Space Walker

Because the Rafale has already entered service with the Indian Air Force. An order has also been placed for the Indian Navy. The combined value of this - being paid for by tax payers is Rs.1,23,000 cr. Infra has been set up, the IAF is deeply invested in the jet. The first new Indian Navy Rafales start coming in by mid 2028. If India were to sign the deal for 114 more Rafales soon, you can expect deliveries to also begin by 2028-29. The first prototype of the Tejas Mk 2 has still not been rolled out. Even if it is rolled out tomorrow, it will not complete flight tests and start entering squadron service before 2035 - that's a seriously optimistic date - its essentially a brand new fighter. The question to be asked is whether India needs a brand new non-stealth 4th generation jet entering service in 2035 - i.e 30 years after the USAF first started indicating F-22s and at a time when the nature of airwarfare has changed completely. This isn't remotely to suggest that the Tejas Mk-2 will be a bad platform but the evolution of air warfare, the heavy dependence on stealth and the emergence of 6th generation platforms will render the Tejas Mk-2 significantly dated by the 2030s - obsolete from a basic design standpoint. That also goes for other existing IAF jets but since one isn't going to discard the Su-30 fleet not the recently acquired Rafale fleet, which has decades of operational life left, it makes it incumbent upon us, as a nation to make hard choices. The AMCA is India's make or break moment. I talk about FCAS - that's a futuristic requirement but it's AMCA that just has to be a gamechanger for the IAF first. And there are many skeptics who doubt that that will happen. In all this, at a time when the Chinese are fielding some of the most radical designs we have seen and already have 300 odd 5th generation J-20s in service, should we blindly endorse the continued induction of 100 plus Tejas Mk-2s at more than Rs.75,000 cr which will start entering service in meaningful numbers only a decade from now?