as an interim purchase. (On June 6, President Putin personally offered India joint-production of the Su-57).

If India doubles down on the AMCA and bets on it for the future, then it will need a man or a woman, and a plan, to steer it. Because it has implications beyond just producing an AMCA. It could transform India’s aerospace sector. Take for instance the ATVP. At present, it is working on at least four major submarine programmes.

It is conducting sea trials of the last Arihant class boat, building a 12,500-ton SSBN (the first of four S5 class boomers), designing P76 conventional submarines, P77 nuclear-powered attack submarines, and a new series of nuclear-powered missile submarines (SSGNs).

These projects, collectively worth over $50 billion and spread over the next two decades, are being executed indigenously, with no foreign assistance. The ATVP is India’s only organisation executing such a volume of critically sensitive defence projects. If India becomes a major undersea power in the 21st century, it will largely be the efforts of this single Indian Navy-driven organisation.

Similarly, an IAF-driven project team would steer not just India’s fifth-generation fighter aircraft program, it would radically reimagine India’s aerospace power. This team could also drive advanced jet engines, manned-unmanned teaming projects, sixth generation fighters and hypersonic aircraft. It could mark India’s renaissance as an aerospace power of consequence.

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