GLOBAL PARTNERSHIPS FOR AIRCRAFT MANUFACTURE

With a highly cumbersome procurement process on the one hand and poor production centres on the other, India should go for international partnerships in general and Brazil in particular that will allow it to rapidly modernise the IAF with advanced weaponry as well as systems that are cheap and effective

-  AMIT GUPTA

The biggest biennial international air show and aviation expo in Asia, the 15th Edition of ‘Aero India 2025’, is scheduled from February 10, 2025, to February 14, 2025, at ‘Yelahanka Air Force Station’ in Bengaluru, India’s information technology capital. Yelahanka has successfully hosted all editions of gala events since 1996.

Building new aircraft is an extremely expensive and time-consuming process often taking decades to bring a project to fruition. But India needs new combat aircraft, transports, drones, as well as passenger aircraft for the burgeoning Indian airlines industry and all this will require committing substantial national resources to do so. Very few nations can afford to carry out such aircraft development on their own so they have sought partnerships in both the military and civilian sectors. The question for India is, who should India approach in the global aerospace industry?

A History of Consolidation and Partnerships

After the Second World War, the West had multiple countries producing aircraft and in each of these countries, there were dozens of aircraft manufacturers. Britain, despite emerging severely weakened from the Second World War, had dozens of aircraft companies with famous names like de Havilland, Hawker Siddeley, Piper, Avro, Vickers, and Handley Page but by the 1980s all these firms were consolidated into British Aerospace. As technological complexity grew, so too did the cost of manufacturing new aircraft and, at the same time, Britain's budgetary constraints meant less money would be spent on defence research and development.