LCA AF Mk2 (Medium Weight Fighter) - News and discussions

[Parthu]

Wait for sometime. Mk2 will end up being a TD. Mk1A will be produced in numbers. Higher possibility of seeing a single engine version of the AMCA.

I was in a small school competition held by the aeronautical society in IIT bombay 1995 when I got the first photo of the LCA. It is still with me.

Let me just tell you from what I have seen, higher number of UCAVs are going to come in. Have always held you will see more than the initial number of Rafales and you will see the Su-57 enter Indian service. Mk1A will come in. AMCA will get delayed, but it will come. Mk2 any delay and its dead. Mk1A will be continued.

While this remains a distinct possibility, I think it will ultimately come down to the F414 license production effort.

If we manage to get the desired 80% ToT and start making the engine locally, it'll make sense to have large numbers of single-engine fighters that utilize it instead of the fully off-the-shelf F404. If that deal goes through, the Tejas Mk2 will be inevitable. Building more Mk1A (beyond the +97) instead of Mk2 will no longer make any economic sense.

And then there's the fact that producing Mk2 will allow us to more effectively amortize the considerable R&D costs of everything that's going on AMCA as well - because of the high degree of commonality between the two.