India eyes 6th generation FCAS, looks at tying up with France for possible collaboration

[Ginvincible]

I would normally reply to each comment individually, but the formatting is getting ugly. Hopefully this doesn't come across as too ranty, but I think there needs to be some pushback against the endless optimism around Indian defence programs. The world is becoming scary and its not cute anymore.

@RationalGuy

I think you're still reading my position as "Indians can't do difficult technology." That's not what I'm saying.

ISRO proves Indians can build excellent institutions and master very hard technology. Kaveri proves that capability does not automatically transfer.

A modern fighter engine or advanced semiconductor lithography requires an entire ecosystem of materials science, precision manufacturing, suppliers, testing infrastructure and institutional knowledge built over generations.

Those aren't just engineering problems. They're industrial ecosystem problems. That's where my pessimism comes from.

India has spent decades on combat aviation and still hasn't demonstrated the ability to develop and produce relevant fighters at a consistent pace.

And I don't really buy the India has other priorities argument anymore. Yes, India isn't rich. There are mouths to feed, homes to build and roads to pave. Every rising industrial power had competing priorities. Somehow the Indian state keeps struggling with maintaining competent institutions, funding and focus across decades.

I'm also not saying China balkanizes India tomorrow. I'm asking what another 30 years of relative decline looks like if China keeps compounding its industrial and technological lead while India keeps pushing the next breakthrough another generation into the future.

India has seen versions of that before. The EIC did not dominate the subcontinent because Indians were inherently incapable (despite what racists may claim). The important gaps were organizational and industrial. Sound familiar? Once those gaps become large enough, strategic freedom starts disappearing long before anybody marches on your capital.

That's why FCAS shouldn't offend anybody. If France has capability India needs, take whatever useful access you can negotiate and keep building domestically in parallel.

The burden of proof is on the people saying the next 40 years will somehow be different from the last 40.

Off topic but I don't understand why the alternative is apparently "superpower or death."

India could end up looking more like Brazil, Malaysia, Thailand or Algeria. A sovereign, culturally distinct regional power that may purchase much of its highest end military technology abroad is still a perfectly respectable country.

That's certainly preferable to sacrificing actual security because strategic dependence hurts national pride.

@Bhartiya Naagrik Sainik

When you say the tooling, presses, suppliers and industrial capacity should have been arranged by now, I agree.

They should have been. That's the problem. Its 2026!

We're discussing dipping next gen aviation in while still saying HAL isn't enough, private industry is inexperienced, the supplier base is too shallow at the scale required and, oh right, propulsion still needs solving.

At what point do the powerpoints and cgi actually turn into an industrial base?

India has proven it can manufacture somebody else's fighter under licence. It does not prove India can independently design, integrate, validate and mass produce the complete next gen system.

You might say that having the ingredients is not the same as having the restaurant.

So yes, obviously egotiate hard with France. But the bargaining positions are clear.

France already has the ecosystem. India is still trying to build one. The results of this transaction are obvious.

@_Anonymous_

I actually agree with most of your roadmap.

LCA -> Mk2 -> AMCA/Ghatak -> AMCA Mk2 -> sixth gen is perfectly logical.

Where I'm less optimistic is the arrows.

Each arrow assumes the previous program matures, enters service in useful numbers, develops the supplier base and transfers that experience into the next program without another decade disappearing.

That's the part India hasn't demonstrated consistently to me.

And personally, I don't think "everything except propulsion" is solved yet. Individual radars, composites, flight controls and weapons are important achievements. Integrating all of them into a low-observable aircraft, validating the complete system and then manufacturing it repeatedly at scale is the actual test.

I also agree that simply blaming HAL is too easy. If the deeper problem is political direction, MoD bureaucracy, etc. That actually makes me more pessimistic, not less.

A company can be restructured. Fixing the machinery around the entire Indian state is considerably harder.

Maybe its easier to frame the FCAS as insurance, and not a replacement for AMCA. It will br an easier pill to swallow. FWIW I do genuinely want India to field an indigenous stealth fighter. I'm just pessimistic about whether it arrives on a timeline where it actually affects the strategic balance.

My concern isn't that India never learns advanced aerospace technology. It's that India keeps learning yesterday's technology while everyone else is fielding tomorrow's.

 

[RationalGuy]

I would normally reply to each comment individually, but the formatting is getting ugly. Hopefully this doesn't come across as too ranty, but I think there needs to be some pushback against the endless optimism around Indian defence programs. The world is becoming scary and its not cute anymore.

@RationalGuy

I think you're still reading my position as "Indians can't do difficult technology." That's not what I'm saying.

ISRO proves Indians can build excellent institutions and master very hard technology. Kaveri proves that capability does not automatically transfer.

A modern fighter engine or advanced semiconductor lithography requires an entire ecosystem of materials science, precision manufacturing, suppliers, testing infrastructure and institutional knowledge built over generations.

Those aren't just engineering problems. They're industrial ecosystem problems. That's where my pessimism comes from.

India has spent decades on combat aviation and still hasn't demonstrated the ability to develop and produce relevant fighters at a consistent pace.

And I don't really buy the India has other priorities argument anymore. Yes, India isn't rich. There are mouths to feed, homes to build and roads to pave. Every rising industrial power had competing priorities. Somehow the Indian state keeps struggling with maintaining competent institutions, funding and focus across decades.

I'm also not saying China balkanizes India tomorrow. I'm asking what another 30 years of relative decline looks like if China keeps compounding its industrial and technological lead while India keeps pushing the next breakthrough another generation into the future.

India has seen versions of that before. The EIC did not dominate the subcontinent because Indians were inherently incapable (despite what racists may claim). The important gaps were organizational and industrial. Sound familiar? Once those gaps become large enough, strategic freedom starts disappearing long before anybody marches on your capital.

That's why FCAS shouldn't offend anybody. If France has capability India needs, take whatever useful access you can negotiate and keep building domestically in parallel.

The burden of proof is on the people saying the next 40 years will somehow be different from the last 40.

Off topic but I don't understand why the alternative is apparently "superpower or death."

India could end up looking more like Brazil, Malaysia, Thailand or Algeria. A sovereign, culturally distinct regional power that may purchase much of its highest end military technology abroad is still a perfectly respectable country.

That's certainly preferable to sacrificing actual security because strategic dependence hurts national pride.

@Bhartiya Naagrik Sainik

When you say the tooling, presses, suppliers and industrial capacity should have been arranged by now, I agree.

They should have been. That's the problem. Its 2026!

We're discussing dipping next gen aviation in while still saying HAL isn't enough, private industry is inexperienced, the supplier base is too shallow at the scale required and, oh right, propulsion still needs solving.

At what point do the powerpoints and cgi actually turn into an industrial base?

India has proven it can manufacture somebody else's fighter under licence. It does not prove India can independently design, integrate, validate and mass produce the complete next gen system.

You might say that having the ingredients is not the same as having the restaurant.

So yes, obviously egotiate hard with France. But the bargaining positions are clear.

France already has the ecosystem. India is still trying to build one. The results of this transaction are obvious.

@_Anonymous_

I actually agree with most of your roadmap.

LCA -> Mk2 -> AMCA/Ghatak -> AMCA Mk2 -> sixth gen is perfectly logical.

Where I'm less optimistic is the arrows.

Each arrow assumes the previous program matures, enters service in useful numbers, develops the supplier base and transfers that experience into the next program without another decade disappearing.

That's the part India hasn't demonstrated consistently to me.

And personally, I don't think "everything except propulsion" is solved yet. Individual radars, composites, flight controls and weapons are important achievements. Integrating all of them into a low-observable aircraft, validating the complete system and then manufacturing it repeatedly at scale is the actual test.

I also agree that simply blaming HAL is too easy. If the deeper problem is political direction, MoD bureaucracy, etc. That actually makes me more pessimistic, not less.

A company can be restructured. Fixing the machinery around the entire Indian state is considerably harder.

Maybe its easier to frame the FCAS as insurance, and not a replacement for AMCA. It will br an easier pill to swallow. FWIW I do genuinely want India to field an indigenous stealth fighter. I'm just pessimistic about whether it arrives on a timeline where it actually affects the strategic balance.

My concern isn't that India never learns advanced aerospace technology. It's that India keeps learning yesterday's technology while everyone else is fielding tomorrow's.

I read your position just fine and my main gripe with it is your "can't sustain multi decade program" part. Fact of the matter is, the gov has long viewed fighter aircraft as a commodity which can be bought, not as a strategic capability which needs to be made in house. The things which the gov has treated as big ticket strategic items, most notably the Arihant class, have succeeded (with foreign help no doubt) over decades. Might I remind you that the Arihant program started in 1983 (with roots all the way back to 1971) and was directly supervised by the PMO. It took 40 years of patience and BILLIONs for it to succeed.

Compare it to the Tejas program, peanuts in funding from the beginning, bureaucracy, external lobbies, apathy from IAF etc. Even then, it has resulted in many advancements and the development of a real ecosystem across the country for military aerospace. Now is the time to accelerate the indigenous push not throw it all in the water and run to foreigners again.

In the areas where we are lacking we need foreign support no doubt (engines) but we have made real progress in all of the other areas. If real funding and support isnt given now, and we act as observers in foreign programs and get whatever they build, when will we make an ecosystem resilient from outside forces? France is a good friend now, do you think that will be the case forever? And what will happen the day things sour between us and them?

And India becoming a Brazil or Malaysia with its size and potential is an absolute failure. We will forever be in the shadow of China then. Having FCAS means the shadow will be smaller but does it matter whether a person drowns by 10 feet or 10,000? Importing silver bullets will anyways not work in detering an adversary like China they only respect true domestic capability.

 

[Ginvincible]

I read your position just fine and my main gripe with it is your "can't sustain multi decade program" part. Fact of the matter is, the gov has long viewed fighter aircraft as a commodity which can be bought, not as a strategic capability which needs to be made in house. The things which the gov has treated as big ticket strategic items, most notably the Arihant class, have succeeded (with foreign help no doubt) over decades. Might I remind you that the Arihant program started in 1983 (with roots all the way back to 1971) and was directly supervised by the PMO. It took 40 years of patience and BILLIONs for it to succeed.

Ehh I actually think Arihant illustrates my point better than yours.

Yes, India kept an extremely difficult program alive for decades and eventually produced a credible SSBN capability. But look at the tempo. The fleet is still tiny decades after the program began.

Arihant shows that India can brute force an exceptional strategic program when it receives extraordinary protection and attention. It doesn't show that the broader Indian system routinely has the foresight or industrial throughput expected of a great power.

And for SSBNs, that's honestly fine. India doesn't need 50 of them. It needs enough survivable boats for credible deterrence.

That's actually pretty close to how I view FCAS and these increasingly high end combat platforms.

Compare it to the Tejas program, peanuts in funding from the beginning, bureaucracy, external lobbies, apathy from IAF etc. Even then, it has resulted in many advancements and the development of a real ecosystem across the country for military aerospace. Now is the time to accelerate the indigenous push not throw it all in the water and run to foreigners again.

In the areas where we are lacking we need foreign support no doubt (engines) but we have made real progress in all of the other areas. If real funding and support isnt given now, and we act as observers in foreign programs and get whatever they build, when will we make an ecosystem resilient from outside forces? France is a good friend now, do you think that will be the case forever? And what will happen the day things sour between us and them?

I agree Tejas was underfunded, bureaucratically strangled and never given the strategic priority it probably deserved.

But those aren't external excuses. The only ones to blame are people in the Indian state itself.

Saying this time it will be funded properly, everyone will coordinate, requirements will stay sane and political focus will survive for decades is exactly the assumption I'm skeptical of. I'm curious why you even seem to believe it?

India should absolutely continue AMCA and invest in its aerospace ecosystem. But it shouldn't gamble future airpower on the assumption that all of those institutional problems finally disappear on schedule.

China isn't waiting for AMCA to mature.

If France can offer useful technology, engineering experience or access to a next gen platform that closes part of the gap, take it.

And India becoming a Brazil or Malaysia with its size and potential is an absolute failure. We will forever be in the shadow of China then. Having FCAS means the shadow will be smaller but does it matter whether a person drowns by 10 feet or 10,000? Importing silver bullets will anyways not work in detering an adversary like China they only respect true domestic capability.

I don't accept the idea that anything short of technological parity with China is national failure. India isn't China.

China spent decades becoming an industrial manufacturing behemoth and organized its state around that objective. Indians are different. They are successful in spite of their government, not because of it. The IT boom happened because the needs for infrastructure were limited, and the government didn't understand the industry enough to strangle it.

Maybe India eventually changes. I'll believe it when I see it.

But high level, a sovereign, democratic, increasingly prosperous India with nuclear deterrence, a strong regional military, competitive industries in selected niches and yes, perhaps some dependence on foreign high-end technology, is still a successful country.

It does not need to reproduce China system for system to remain secure.

That's where FCAS fits into this for me. Keep trying to build Tejas/AMCA. Keep trying to solve propulsion. Keep expanding the domestic ecosystem.

But treat FCAS as insurance against the extremely likely possibility that indigenous timelines slip again.

Pride is a poor substitute for capability

 

[Ginvincible]

France is a good friend now, do you think that will be the case forever? And what will happen the day things sour between us and them?

On this specifically..sure.. maybe relations sour someday. Nobody knows what India or France looks like 30 years from now.

But I don't think "they might become unfriendly someday" is a good argument for refusing cooperation on a critical capability India needs now.

By that logic, why buy American engines? Why Russian submarines? Why Israeli sensors? Any supplier can become hostile, impose sanctions or simply change governments.

FCAS doesn't require India to trust France forever. It requires India to decide whether working with France today leaves it better positioned than spending the next 20 years hoping the indigenous timeline behaves.

Given the current capability gap, that seems like a pretty easy risk calculation to me.

 

[RationalGuy]

Ehh I actually think Arihant illustrates my point better than yours.

Yes, India kept an extremely difficult program alive for decades and eventually produced a credible SSBN capability. But look at the tempo. The fleet is still tiny decades after the program began.

Arihant shows that India can brute force an exceptional strategic program when it receives extraordinary protection and attention. It doesn't show that the broader Indian system routinely has the foresight or industrial throughput expected of a great power.

And for SSBNs, that's honestly fine. India doesn't need 50 of them. It needs enough survivable boats for credible deterrence.

That's actually pretty close to how I view FCAS and these increasingly high end combat platforms.


I agree Tejas was underfunded, bureaucratically strangled and never given the strategic priority it probably deserved.

But those aren't external excuses. The only ones to blame are people in the Indian state itself.

Saying this time it will be funded properly, everyone will coordinate, requirements will stay sane and political focus will survive for decades is exactly the assumption I'm skeptical of. I'm curious why you even seem to believe it?

India should absolutely continue AMCA and invest in its aerospace ecosystem. But it shouldn't gamble future airpower on the assumption that all of those institutional problems finally disappear on schedule.

China isn't waiting for AMCA to mature.

If France can offer useful technology, engineering experience or access to a next gen platform that closes part of the gap, take it.


I don't accept the idea that anything short of technological parity with China is national failure. India isn't China.

China spent decades becoming an industrial manufacturing behemoth and organized its state around that objective. Indians are different. They are successful in spite of their government, not because of it. The IT boom happened because the needs for infrastructure were limited, and the government didn't understand the industry enough to strangle it.

Maybe India eventually changes. I'll believe it when I see it.

But high level, a sovereign, democratic, increasingly prosperous India with nuclear deterrence, a strong regional military, competitive industries in selected niches and yes, perhaps some dependence on foreign high-end technology, is still a successful country.

It does not need to reproduce China system for system to remain secure.

That's where FCAS fits into this for me. Keep trying to build Tejas/AMCA. Keep trying to solve propulsion. Keep expanding the domestic ecosystem.

But treat FCAS as insurance against the extremely likely possibility that indigenous timelines slip again.

Pride is a poor substitute for capability

Never said we need to match China but we need to become a formidable force and an adversary with the ecosystem to credibly produce systems which can challenge theirs. And we need to export such systems to their adversaries (not AMCA per se tho). Chinese only understand strength and relying on others for military aircraft is a weakness. It won't stop them from arming Pakistan or doing their nefarious salami slicing antics. An India with a domestic ecosystem which can produce top notch weapons and export it to their adversaries, now that is something which will make them pause. They are an enemy which sees everything through the lense of domestic industrial capacity.


Speaking of the tempo its increasing after the first boat came, and the timeline now to advanced SSN and SSBNs have been shortened because the underlying ecosystem has already been built. India took 40 years to reach Arihant, its gonna take less than half that time to reach S5. Because of the ecosystem. The same will happen with our military aerospace program.

If the Indian state developing domestic hardware has been a disaster then almost the same thing can be said of "collaborating" with others. We did the same with the Germans/French for subs, well that was a disaster and we didn't learn anything. Now that we didnt learn anything we don't have a domestic industry and thus we have to run around again for decades asking others. Thats what will happen if we go into FCAS.

 

[_Anonymous_]

@_Anonymous_

I actually agree with most of your roadmap.

LCA -> Mk2 -> AMCA/Ghatak -> AMCA Mk2 -> sixth gen is perfectly logical.

Where I'm less optimistic is the arrows.

Each arrow assumes the previous program matures, enters service in useful numbers, develops the supplier base and transfers that experience into the next program without another decade disappearing.

That's the part India hasn't demonstrated consistently to me.

That's coz we've still not flown the Mk-2. Mk-1a mfg schedule is behind schedule due to delayed deliveries of the F-404 TF & other issues. Also factor in this is the first time HAL is actually mfg an FA as opposed to assembling it from CKDs / SKDs which is screw driver assembly .

What this means is they have an entire ecosystem to manage & get them to adhere to a schedule ensuring quality standards aren't compromised.

You may say they're making a real meal out of it & you wouldn't be too far off the mark. The real test will come when the private consortium goes about mfg the AMCA Mk-1 whereas the real test for HAL would be if this steep learning curve helps them streamline Mk-2 series production as & when that happens delivering the product on time with quality assurance as per client SQRs.

And personally, I don't think "everything except propulsion" is solved yet. Individual radars, composites, flight controls and weapons are important achievements. Integrating all of them into a low-observable aircraft, validating the complete system and then manufacturing it repeatedly at scale is the actual test.

You'd have to list which areas you think we're not upto the mark in . Otherwise the thread on AMCA is pretty good in tracking the progress of the entire program.

Perusal of other threads like Public & Pvt Defence Industries , the one on Uttam radars et al also give you insights into the progress these individual components are making.

Members like @Bhartiya Naagrik Sainik have also been tracking these developments in granular details. His posts may not be reader friendly but what it lacks in terms of presentation he makes up in content. In fact he can be accused of information overload. @ShiroBarks is another such member.

There may be other members too undertaking such an exercise & sharing information here but I haven't been up to date on the new members & their activities as I have stopped frequenting this site. More of a guest member these days .

I also agree that simply blaming HAL is too easy. If the deeper problem is political direction, MoD bureaucracy, etc. That actually makes me more pessimistic, not less.

Agreed but this is an old grouse which won't be addressed anytime soon . The sooner we make our peace with it the better. Changes will be incremental gradual & at times the pace would be glacial.

A company can be restructured. Fixing the machinery around the entire Indian state is considerably harder.

Bureaucratic & judicial reforms will happen the day we have a revolution since any party getting a 2/3rds majority any time soon is out of the question.

Maybe its easier to frame the FCAS as insurance, and not a replacement for AMCA.

These are 2 separate programs. The insurance for the AMCA which is a 5th Gen program is the Su-57 & in all likelihood we'd be getting 2 squadrons which may go upto 4 off the shelf. FCAS is a 6th Gen program.

It will br an easier pill to swallow. FWIW I do genuinely want India to field an indigenous stealth fighter. I'm just pessimistic about whether it arrives on a timeline where it actually affects the strategic balance.

The window for worrying is well past its time. That was in 2022-24 . Now whatever comes will be in the mid 30s whereas our definitive war against China IMHO is scheduled for 2030 give or take a year.

As my ex boss used to say - jab museebat hadh se zyada ho jaaye toh aasaan ho jaata hain . In other words - Que Sera Sera...

My concern isn't that India never learns advanced aerospace technology. It's that India keeps learning yesterday's technology while everyone else is fielding tomorrow's.

But this is true for all nations except the US ever since the collapse of the former USSR. Tell me which nation is at the cutting edge of military technology. The US sets the pace & every other country follows. Some do it sooner than the others.

I won't even see China's alleged 6th Gen FA program as path breaking . Let more information come out . Getting those FA to fly is impressive but whether it fulfills the role it was intended for & to what degree is the true measure of the technological prowess of that nation . And on that parameter China's more of a black hole.

 

[Bhartiya Naagrik Sainik]

Members like @Bhartiya Naagrik Sainik have also been tracking these developments in granular details. His posts may not be reader friendly but what it lacks in terms of presentation he makes up in content. In fact he can be accused of information overload.

We Indians have to be jolted out of day dreams of overoptimistic peace to understand dark side of human nature, hence i have used colors, big fonts.

 

[Speedster1]

Desgning a new combat ac (let alone a 6G jet) from scratch is incredibly expensive. The engines alone can cost $8b- $10b over a decade or so. Plus our baboos are known to withhold funds for flimsy reasons, stalling AMCA for years.

A consortium approach would commit GoI to a fixed schedule for releasing funds in return for a more predictable development timeframe. The price would be steep but it'd also offer some comfort to the IAF leadership which has been shouting 'technology delayed is technology denied' from the rooftops lately.

The French may be notoriously difficult to work with and loath to sharing tech. But our association with them goes back a long way. Back in the 80s, it was DA who consulted ADA/DRDO on the design of the Tejas Mk1/A. No wonder it turned out looking like a mini M2000.

In fact, had we gone with the analogue FCS offered by DA, Tejas Mk1/A would have probably entered service in the mid to late 2000s.

With the Rafale co-production deal, we'll learn the latest Industry 4.0 techniques in aerospace mfg which will stand us in good stead when designing and building 6G jets/ucav/simulators, etc.

GCAPs timelines don't match ours. (It is meant to replace EF2000 in the late 2030s) and its founding partner countries have already split the major work packages among themselves. France will continue to invest in Rafale atleast until the 2050s while its next gen bird takes shape.

With France, we'll get what we pay for + minimum political strings. Not so with GCAP and certainly not with the American F47. What we need is a watertight contract that'd hold the French to their word.

 

[Saaho]

China was assembling reverse engineered Russian shit during the 80s. Can you give hard figures on what China spent on J10 vs what we spent on Tejas and the IJT? You think J10 was ready in the 80s and 90s? It took until 2000 to make that thing fly and little bit longer to operate it.

Indian Tejas program spent 13320 thousand crore INR in development cost till 2016 when FOC was complete. This was Tejas MK1. (33 years in the making: What took Tejas so long to fly)

This is close to 2.03 billion dollar for a single engine light fighter jet. And even by 2016 the jet was not ready for induction.

J-10 Program allocated 500 million RMB in 1981 and was introduced in 2003. 500 RMB of 1981 will be about 1.08 billion USD today. You can double it and it will still be 2.16 billion USD in today money.

J-10 has been flying since 2003, two new models inducted and 600 produced. For Tejas, well, you know the story.

Tejas MK1 costs about 39 million dollars in FOC in 2023 dollars.
J10A, a heavier plane with more powerful engine costed 40 million in 2023 dollars.

Now for IJT.
(Long Road Ahead For HAL’s HJT-36 Sitara Intermediate Jet Trainer - Mobility Outlook)
(中国老坦克遭疯抢 净赚十几亿美元--万维读者网)

CAG says India allocated 180 Crore in 1999 for development. This will be about 42 million in 1999 conversion rate.
Further it says India spent about 467 Crore by 2005. This was about 108 million USD in 2005.

China had an equivalent project called JL-8/K-8 in 80s-early 90s with Pakistan which delivered jet in 92 onwards. Pakistan contributed 6 million in 1986 and China 18 (1:3) for a total development budget of 24 million dollars in 86. This would amount to 43 million in 2005. Even if you double it, it will be 86 million dollars. JL-8/K-8 was exported to massive number of countries.


The issue is not money. It is HAL. I do not trust HAL for 6th gen project or even 5th gen project. AMCA is going to have same issues. Do not hold your breath for it to attain IOC before 2040.

Btw Pakistan having 100 5th gen fighters by 2040? Get real. And even if that happens your FCAS won't be there to save the day, it will be at best moving towards prototype stage lol. Not even 1 FCAS will be ready for combat use by 2040, mark it down.

I mean, if J-35 is produced at the same rate JF-17 was produced, there is no reason to believe that by 2040 PAF will not have 100 J-35s.

 

[Batman]

FCAS is 20-22 year in future. In all honestly, I can see FCAS reaching IOC before AMCA.
And Tejas, well I feel it is stupid to even mention Tejas. In 2026, Tejas is a trainer. Not a fighter. And HAL can not even deliver that.

NO ONE other than US and China has made a fifth gen. So what do you do? Go to HAL?
Among the OPTIONS AVAILABLE France is best and very likely will deliver REAL planes on time. Because they make money out of it. And they have been making planes for long time.

HAL is useless.
UK is worse than France.
And there is no third option.

We could go with Russia also since they are the most technologically advanced and capable fighter makers in Eurasia.

 

[Saaho]

We could go with Russia also since they are the most technologically advanced and capable fighter makers in Eurasia.

France is better.

I just gave you the example of the Eurofighter & the fact that BAe was also the lead contractor / sub contractor for the F-35 project . For more details on the low down of BAe & RR's involvement contact Paddy & Sweetie . @BMD ; @Innominate

I told you before. Eurofailure was not British jet. It was a collaboration. French are vastly more independent and competent.

 

[Batman]

The French may be notoriously difficult to work with and loath to sharing tech. But our association with them goes back a long way. Back in the 80s, it was DA who consulted ADA/DRDO on the design of the Tejas Mk1/A. No wonder it turned out looking like a mini M2000.

In fact, had we gone with the analogue FCS offered by DA, Tejas Mk1/A would have probably entered service in the mid to late 2000s.

With the Rafale co-production deal, we'll learn the latest Industry 4.0 techniques in aerospace mfg which will stand us in good stead when designing and building 6G jets/ucav/simulators, etc.

There is no revolutionary tech or good quality tot being transferred in the Rafale co-prodcution deal, it's like 50% with mostly just the airframe and other non critical components, not to mention they aren't even giving us proper access to their software, there is nothing they are offering which we already can't do, the only benefit of this co production is reduce supply chain issues and help boost local industries but doesn't mean much when france controls all the critical supply chain and components anyway, neither their airframe or technology they transfer is anything revolutionary, if we already had made the Tejas Mk2, I would have told France to shove their rafale offer far up where the sun doens't shine except for maybe the Navy.

Not to mention, france's controversial history with technology tranfer or co-development.

 

[Saaho]

India could end up looking more like Brazil, Malaysia, Thailand or Algeria. A sovereign, culturally distinct regional power that may purchase much of its highest end military technology abroad is still a perfectly respectable country.

That's certainly preferable to sacrificing actual security because strategic dependence hurts national pride.

I mean, this should be obvious. A student goes to a for profit university (there are many in west) to learn skills. It costs arm and leg but learning is real. He takes internship and is paid much less than market rate. But he gains extremely valuable lessons. Folks here want India to skip all these steps.

One should look at how IN developed its nuclear boats. That is the template. First they leased. Then they started development of a small pocket nuke boat under Russia's tutelage while paying Russia in massive $$$s. Then they expanded it. And now they are planning to build even SSNs.

They will have AIP too eventually, that too made in India. Though I believe IN will now agree that inducting Kalawari with MESMA would have been a better idea. It would have allowed Indian AIP to mature and tested on Kilo. Later follow on order for next batch of (now cancelled) Kalawari would have included that AIP. P75(I) would have focused on something else altogether instead of becoming emergency purchase for AIP technology.

Its extremely important to have capabilities in armed forces while industrial complex matures make in India platforms.

 

[Batman]

France is better.

Nope, france is not remotely as capable as Russia and probably falls below even UK in technological capability.

 

[Saaho]

Nope, france is not remotely as capable as Russia and probably falls below even UK in technological capability.

Specific to fighter jets, French are much better. In any sense of metric. And more importantly, more aligned with goals of Indian airforce and Indian Navy.

 

[Saaho]

France will likely insist on DA being prime contractor for key aspects like the airframe, FCS and propulsion as it did with FCAS. They are more or less evenly placed vs DRDO/ADE when it comes to stealth aircraft D&D though. DA has worked on stealth UCAV programs like Neuron ( including flying Grand Duc/Petit Duc demonstrators) while ADE has only recently proven a flying wing stealth planform via the SWIFT prog. Once AMCA prototyping starts, we'll have more relevant experience that DA won't.)

The IAF/MoD may be OK with DA taking the lead, as long as both countries requirements can be harmonized. As you pointed out, this would be our chance to absorb prog mgmt expertise from a major Western aerospace major. The amount of design work we ultimately get might also depend on the amount of money we'd be prepared to put up.

The rest of the avionics and mission systems will likely be unique, based on the respective national requirements, imo.

Let me be very specific. India does not have capability to take lead in Propulsion, airframe. May be FCS. India will likely get the unmanned parts which Germany was leading on. So it will look like: Dassault Lead developer in manned jet with an Indian company (likely HAL) as lead partner. HAL/Adani Lead developer in Unmanned counterparts with Dassault India as lead partner.

Later one more country might join or it will continue like this.

I think it is pretty great if it happens.

 

[Batman]

Specific to fighter jets, French are much better. In any sense of metric. And more importantly, more aligned with goals of Indian airforce and Indian Navy.

Nope, no real scientist considers France a better fighter jet maker than Russia. Russia/USSR have a much broader fighter jet envelope than what France can ever dream of achieving,

• MiG-21 — lightweight fighter
• MiG-23 — variable-geometry interceptor/fighter
• MiG-25 — extreme-speed/high-altitude interceptor
• MiG-29 — lightweight highly maneuverable fighter
• MiG-31 — very-long-range, Mach-class interceptor
• Su-27 — heavyweight air-superiority fighter
• Su-30 — long-range two-seat multirole fighter
• Su-33 — carrier fighter
• Su-34 — fighter-derived deep-strike aircraft
• Su-35 — advanced supermaneuverable 4++ fighter
• Su-57 — stealthy fifth-generation fighter

France certainly has an outstanding historical fighter industry, Mirage III, F1, 2000 and Rafale in particular but its post-Cold-War combat-aircraft development has essentially converged on one capable family: Rafale.

Russian jets are a league ahead in terms of raw kinematic aerodynamic and kinematic capability. Russian Engines are much more powerful than French ones not to mention their latest engines are a generation ahead in technology than France's latest ones. Russia arguably has the best operational 5th generation fighter jet on the planet right now, France is a generation behind in their jets.

Russian jets have much greater growth potential than French ones, Russian sensor architecture is also a generation ahead than that of France, much greater interceptor design expertise, much better experience and capability in terms of thrust vectoring, more diverse design schools like Sukhoi, Mikoyan and Yakovlev unlike France heavily consolidated around Dassault.

There is no world where France is remotely close as the Russian Industry in terms of fighter jet expertise or experience.

 

[Saaho]

I also agree that simply blaming HAL is too easy. If the deeper problem is political direction, MoD bureaucracy, etc. That actually makes me more pessimistic, not less.

The real problem is structural.

In China state owned mega corp AVIC has many subsidiary (SAC, HAIG, CAC etc) that compete for government projects. Result is that all of them grow in capability. We never had such a structure. Even for radars they have multiple institutes that compete (NRIET, ERI, LETRI etc).

US has private firms LM, Boeing.

EU has Airbus, Saab etc.

India has only HAL.

And there lies the rub.

Come think of it, IN also has similar situation. There are many ports for ship building that compete for their contracts. Some private some state owned.

 

[Saaho]

Then there's our experience with NG in the construction of the Scorpene submarines. Result they were deliberately excluded from the Project -75 I. Moreover there's not a peep from Naval HQ at the moment on additional Scorpenes we were supposed to contract a couple of years ago. And by the looks of it we aren't going to collaborate with NG anytime soon.

Dassault is not NG. Totally different companies. More over Scorpene was not exactly skipped over. Scorpene was under construction in India already and DRDO was developing AIP for it. P75I had one requirement that was make or break :AIP. German AIP was few shades better because it is based on fuel cells. French MESMA is slightly more noisey. IN wanted fuel cell AIP and only one in market is from Germans apparently.

France is certainly a better bet but they're not without faults either. Dassault Aviation signed their technical & commercial bids without any deviations & the moment they were announced as the winners in the commercial bid backed off from signing the agreement on grounds they couldn't stand guarantee for the workmanship quality & time taken by HAL to deliver.

I personally feel they were right to do so. I as a developer can not take guarantee of others work. And contract terms are negotiated. Winner was not bound to sign contract and can walk away if India demands stupid terms. And by that time French had options as others had started to buy Rafale. Had India concluded deal in 2000s instead of doing entire song and dance till 2012, India would have gotten better terms from French because in 2000s they had not found a single buyer. The entire competition route frankly *censored*ed India's opportunity. Fault is in our procurement process here.

Au contraire DA has no experience of 5th Gen FA . They're leaping one generation to develop the 6th Gen FA . That's a handicap . No doubt DA has the legacy & technological depth to undertake the project but it'd be a tough deal.

I think I have covered this before. Only China and US can claim to have REAL expertise in fifth gen development. Neither Airbus, nor anyone else. But, among ALL the options that India has for 6th gen fighter, DA and france is THE BEST. Because NONE have real experience at 5th gen BUT DA has a history of independence and deliveries plus collaboration with in france partners for everything related to jets. NO one else has that.

If you look at Eurofailure, the expertise is spread across a number of countries. Eurojet was a collaboration of RR of UK, MTU of Germany, Avio of Italy and so on.

For non France option, you will need a consortium of sorts to work with. GCAP is going in that direction. With france, they have most expertise in a single country. India can actually contribute in unmanned part because HAL has been busy working on CATS program. So India and France really fit.

 

[Bhartiya Naagrik Sainik]

It is difficult to satisfy everybody's opinion.
I don't mind if we get few Su-57, but it should not impact AMCA.
I also don't mind if we get few FCAS, but it should not impact our own 6gen design, provided we take timely domestic initiative bcoz a jet needs 15-20 years. It must start today. We can consult the world, get few foreign components like JV engine, etc, but make our own things too TIMELY.
Repeating - If NRIs lead as global CEOs but India lags then it is national management problem.

That's the problem. Its 2026!

We're discussing dipping next gen aviation in while still saying HAL isn't enough, private industry is inexperienced, the supplier base is too shallow at the scale required and, oh right, propulsion still needs solving.

We're hearing this decade after decade & it becomes excuse to import.
If supply base is shallow then it means industrial training to make new objects is not upgrading, it is management's lazy mistake.
This way a start-up will never ever kick-start unless people are kicked.

At what point do the powerpoints and cgi actually turn into an industrial base?

The point in time when people have completed education & consultancy & decide to take initiative to confidently build something original, not just latch on & piggyback others. That's how business continuity continues to make new products & how startup starts.

India has proven it can manufacture somebody else's fighter under licence. It does not prove India can independently design, integrate, validate and mass produce the complete next gen system.
You might say that having the ingredients is not the same as having the restaurant.

That's your discouraging perception. I understand why think like this bcoz -
- Bad managers suppress talented people.
- Most Indians lack self-confidence & management.
- Business tycoons like Tata, Ambani, Adani, etc just want ready made setup to produce something big, not design by self.

But I already said China & Russia can't collaborate with West & wait to achieve their quality level.
Production force needs good leadership & management.
So just imagine that FCAS like design comes from Indian group & passed on to PPP.
After people graduate out & gain some experience, some open their own business, some become good managers, some become bad managers just wanting the salary associated.
Point is to become confident & take initiative, build original stuff as per our needs.
MoD/PMO have to assemble capable & willing people.

So yes, obviously negotiate hard with France. But the bargaining positions are clear.
France already has the ecosystem. India is still trying to build one. The results of this transaction are obvious.

Consultancy & collaboration doesn't mean 100% import.
Future French political regimes may not be so friendly.
France is small capitalist country hence always very busy to 1st cater to their domestic needs then export to generate revenue & then collaborations which they don't need but others need from them.
France didn't adjust with UK, Germany, they won't adjust much with anybody bcoz they are very confident guys making them capable.
We should stop importing products made as per foreign needs, not our needs.
If India doesn't try HARDER to build ecosystem, implement 2 shifts IMO, then before any big war with any aggressor, there will be civil war due to mass unemployment. Every Indian sector need to get into global market.