IAF chief says jet delays are hurting, and wants 36 to 40 fighters a year

Air Chief Marshal A.P. Singh said on Saturday that late fighter deliveries are hurting the Indian Air Force, and that the service needs 36 to 40 new jets a year if it is to stop shrinking.

He put the current strength at 30 squadrons. The figure written into planning for a two-front war, against China and Pakistan, is 42. Some of the squadrons still on the books are due to retire over the next few years. Singh did not pretend the gap was stable. He said the numbers are getting reduced, and that the delays are hurting. There is, he said, no doubt about that.

The path he described has two production lines. Hindustan Aeronautics is expected to hand over 24 Tejas Mark 1A jets a year. A proposed order for 114 Rafales would add about 12 a year. Dassault would build 96 of those 114 in India. Singh said the Rafale deal could be closed within this financial year if the process holds. If both streams run as planned, he said, the force can meet the pace it has set itself.

HAL's existing Tejas Mark 1A contract covers about 180 aircraft. Deliveries have stalled on two problems. One is the integration of radars and missiles, which Singh's account, as reported by The Tribune, expects to be sorted in the next few weeks. The other is the supply of F404 engines from General Electric in the United States. That delay is not an Indian production fault. It is an American engine line that has not delivered to the schedule the airframe needs. Until those engines arrive, a finished Tejas cannot be accepted as a fighter.

On a fifth-generation aircraft he was more conditional. Russia has offered the Sukhoi-57. No decision has been taken. Singh said the IAF needs a plane of that class. If the indigenous Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft is delayed, he said, the service will have to decide on a foreign fifth-generation type. That is not an order. It is a public marker that AMCA's calendar is now part of the combat calculation, and that the Russian offer is the one on the table.

The arithmetic is unforgiving. Thirty squadrons against a mandate of 42, with retirements ahead, means the force falls further behind unless induction runs at the 36-to-40 rate he named. Twenty-four Tejas and twelve Rafales add to 36, the bottom of that band. Any slip in the GE engines, in the radar-missile integration, or in the Rafale contract takes the year below the number he said is required. A foreign fifth-generation buy would sit outside that count. It would also take years of training and weapons integration before it filled a squadron.

The financial-year claim on the 114 Rafales is the near-term test. Defence acquisition at that scale usually slips past a single budget cycle. Singh said it could be done inside this one. If the contract is unsigned by March, the 12-a-year Rafale stream he used in the sum does not start, and the Tejas line carries the whole recovery on its own, still short of engines.

The open choice is the Sukhoi-57. Singh has not asked, in public, for a signed deal. He has said the class of aircraft is needed if AMCA slips. The next budget and the next HAL delivery quarter will show whether that condition is met or whether the offer stays an offer.