India's Air Force urgently needs more frontline combat aircraft

We must foster competition and attract private investment to get fighter jets needed for our defence

- NITIN PAI

The Indian Air Force (IAF) is not only short of an adequate number of aircraft to protect our skies, but will see its capabilities weaken over time, unless corrective action is taken immediately. In my estimate, a significant proportion of IAF's fighter aircraft fleet is down due to a shortage of Russian spares, and the rest are sparingly used to ensure that they don't fly into a spares crunch. Thus, the effective strength of the Air Force is much smaller than what publicly available numbers indicate. It also means young pilots get fewer hours of flying training. In an age that may see wars fought in the air and space, India ignores the IAF's problems at great peril.

Speaking at a seminar in New Delhi a few days ago, Air Chief Marshal A.P. Singh pointed out that 40 years after development started and eight years after the first planes were inducted, IAF is yet to receive all 40 of the indigenous Tejas fighters. Although a further 180 have been ordered, Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd's (HAL) track record and critical dependence on foreign suppliers for jet engines means that on current trends, it will be decades before the IAF sees these aircraft at its bases. By that time, they might be a lot less effective because the rest of the world, especially China, would be two generations ahead.