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Chandigarh: Three US-origin General Electric (GE) combat aircraft engines were finally delivered to Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) last week kick-starting, after an extended hiatus production of the upgraded variant of India’s indigenously developed Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Mk1A for the Indian Air Force (IAF). 

This latest delivery takes to ten the number of GE F404-IN20 after burning power plants supplied to HAL under its Rs 5,375-crore order for 99 engines for the Mk1A, placed in early 2021, highlighting the IAF’s continuing vulnerability to imported propulsion and the constraints this imposes on its already depleted fighter fleet.

The Mk1A is central to the IAF’s efforts in boosting its dwindling combat aircraft strength, which has fallen from a sanctioned 42.5 fighter squadrons to just 29, including six squadrons of legacy SEPECAT Jaguars, inducted in the 1970s. It has ordered 180 Mk1As – 83 under the first contract, worth nearly Rs 48,000 crore, signed in early 2021, and another 97 under a Rs 62,370-crore deal inked over four years later, in September 2025.

Yet, so far it has not received a single Mk1A, with deferred GE F404 engine supplies pushing the programme nearly three years behind its original delivery schedule. GE had shut down its dedicated F404-IN20 production line at its Lynn, Massachusetts, facility near Boston for several years after HAL reportedly failed to place timely follow-on orders for engines for the MK1A.

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GE eventually delivered the first F404-IN20 under its order for 99 engines in March 2025, two years after deliveries were originally due to begin, enabling the fighter to proceed with its pre-induction trials, including weapon and radar integration. This delay also prompted HAL to impose liquidated damages on GE, with its chairman and managing director D.K. Sunil confirmed that the penalty clause had been invoked against the US company, but provided no details.

Media reports quoted unidentified HAL sources last week claiming that another 22 F404 engines would arrive by year-end, but military aviation sources in Bangalore and New Delhi remained sceptical about GE’s ability to meet that target. But, even if these do arrive it would still leave a substantial backlog in Mk1A production, despite HAL claiming to have increased its annual production capacity of the fighter type from 16 to 24 units by adding a third assembly line at Nashik to its two existing ones in Bangalore.

Engine availability was, however, only one of the Mk1As production constraints, and Air Chief Marshal A.P. Singh had publicly vented his frustration with HAL’s production performance over it. At Aero India in Bangalore in February 2025, he berated HAL officials, saying he was “just not confident” of the public sector company’s ability to ensure timely Tejas deliveries, as it was........

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