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Seemingly oblivious to the massive financial commitments involved, the Indian Air Force (IAF) is currently considering an extraordinary three-way, near-simultaneous combat aircraft programme in a country still awash with widespread poverty and abysmally low per-capita incomes.

According to a cross-section of senior IAF veterans and military analysts, decades of poor planning and the lack of a coherent long-term procurement strategy had left the service with a highly depleted fighter fleet. And, rather than boosting this and augmenting operational capability to meet the growing challenges in its immediate neighbourhood, the IAF has been left scrambling to make up for years of neglect.

They said few countries, even amongst the world’s major military powers, could contemplate all three ambitious fighter programmes at once – buying 114 Dassault Rafales to shore up a fleet that has fallen from a sanctioned 42.5 squadrons to just 29, developing the indigenous fifth-generation Advanced Multirole Combat Aircraft (AMCA) and now considering acquiring Russian Sukhoi Su-57 ‘Felons’, potentially with technology transfer and local manufacture.

An extravagance India can ill afford

This latter prospect is expected to figure prominently in discussions between prime minister Narendra Modi and Russian president Vladimir Putin in New Delhi on Friday (September 11), a day ahead of the opening of the BRICS summit in the capital.

Collectively, all three projects involve an extravagance India can ill afford.

The proposed 114-Rafale procurement under the Multi-Role Fighter Aircraft programme – with 96 of them being built locally through technology transfer – is estimated to cost a staggering Rs 3.25 lakh crore ($35-36 billion), but the deal remains under negotiation.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.

The two other two programmes have recently acquired greater salience in IAF planning, with the Su-57 proposal gaining particular momentum ahead of Putin’s arrival in Delhi on Friday. But neither the Su-57 nor the twin-engine AMCA project has a confirmed number of aircraft or a publicly disclosed price.

The following cost comparisons are therefore necessarily approximate, based on industry estimates and available reporting rather than official Russian or Indian government figures. Around 40 Su-57s – enough for two squadrons, which the IAF is reportedly considering – together with extensive technology transfer and possible local production could potentially cost an estimated Rs 40,000-50,000 crore.

A comparable estimate for the first 40 operational twin-engine AMCAs is considerably........

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