For decades, India’s most advanced fighter jets have borne the stamp of foreign origin. But the country’s quest for military self-reliance took a leap forward last week with the long-awaited go-ahead for its own stealth fighter jet.
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The Indian government’s green light for the Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) is being lauded by analysts as a watershed moment for national security, as the country confronts mounting military pressures from both Pakistan and China.
New Delhi’s Defence Ministry announced on Tuesday that it had approved the “execution model” for the AMCA – a fifth-generation fighter jet project aimed at enhancing the Indian Air Force’s deep-strike capabilities – paving the way for prototype development and eventual production.
“This is an important step towards harnessing the indigenous expertise, capability and capacity to develop the AMCA prototype, which will be a major milestone towards Aatmanirbharta (a self-reliant India) in the aerospace sector,” the defence ministry said in a statement, referring to the government’s flagship initiative to boost domestic manufacturing and reduce reliance on imports.
The AMCA project is now entering a pivotal, action-oriented phase of development, said Antoine Levesques, senior fellow for South and Central Asian defence, strategy and diplomacy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
The approval of an execution model for the fighter “is a golden opportunity for India to create a new defence industrial template for both its established public and insurgent private industry to work sustainably on a far more equal and efficient footing than any of India’s previous large-ticket, multi-decade defence industry projects,” Levesques told This Week in Asia.