New Delhi: Mounting uncertainty over India’s negotiations with the United States and General Electric (GE) over the F414 engine, which was selected to power several advanced indigenous combat aircraft programmes, has reinforced calls by senior Indian Air Force (IAF) veterans to acquire two squadrons – around 40 aircraft – of Russia’s fifth-generation Sukhoi Su-57 fighters as an ‘interim operational bridge’ until these platforms enter service.Their strategic argument, however, extends well beyond the protracted and increasingly fraught F414 negotiations. They maintain that the IAF is confronting three converging operational challenges: the Pakistan Air Force’s (PAF) imminent induction of China’s fifth-generation Shenyang J-35AE stealth fighter, the continuing decline in the IAF’s fighter squadron strength, and mounting delays in indigenous combat aircraft programmes dependent on the GE-F414.“With Pakistan poised to imminently take delivery of J-35AEs, the IAF’s most likely and viable course is to close the capability gap by swiftly acquiring two Su-57 squadrons,” Air Marshal Sanjeev Kapoor (retired), the IAF’s former Director General of Inspection and Safety, told The Wire. Russia itself, he added, is unlikely to transfer more than two such squadrons, making this a practical stopgap capability rather than a long-term fighter fleet replacement or option.Strategic concernsAccording to multiple overseas defence industry assessments, Pakistan is expected to begin inducting the export variant of the J-35AE from late 2026 or early 2027, with its fleet eventually reaching around 40 such aircraft by the early 2030s. By then, the IAF’s fighter squadron strength is projected to decline well below its current 29 squadrons – against an authorised 42 – as six legacy Jaguar squadrons are expected to begin retiring soon, outpacing the induction of replacements, including additional Dassault Rafales.Compounding these challenges, the GE-F414 impasse has further amplified strategic concerns because the engine has emerged as the sole propulsion backbone of India’s future combat aircraft, including its fifth-generation fighter programme.Also read: The F414 Row Is the Price of India’s Long Failure to Develop Its Own Jet EnginesThe IAF, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and its Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) have collectively selected this 98-kilonewton (kN) engine to power the advanced Tejas Mk2 fighter, prototypes and initial squadrons of the Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) and the Indian Navy’s (IN’s) Twin-Engine Deck-Based Fighter (TEDBF). Any hitch or protracted delay in securing this engine, therefore, risks delaying not just one aircraft programme but virtually India’s entire next-generation indigenous combat aviation.Such abject dependence is by no means easily reversed.Modern fighter aircraft are designed around their engines, which determine everything from airframe geometry, air intakes and fuel systems to centre of gravity, flight-control integration and overall performance. Replacing the F414 at this stage would require extensive redesign, systems integration, flight testing and certification, effectively unravelling years of development. Such an undertaking, almost impossible to envisage, would almost certainly delay all three programmes by several years while adding billions of dollars in costs. More fundamentally, the larger strategic consequence of the F414 engine lock-in and its attendant procurement complexities is that India has, in effect, tied the future of its combat aviation to a single foreign power plant and, by extension, to the vagaries of its turbulent political, commercial, diplomatic and defence relationship with the US.India’s negotiation tacticsAdding to the overall uncertainty surrounding the F414 programme is the manner in which India is conducting the engine negotiation itself. Rather than pursuing the F414 as a single, integrated national programme, the government has divided responsibility for the negotiations among multiple agencies, with overlapping but distinct commercial, industrial and technological priorities.Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), for its part, is negotiating the acquisition of F414 engines for the Tejas Mk2 while separately pursuing the 2023 understanding between the two countries to manufacture the power pack locally via technology transfer. Alongside, the DRDO and the ADA are separately handling discussions with GE on F414 supplies, technology transfer, engineering support, prototype integration and intellectual property rights (IPR) for the AMCA and the TEDBF and eventual series manufacture of a limited number of platforms.Matters have become still more contentious following GE’s recent reported demand for a near three-fold increase in the engine’s unit cost – from an estimated Rs 70-80 crore to more than Rs 200 crore – and a further investment of over $800 million to establish a dedicated F414 production facility in India. Instead of advancing one of India’s most strategically important defence-industrial programmes through a single, integrated national effort, the F414 process has become an object lesson in how institutional fragmentation can squander bargaining leverage, delay outcomes and complicate decision-making. It also underlines why programmes of such vital importance should never be pursued in this manner.Procurement decisionsMore fundamentally, many retired senior IAF officers privately acknowledge that the F414 impasse is merely the latest manifestation of a far deeper structural problem. They contend that it reflects decades of procurement drift, repeated postponement of acquisition decisions and excessive confidence in optimistic indigenous development schedules.“The IAF is now paying the price for repeatedly assuming that future indigenous programmes would arrive on time,” observed one retired three-star fighter pilot who declined to be identified. “Whenever timelines slipped, procurement decisions were simply deferred rather than backed by credible contingency planning” he said. The consequence, he added, is that the service now faces an increasingly narrow window in which to manage the transition from an ageing fourth-generation fleet to a credible fifth-generation force.Waiting for the AMCA, therefore, no longer offers a credible solution to the IAF’s near-term operational requirements. It is this reality – rather than the F414 negotiations alone – that has prompted several senior IAF veterans to advocate acquiring two SU-57 squadrons, less as a matter of choice than of operational necessity.And, it is against this backdrop that Russia has renewed its effort to position the Su-57 as both a long-term fleet option and an ‘operational bridge’ for the IAF until the AMCA becomes available. The advanced Russian fighter featured prominently at Aero India 2025 in Bengaluru, where it was showcased through static display and flying demonstrations highlighting its low-observable airframe, internal weapons bay, avionics integration and multirole strike capabilities.Thereafter, Moscow’s pitch for its fighter has extended beyond limited flyaway deliveries to possible co-production in India, technology collaboration and licensed manufacturing – an approach modelled on earlier Soviet and Russian-origin aircraft programmes pursued by India since the late 1960s. Russia has also repeatedly sought to revive the IAF’s interest in the Su-57 and would almost certainly portray any prolonged deadlock in the GE negotiations as evidence of the limitations of India’s defence-industrial cooperation with the US.Another fighterAviation analysts, meanwhile, maintain that two operational Su-57 squadrons would justify establishing the infrastructure needed to support an entirely new fighter type, while enabling the IAF to develop tactics, doctrine and operational experience in fifth-generation air combat years before the AMCA enters service. For Moscow, on the other hand, such a deal would deepen aerospace cooperation with India and reinforce its argument that Russia remains a more flexible defence partner than Western, especially US suppliers. While Russia has historically been more accommodating on licensed production and local manufacturing, it too has closely guarded genuinely advanced propulsion, stealth and sensor technologies, much like every other major aerospace power.Yet, the case for acquiring the Su-57 is far from unequivocal. Introducing yet another fighter type into an already diverse IAF inventory of six combat aircraft would further complicate logistics, maintenance and training while adding to the financial burden of an already overstretched modernisation programme. Such a purchase could also complicate India’s evolving defence relationship with the US.But supporters of the proposal dismiss these concerns as secondary to the IAF’s immediate operational requirements. “The central issue is not platform preference but operational preparedness,” said the aforementioned three-star veteran. The IAF cannot allow a prolonged capability vacuum while waiting for next-generation indigenous aircraft to arrive, he added.Ultimately, the Su-57 debate is less about choosing a Russian fighter than about managing the consequences of years of flawed and delayed procurement decisions and overly optimistic planning assumptions. Should the unresolved F414 engine issue continue to hamper and postpone the IAF’s next-generation combat aircraft programmes, the question before it may soon cease to be whether it wants the Su-57. It may instead become whether it can afford to confront a fifth-generation threat in its neighbourhood without one.