In a major boost to the Make in India initiative, the Indian Air Force (IAF) plans to build around a hundred advanced fighter jets in India, for which it has initiated discussions with international aircraft manufacturers.
Top authority sources have instructed India Today that the Atmanirbhar push will, for the first time, see Indians using foreign currency to pay for nearly 70 per cent of the project’s cost.
“The plan is to build ninety six planes in India for which repayments for 36 would be made in part in Indian and partially in overseas currency. For the last 60 aircraft, the repayments would be made in Indian forex only,” they said.
The IAF plans to purchase 114 planes, which will be used to enhance its combat capability and replace the outgoing fleet of MiG series aircraft. The first 18 planes of the mission will be imported from the selected foreign vendor’s home base after conducting limited trials of the planes in competition. Companies such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, MIG, Dassault and Saab are in the running for the project which is expected to be completed within three years.
The IAF first floated the Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) tender in 2007 to procure 126 new fighter jets from foreign OEMs. It was once proposed to continue to build and maintain fighter jets as light combat aircraft based on their allowed power efficiency. (LCA) Tejas, a planned indigenous alternative to the IAF’s increasingly aging fleet, has sought more time to fill the gap.
After many issues that came up all throughout the soft procedure, in 2015, the MMRCA mission was canceled. For IAF to hold its operational capabilities, the government rather decided to acquire 36 Rafale jets.
