Among the programmes suffering from this lack of leadership is the Tejas Light Combat Aircraft project.
Aeron Systems, founded in 2008 by Ashvani Shukla and Abhijit Bokil, is looking to contribute to programmes such as the Tejas light combat aircraft
Last week, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said buying 90 less Rafale fighter jets than the 126 planned earlier would save him money to buy more Tejas Light Combat Aircraft for the India Air Force.
The delivery of the Tejas Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) to the Indian Air Force under a Rs 48,000-crore deal will begin from March 2024 and around 16 aircraft will be rolled out annually till the completion of the total supply of 83 jets, Chairman and Managing Director of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited R Madhavan said on Sunday.
'The Raksha Mantri's day at sea'/
Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha on Wednesday expressed concerns over the delays in delivery schedules of 'Tejas' Light Combat Aircraft and intermediate jet trainer 'Sitara', both being developed indigenously, and their impact on operational capability.
Landing on an aircraft carrier deck is the ultimate and most daunting challenge for a fighter pilot. This takes India into a select group of nations -- the US, the UK, Russia, France, and China -- that have developed such jets.
The ministry's year-end review is silent on the continued occupation by Chinese troops of territory that India has always claimed and patrolled.
Top HAL sources say the AMCA, which is being developed as the IAF's next-generation stealth fighter, is slated to be assembled at HAL Nashik.
Armed with rockets and missiles, these helicopters can rain fire on the enemy in rarefied altitudes.
The Sri Lanka Air Force and Egypt has also shown some interest in procuring the Tejas.
The defence ministry is shooting to achieve an annual export target of $5 billion by 2025.
In rebranding the F-16 into the F-21, Lockheed Martin appears to have accepted what many have warned it for years: That the IAF would never buy a fighter whose very name is associated across India with the Pakistan Air Force which has operated the F-16 since the 1980s.
The contracts with Israel Aerospace Industries will condemn the Tejas Light Combat Aircraft to a marginal presence in the IAF's future fleet.
'The JF-17 is the aircraft of today and the Tejas is the aircraft of tomorrow.'
>The Indian Navy wants 'day and night capable, all weather multi-role deck based combat aircraft which can be used for air defence, air-to-surface operations, buddy refuelling, reconnaissance, electronic warfare missions' from its aircraft carriers.
Dassault Aviation chief Eric Trappier has made it clear it would take at least three years to deliver 36 Rafales to the Indian Air Force.
Defence minister claims MoD 'alive and kicking' after 'getting the weeds out'.
The final deal may be clinched by May-end.
The Air Chief Marshal, who is set to retire on December 31, also rued that the tender for the much needed "force multiplier" mid air refuellers had to be withdrawn. He said a fresh tender is in the offing and the procurement will be speeded up.
Asked whether the IAF can play a role in smashing terrorist training camps across the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir, he did not rule out such a possibility.
The cancellation of the project has far-reaching implications for the IAF, for which this was once its high-tech future fighter.
A fighter aircraft's lethality in air-to-air combat is governed by the air-to-air missile that it carries. Since the Independence, the Indian Air Force has mounted French, Russian and British missiles on its fighters. On Sunday, an IAF Sukhoi-30MKI fighter conducted the first test launch of the indigenous Astra air-to-air missile, which the Defence R&D Organisation is developing at its missile cluster in Hyderabad.
With no payments coming in, HAL for the first time ever taken a bank loan of Rs 7.81 billion.
Defence Minister A K Antony is flying down to Bangalore to award the Tejas its initial operational certificate on Friday. The Sitara's success in intensive flight-testing this year means that he could soon be making another trip to award an identical certification to the Sitara.
The Tejas has flown an unprecedented 450 test flights this year towards a splashy ceremony in Bangalore scheduled for December 20, where Defence Minister AK Antony will preside over its induction into the Indian Air Force, says Ajai Shukla.
The IAF is down to 34 squadrons. This will dip to 30 squadrons by the end of this decade, as nine squadrons of MiG-21 and MiG-27s retire.
In a candid admission, the Indian Air Force on Thursday said that given its depleting strength, it does not have the adequate numbers to "fully execute" an air campaign in case of a two-front war involving Pakistan and China simultaneously.
By removing Avinash Chander last week, the government has chosen to sacrifice the organisation's most potent symbol of success
From 2018-19 onwards, 16 'Standard of Preparation-18' Tejas fighters, which involves four major upgrades, will roll off the line each year.
NSA Doval, defence top brass brief Union ministers on the deal to help them counter Opposition charges.
Indian Air Force on Friday raised its first squadron of the home-grown Light Combat Aircraft Tejas with the induction of two aircraft into the force at the Aircraft System Testing Establishment in Bengaluru.
'It is hard to justify $225 million a plane for an increasingly obsolete mission.' The purchase of the 36 Rafales has changed little for the IAF.
There is considerable discomfort within the defence ministry about the Rafale deal.
Swaraj is in Bahrain for a two-day visit to attend the first ministerial meeting of the India-Arab League Cooperation Forum to be held on Sunday.
An ill-informed public narrative centres on expensive weapons platforms instead of the little things that would improve capability.
The National Democratic Alliance government has adopted half measures instead of moving decisively on defence.
What the new defence minister does with the Rafale fighter jet deal will decide if India wants to build genuine, long-term defence capability through an indigenous product that slashes life-cycle costs, or opt for glitzy signing ceremony with foreign vendors that would please the public, says Ajai Shukla.
The IAF has just 33 squadrons, 9 short of the 42 squadrons needed to tackle China and Pakistan together, says Ajai Shukla.
It came under severe criticism from the CAG on Friday as it pointed out that its Mark-I version has 53 'significant shortfalls'.
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