Chandigarh: Three US-origin General Electric (GE) combat aircraft engines were finally delivered to Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) last week kick-starting, after an extended hiatus production of the upgraded variant of India’s indigenously developed Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Mk1A for the Indian Air Force (IAF). This latest delivery takes to ten the number of GE F404-IN20 after burning power plants supplied to HAL under its Rs 5,375-crore order for 99 engines for the Mk1A, placed in early 2021, highlighting the IAF’s continuing vulnerability to imported propulsion and the constraints this imposes on its already depleted fighter fleet.The Mk1A is central to the IAF’s efforts in boosting its dwindling combat aircraft strength, which has fallen from a sanctioned 42.5 fighter squadrons to just 29, including six squadrons of legacy SEPECAT Jaguars, inducted in the 1970s. It has ordered 180 Mk1As – 83 under the first contract, worth nearly Rs 48,000 crore, signed in early 2021, and another 97 under a Rs 62,370-crore deal inked over four years later, in September 2025.Yet, so far it has not received a single Mk1A, with deferred GE F404 engine supplies pushing the programme nearly three years behind its original delivery schedule. GE had shut down its dedicated F404-IN20 production line at its Lynn, Massachusetts, facility near Boston for several years after HAL reportedly failed to place timely follow-on orders for engines for the MK1A.Also read: Indo-US Javelin Deal: Solution For India’s Needs or Lollipop for Washington?GE eventually delivered the first F404-IN20 under its order for 99 engines in March 2025, two years after deliveries were originally due to begin, enabling the fighter to proceed with its pre-induction trials, including weapon and radar integration. This delay also prompted HAL to impose liquidated damages on GE, with its chairman and managing director D.K. Sunil confirmed that the penalty clause had been invoked against the US company, but provided no details.Media reports quoted unidentified HAL sources last week claiming that another 22 F404 engines would arrive by year-end, but military aviation sources in Bangalore and New Delhi remained sceptical about GE’s ability to meet that target. But, even if these do arrive it would still leave a substantial backlog in Mk1A production, despite HAL claiming to have increased its annual production capacity of the fighter type from 16 to 24 units by adding a third assembly line at Nashik to its two existing ones in Bangalore.Engine availability was, however, only one of the Mk1As production constraints, and Air Chief Marshal A.P. Singh had publicly vented his frustration with HAL’s production performance over it. At Aero India in Bangalore in February 2025, he berated HAL officials, saying he was “just not confident” of the public sector company’s ability to ensure timely Tejas deliveries, as it was not operating in “mission mode”. He said HAL had promised the IAF that 11 Mk1As would be ready, albeit without engines by the time of the air show, but “not a single” one was available.Thereafter, a cross-section of senior IAF veterans previously associated with the Tejas programme have questioned what India’s much-vaunted ‘indigenous production’ really means when its most critical component – the engine – remains imported. A two-star fighter veteran said the GE-F404 problem exposed a fundamental weakness in the TEjas programme, as HAL had little control over the rate at which the engines became available. “HAL can design and assemble the fighter, but it cannot control production of its engine, which eventually determines how many aircraft can actually be completed and how quickly,” he added, unwilling to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.Other veterans were equally cynical. Another former fighter pilot declared that a so-called indigenous fighter is of “limited value” if its manufacturer cannot independently secure the engine needed to make it fly. Three engines after an extended delay are undoubtedly better than none, he said, also requesting anonymity, but they only reinforced the “bind and trap” in which HAL was considering tts dependence on GE.GE’s long and increasingly troubled association with the Tejas programme dates back to 2004, when its F404-IN20 engines, delivering about 84 kN (Kilo Newton) of thrust, were shortlisted for the fighter’s Limited Series Production (LSP) phase as the indigenously designed fighter moved towards full-scale manufacture. India had originally intended to power the Tejas with the indigenous Kaveri turbofan being developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), but it achieved only about 70.4 kN of wet thrust, against a targeted 81 kN, forcing the programme to adopt the GE F404 instead.The Tejas prototypes and Technology Demonstrators were powered by the older F404-GE-F2J3 developmental engine, but GE’s 2004 contract provided 17 of the upgraded F404-IN20s for the LSP models. The first LSP Tejas powered by the F-404 engine flew in 2008 following which GE supplied 65 F404-IN20 engines for the Tejas Mk1 programme, completing deliveries by 2016.With that Indian order completed and no further F404-IN20 orders on the horizon, GE reportedly closed its ‘dedicated’ IN (India) 20 production line. The closure reflected the lack of further orders rather than obsolescence as the F404 was still widely used as part of the Swedish RM12 engine-jointly developed by GE and Volvo Aero for Saab’s Gripen fighter- and variants that powered South Korea’s T-50 fighter-trainer as well as Boeing’s T-7A trainer.Industry sources said HAL’s failure to place a timely follow-on order meant that, when it eventually ordered another 99 engines in 2021 for the Mk1A, GE had to revive the dormant production line and re-engage its global supply chain. This revival coincided with the Covid pandemic, when suppliers, including many in South Korea, faced severe and recurring difficulties, further delaying the ramping-up of F-404IN20 production.The F404 shortage was not, however, the only hurdle delaying the Mk1A, as ACM Singh had pointed out at Aero India 2025.The first F404 engine finally arrived in March 2025 after a nearly 24-month delay, but it took another seven months before the first Mk1A assembled at Nashik made its maiden flight in October. The aircraft still needed to complete its flight, weapons and systems-integration trials before induction. At the time HAL Chairman Sunil said these involved the indigenous Astra beyond-visual-range (BVR) missile, other short-range missiles, laser-guided bombs and the Israeli ELTA ELM-2052 radar/fire-control system. Earlier software problems also required modifications before final validation.The Mk1A is a substantially upgraded version of the Mk1 rather than a radically redesigned fighter. Its principal improvements include an Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar in place of the Mk1’s mechanically scanned radar, a more capable electronic-warfare and self-protection system with a jammer, integration of BVR missiles and air-to-air refuelling. It also incorporates a new locally-designed mission computer and digital flight-control computer, smart multifunction displays, software-defined radio, an updated identification-friend-or-foe system and other modifications like ‘substantial weight loss’ intended to improve maintainability.The scale of the Mk1A upgrade is better understood against the long and troubled development of the original Mk1, which itself took over three decades to acquire the capabilities required for operational service, after the LCA programme was initiated in the early 1980s.The IAF’s 40 Mk1 Tejas fighters were divided between two contracts: 20 Initial Operational Clearance (IOC)-standard aircraft ordered in 2006 – 16 fighters and four trainers – and another 20 Final Operational Clearance (FOC)-standard aircraft ordered in 2010, also comprising a similar break-up. The government had originally expected the IOC to be achieved in 2008, but the programme slipped badly, with IOC-I eventually granted in January 2011 and IOC-II only in December 2013. Amazingly, IOC-II, according to some senior IAF veterans, was a ‘compromise’ that allowed Tejas to move into an operationally usable configuration even though the fighter still lacked several capabilities required for its final operational standard.Initially, both these squadrons – No. 45 ‘Flying Daggers’ and No. 18 ‘Flying Bullets’ – were based at Sulur, near Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, but the latter moved to Naliya in Gujarat in 2024. Presently, the IAF has just two operational Tejas Mk1 squadrons, underscoring how incrementally the indigenous fighter programme has added to its declining combat fleet.Meanwhile, delays in F404 deliveries point to an even more troubling problem confronting the upgraded Tejas Mk2 and the under-development fifth-generation Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA), both of which are to be powered by the more powerful 98kN GE F414 engine.India is currently pursuing two parallel tracks with GE for its F414 power plant: HAL is negotiating its manufacture in India under a joint 2023 agreement envisaging substantial technology transfer, while the DRDO and its Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA), which is responsible for designing both the AMCA and the Indian Navy’s Twin-Engine Deck-Based Fighter (TEDBF), are separately in talks to acquire some 15 F414s needed to power their prototypes and LSP aircraft.But both efforts face problems.The HAL-GE negotiations are reportedly deadlocked on the extent of technology transfer, the manufacturing technologies and intellectual property (IP) of the engine that GE will retain, and the commercial terms for producing the powerpack in India. HAL has said the proposed arrangement envisages 80% technology transfer, with 80% of the engine to be manufactured in India and the remaining 20% sourced from GE, although the specific technologies and details were still being discussed.The separate DRDO-ADA negotiations for the AMCA, on the other hand, have been complicated by a sharp escalation in GE’s reported F-414 engine price. The F414 was initially estimated at around Rs 70–80 crore per engine, but GE has reportedly quoted more than Rs 200 crore for each unit. Moreover, AMCA’s problem is further compounded by the fact that its airframe has already been frozen around the F414 and replacing this would require substantial changes that were not only costly, but also time-consuming to validate the proposed fighters flight-control systems, stealth characteristics, sensors, radar, weapons integration and propulsion performance.In recent weeks tentative alternatives have emerged for the AMCA’s longer-term propulsion needs. Reliance Industries and the UK’s Rolls-Royce recently announced their intent to jointly develop an indigenous combat engine for the AMCA, initially targeting more than 120 kN of afterburning thrust, with the British company offering full technology transfer and Indian ownership of the resulting intellectual property. France’s Safran too is separately negotiating with DRDO’s Gas Turbine Research Establishment (GTRE) to co-develop a new 110-kN-class engine and offering extensive technology transfer, including critical engine technologies.But neither option offers an immediate escape from the F414 or from this dependency and the parallel with the F404 is stark. The F404 delays have shown the cost of this dependence and for an air force desperately short of fighters in a restive neighbourhood, duplicating that same reliance with the F414 to power the follow-on Tejas Mk2 and the AMCA would not only be foolhardy, but a serious strategic blunder.