Chandigarh: The Indian Air Force (IAF) faces a serious operational dilemma as it fast-tracks the acquisition of 114 additional French Rafales under the Multi-Role Fighter Aircraft (MRFA) programme to shore up its depleted combat squadron strength, which has fallen to 29 from a sanctioned 42 squadrons.While the 4.5-generation Rafales would to some extent boost the IAF’s fighter numbers, a cross-section of veterans and analysts believe their induction could also leave the service increasingly behind the ‘technological curve’ of the air war India may eventually have to fight with China and Pakistan, both of which are already fielding, or moving towards acquiring, 5th-generation stealth fighters.The Rafale buy, now at an advanced stage of negotiations, under which 98 fighters would be constructed locally through technology transfer from Dassault, is estimated at around $35–40 billion and would be the IAF’s most expensive combat aircraft acquisition ever.But the scale of the IAF’s technological disadvantage is stark when set against China’s growing stealth-fighter fleet. The People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) operates these indigenously designed and built fighters in substantial numbers, with open-source estimates suggesting around 500 J-20s and over 50 J-35 variants.These numbers are expected to proliferate as production of both fighter types expands. Alongside, China’s close strategic and military ally Pakistan is moving towards acquiring the J-35AE, with deliveries of 40-odd of these export-model aircraft reportedly expected to begin by year-end and be completed shortly thereafter.For the IAF, the implications are serious: it could face stealth fighters from both China and Pakistan under the two-front contingency that Indian military planners have long warned about, while relying on 4/4.5-generation aircraft that make up its entire combat fleet.Against this rapidly changing regional air-power balance, the IAF will begin inducting 114 Rafales, possibly around 2029, assuming the contract is concluded on schedule, although the larger domestically built tranche will take considerably longer to materialise. Industry sources said that these Rafales are likely to be in the F4 configuration, a significantly more advanced standard than the 36 F3 Rafales presently in IAF service, with improved radar, electronic warfare (EW) and sensor fusion connectivity, enhanced weapons integration and the ability to operate alongside dedicated ‘wingman’ unmanned aerial systems (UAS).Also read: Rafale Returns? A Decade Later, India is Back to the Same Fighter Deal at Four Times the PriceThe F4s can also be upgraded to the F5 standard, presently under development and likely to be ready to enter operational service in the early 2030s. The F5s are envisaged with a more advanced radar, enhanced EW and optronic systems, greater computing and networking capability and new weapons.More significantly, this model is also being configured for collaborative combat with unmanned combat aircraft/ UAS, operating as a ‘forward’ sensor, intelligence-gathering asset and weapons carrier, keeping the manned Rafale farther away from heavily defended enemy airspace.“Yet, despite these substantial improvements, both F4 and F5 Rafale variants will remain non-stealth fighters, unlike China’s J-20s and J-35s, whose fundamental operational advantage lies in their low observability and consequent reduced detectability,” said a military aviation official, requesting anonymity.Long-range aerial engagements, he said, are not just ‘technical contests’ between competing radars and missile ranges, with the upper hand going to whichever side can accurately track the opponent first while remaining undetected. This dynamic, he added, is swiftly changing modern air combat, as 5th-generation fighters like the J-20 and J-35 are harder to detect, thus giving them more time to find and engage an opponent.Without doubt, the Rafale has formidable counters in its arsenal: advanced Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar, SPECTRA (Self-Protection Equipment to Counter Threats for Rafale Aircraft) EW suite, Infrared Search and Track (IRST) systems, sensor fusion and Meteor and other missiles. These systems can significantly reduce the Rafale’s vulnerability, but they cannot change its basic character: being fundamentally a non-stealth platform, it is potentially easier prey for an opposing 5th-generation fighter.Besides, the PLAAF and the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) do not operate in isolation, but within an increasingly sophisticated ‘kill-chain’ network of airborne early-warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft and assorted ground-based sensors. Simply put, the J-20s and J-35s could exploit input from this wider network to find and engage Rafales, while remaining ‘hidden’ themselves.A particularly relevant warning about the difficulty of 4.5 generation fighters like Rafales detecting and engaging stealth fighters comes from Paris itself, in a study by Adrien Gorremans, a former French Air and Space Force lieutenant-colonel and Mirage 2000C/B fighter pilot, and retired colonel Jean-Christophe Noël of the French Air Force.Also read: Three Fighter Programmes, One Shrinking Indian Air ForcePublished in January 2025 by the Institut Français des Relations Internationales (Ifri), an independent French think tank specialising in international affairs and security, The Future of Air Superiority: Command of the Air in High Intensity Warfare analysis examines the prospects of French air power and the survivability of the Rafale in high-intensity aerial conflict against technologically superior platforms.The study identifies the J-20 as a challenge to Western 4/4.5th-generation fighters, warning that its stealth characteristics complicate their detection and engagement. More pointedly, the authors say French pilots who regularly exercise against 5th-generation fighters acknowledge that Rafale combat missions against stealth aircraft were “difficult to win with the current state of sensors”. The study concludes that “radar stealth and the suppression of enemy air defences (SEAD) are likely to remain the dominant factors of tactical superiority in air combat over the next decade”.Such warnings become even more stark and forbidding as China strides ahead with its 6th-generation fighter programmes, including two tailless designs widely referred to as the J-36 and J-50. Open-source assessments suggest these two platforms are being designed for extended range, lower observability, powerful sensors and electronic-warfare systems, greater power generation and networking, larger internal weapons capacity and the ability to operate alongside both manned and unmanned aircraft.The US Department of Defence too has been keenly watching these developments, assessing that such aircraft could eventually undertake both air-to-air and air-to-surface missions and control uncrewed aircraft in combat.“It is against this rapidly advancing Chinese air-power capability that the IAF needs to plan for the next decade and beyond”, said a two-star IAF fighter pilot veteran. While the 114 Rafales, he said, declining to be named, will help arrest the steady decline in fighter numbers, they remain essentially a solution to an immediate numerical problem.However, as of now, the Advanced Multirole Combat Aircraft (AMCA), an indigenously designed, low-observable 5th-generation fighter, is intended to provide the operational answer to the PLAAF’s technological challenge. But the IAF’s biggest obstruction is that the AMCA remains at least a decade, if not longer, away from operational service, by which time the PLAAF’s 6th-generation programmes would already have moved the technological goalposts, potentially leaving China one or even two generations ahead of the IAF.To make matters worse for the IAF, the AMCA is riddled with problems and obstacles, faced with a major, seemingly insurmountable hurdle which has bedevilled India’s combat-aircraft programmes for decades-propulsion.Also read: Three Fighter Programmes, One Shrinking Indian Air ForceAMCA prototypes, limited-series production aircraft and initial series built Mk1 variants have been designed around the US-origin General Electric GE F414-INS6, a 98-kN (kilonewton) engine, also selected for the upgraded Tejas Mk 2 indigenous light combat aircraft (LCA), as India has no production-ready powerpack of its own in this class, despite decades of effort. This has spawned an existential dilemma for the IAF – a potential 5th-generation fighter dependent on a foreign powerplant whose future is complicated by technology transfer for its local manufacture, intellectual property rights surrounding it and other commercial complications.Negotiations between Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) and GE to locally make the F414 under their 2023 agreement have dragged on, while the indicative price of each engine has reportedly risen almost three times, from around Rs 70–80 crore to around Rs 200 crore.Furthermore, these delays and uncertainties over the AMCA’s powerplant have adversely impacted the programme’s timeline, with the prototype currently expected to roll out in 2028–29 and fly in 2029, while series production is targeted for around 2035. HAL and the Ministry of Defence (MoD), however, have disputed media reports that the talks with GE are deadlocked.Consequently, UK-based Rolls-Royce is pursuing a proposed 120-kN-plus engine partnership with Reliance Industries, while France’s Safran is examining possibilities for a new high-thrust combat-aircraft powerpack with the Defence Research and Development Organisation’s (DRDO) Gas Turbine Research Establishment (GTRE), but neither offers an immediate alternative to the F414. Moreover, redesigning the AMCA around either engine would mean the extraordinary proposition of redesigning a fighter around a powerplant that does not yet exist.If such confusion were not enough, Russia’s Sukhoi ‘Felon’ Su-57 has once again surfaced in the IAF’s long-running 5th-generation fighter saga. Long discussed as a possible fallback acquisition, it has re-emerged in recent weeks as an ‘interim capability’ until the AMCA becomes operational. President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Narendra Modi are due to discuss the Su-57 deal, including technology transfer for the fighters’ local production, at their bilateral meeting in New Delhi today (Friday) ahead of the BRICS summit a day later.Thus, in conclusion, the IAF’s immediate challenge is no longer simply buying more fighters, but getting the right ones into service before its burgeoning technological disadvantage concerning its adversaries becomes an operational liability. At the end of the day, combat readiness and enhanced capability are what jointly win wars; not just marking up numbers on an official squadron headcount.