IAF's Capabilities Are Long Dwindling, and the Problem Isn't a Lack of Ideas or Platforms

It takes a special kind of bureaucratic genius to spend weeks deliberating the obvious.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) did just that by constituting a committee last December to tackle the Indian Air Force’s (IAF) dwindling fleets of fighter, mid-air fuellers and airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft – a reality that has been in freefall and public glare for over two decades.

This crack team was headed by defence secretary Rajesh K. Singh and loaded with high-ranking officials – the vice chief of air staff, secretary defence production, head of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), and the deputy chief of air staff serving as member secretary.

According to selective media reports, this committee had recommended in March this year the ‘expedited’ induction of all these diminishing assets into the IAF and reiterated the need to pursue atma nirbharta, or self-reliance, in this regard, by involving the private sector to fill critical operational gaps in collaboration with Defence Public Sector Units and the DRDO.

Even the Press Information Bureau, usually eager to publicise government initiatives in detail, issued a terse four-sentence note in March when the defence secretary’s committee submitted its report, offering no specifics beyond the predictable talking points.

But this cannot possibly be the core of the committee’s so-called "secret" recommendations.

After all, it did not require a high-level task force to note what has been starkly obvious and the subjects of countless parliamentary questions, media reports and defence seminars centred on the IAF’s shrinking fighter numbers and the potential of the private sector in defence manufacturing.  

An apt metaphor for this exercise would be a university or leading academic institution launching a high-powered research project to determine the date of Indian independence – only for the scholars to eventually conclude after years of study that it was, indeed, August 15, 1947.

From 2000 onwards, it was well known that the IAF’s fighter strength was in crisis, declining steadily from a sanctioned strength of 42.5 combat squadrons to 29 presently, a number that probably equalled those in the Pakistan Air Force.  

Chronologically speaking, it was known when the long-delayed process to acquire 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) was initiated in 2007-08. It remained a crisis when negotiations with France’s Dassault for Rafale jets shortlisted for the MMRCA tender were stalled around 2012, and matters were further exacerbated when these were scrapped three years later over bureaucratic objections. And, the crisis persisted even when India initiated the ‘stopgap’ purchase of 36 French Dassault Rafale fighters in 2016.

Almost a decade later, media reports and analysts have suggested that the earlier MMRCA proposal has been dusted off, renamed the MRFA (Multi-Role Fighter Aircraft) project, but it now involved procurement of 114 platforms. 

Of these, 18 of the shortlisted platforms would be acquired in a fly-away condition, and the remaining 96 built locally via a collaborative venture between the selected original equipment manufacturer and a local strategic partner via a technology transfer, in a project estimated to cost USD 20-25 billion.

Alongside, even the indigenous Tejas Mk-1A upgraded variant, which offered a reliable interim solution to make good fighter numbers, remains caught in delay for a variety of reasons like the timely supply of General Electric GE F404-IN20 afterburner turbofan engines from the US.

The 2021 order for 83 Mk-1As, intended as replacements for the Soviet-era MiG-21s – finally being retired after 62 years of squadron service in September – remains a work-in-progress.

Braving these recurring delays, MoD’s defence acquisition council, headed by Union defence minister Rajnath Singh, had approved a follow-on order for 97 additional Tejas Mk-1As in December 2023, although a formal contract for them with Hindustan Aeronautics limited is yet to be inked.

So, what really has changed?

Well, the MoD had recently approved a brand-new “execution model” for the indigenous fifth-generation Advanced Medium Aircraft (AMCA) that has existed since 2007 but was then called the Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA) and was a collaborative venture with Russia.

Designated the Perspective Multi-Role Fighter by the MoD, the FGFA was based on Russia’s Sukhoi T-50-then known as PAK-FA (Prespektivnyi Aniatsionnyi Kompleks-Frontovoi Aviasty), which later morphed into the Sukhoi Su-57 stealth fighter in service with the Russian Air Force presently. 

This putative 30-ton, twin-engine platform that promised super-cruise capabilities, advanced stealth, internal weapon bays and next-generation avionics, however, was abandoned after the MoD paid USD 295 million towards its preliminary design, as part of its equal financial but partial technical partnership.

Such projects revealed that in the theatre of India’s military modernisation, when something fails to take off, the MoD simply renames, repackages and relaunches it, hoping that a change in label might succeed where substance has not.

In the meantime, other IAF legacy projects that the aforementioned committee deliberated upon, too limp on.

The mid-air refueller saga began in 2007 and remains unfulfilled. The IAF operates six IL-78MKIs, Russian-origin mid-air refuelling aircraft inducted between 2003 and 2006, but this fleet has faced persistent serviceability issues due to maintenance challenges and spares shortages, leading to low availability rates. 

Multiple attempts since 2007 to acquire – or lease – more modern refuellers like Airbus A330 Multi-Role Tanker Transport (MRTT) aircraft have repeatedly stalled over cost and procedural hurdles. The IAF’s ongoing shortage of aerial tankers hampers its ability to project sustained air power.

The IAF’s AEW&C platform procurement saga began in 2003 with plans to acquire a fleet of such aircraft to enhance its situational awareness and battle management capabilities. Over two decades later, progress has been slow and limited.

Only six Mk1A systems, mounted on Brazilian Embraer EMB-145 platforms, have been inducted, offering limited range and endurance compared to global standards. A follow-on project to develop more capable assets on Airbus A321 platforms was proposed to overcome these limitations but despite being cleared in principle and even attracting cabinet-level attention, the programme remains stalled due to cost, bureaucratic indecision and delays in finalising industrial partnerships, opening an operational gap in aerial domain awareness and undermining network-centric warfare capability.

Looking back, the MoD’s core challenge has always been the absence of financially viable, long-term defence plans, inadequate institutional structures for capability acquisition and, most crucially, a persistent unwillingness to introspect, identify systemic flaws and implement meaningful reforms. 

The MoD, it seems, continues to respond to critical military modernisation requirements with the same tools – committees, vague announcements and procedural innovation that merely end up substituting nomenclature for progress. 

The IAF’s capability crisis stems not from a lack of ideas or platform availability, but from institutional inertia. And, unless that changes, the MoD – and by extension, the IAF – will continue fielding new committee reports, all the while watching prevailing problems become even more unmanageable.

Amit Cowshish is a former financial advisor (acquisitions), Ministry of Defence.

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