Navy spurns homemade warplane, shops abroad
Rejects Tejas for being too heavy in latest blow to the push for self-reliance
India’s navy is on the hunt for a new foreign fighter jet after rejecting an indigenously made aircraft as too heavy, the latest sign of the struggle to get Asian militaries to buy locally to grow their defence industries.
The navy last month invited manufacturers to pitch for 57 planes for its aircraft carriers, a multibillion dollar order the government had hoped would go to the state-run producers of India’s Tejas, a combat aircraft 33 years in the making.
India, South Korea, Taiwan and other Asian buyers are expected to intensify efforts this year to develop indigenous warplanes, military officials said, due to anxieties that the United States may be less engaged in the region under President Donald Trump.
But their hopes of manufacturing state-of-the-art warplanes could still be decades away as countries need more time to master the technology, experts said.
“It’s been long on ambition short on success,” Richard A. Bitzinger, senior fellow at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said of the drive. “These things are being done because of technonationalism. They are done because these countries perceive of themselves as rising powers.”
As part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Make-inIndia” campaign, scientists will showcase the Tejas warplane at an air show opening in Bengaluru on today. But the jet remains a work in progress, with only three in service with the air force.
South Korea, supported by Indonesia, has multibillion dollar plans to develop a twinengined KF-X fighter jet, while Taiwan said it plans to build 66 jet trainer aircraft and eventually a combat plane.