Chandigarh: One of the enduring curiosities of Indian officialdom is how readily senior officials have ready answers to problems and issues that defied resolution while they were still in office.In innumerable television debates and newspaper columns, and even in regular conversations, these grandees display an uncanny knack for forthrightly stating how matters they grappled with for years could have easily been resolved.In miraculous Eureka moments, retired civil servants acquire an almost uncanny certainty about how their departments and ministries should be run, former diplomats discover with equal clarity how foreign policy ought to be conducted, while others emerge with fully formed answers to tricky matters that have eluded the Indian establishment for decades.Senior Indian military officers too are no different.Retirement confers a freedom of candour that the uniform restrictedOnce out of uniform, many of them expound freely about how timely force modernisation, better procurement and stronger operational preparedness could well have transformed their particular service. Retirement, it seems, confers a freedom of candour that the uniform restricted.And, in numerous such instances, many of their observations are valid, but inevitably raise the highly discomfiting question: what did they do about these serious and obvious anomalies when they were still in positions of authority to influence matters?Air Marshal Nagesh Kapoor, who retired as the Indian Air Force’s (IAF’s) Vice Chief of Air Staff (VCOAS) in June, offers a particularly striking example.When asked in an August 22 interview with NDTV, whether it made rational military sense for the IAF to potentially field the 4.5-generation, under-development indigenous Tejas Mk-2 fighter 2035 onwards against China, which was moving towards 6th-generation combat capability, or Pakistan, which was imminently inducting 5th-generation platforms, AM Kapoor categorically declared: “No, operationally, definitely No.”China already operates a large fleet of 5th-generation J-20 stealth fighters, is moving ahead with the comparable J-35 and is still developing more advanced 6th-generation models like the ‘Chengdu’ J-36 and ‘Shenyang’ J-50. Pakistan, on the other hand, is reportedly due to begin receiving the J-35AE (Export) variant later this year. Kapoor’s concern, and indeed that of the IAF, is therefore not some futuristic fantasy about highly advanced enemy fighters, but the very real possibility that India’s supposedly 4.5-generation Tejas Mk 2 could well be chasing a dated capability that its principal adversaries have already moved beyond.It is difficult to question the logic of Kapoor’s response, a view widely shared by a large cross-section of serving and retired IAF fighter pilots and military planners. But what is striking is that the former VCOAS voiced this self-evident evaluation only upon retirement, having been the IAF’s second-highest-ranking officer until June 2026 and responsible for the Force’s operational planning, modernisation, procurement and overall capability development. The three-star officer didn’t confirm or deny whether he had actually raised this fighter mismatch with the government or not.Moreover, even if the Tejas Mk-2 – expected to make its maiden flight only next year – was indeed heading towards technological irrelevance as a frontline fighter, the obvious question remains whether the IAF needed to change course on its deployment. Or, more pertinently, should Kapoor – and the IAF – not have pressed the government for enhanced fighter capability, rather than commit scarce financial resources to developing and series-producing an operationally outgunned platform?However, in justifying the continued relevance of the Mk-2 fighter, Kapoor declared that it would not be entirely redundant. He acknowledged that such 4/4.5-generation fighters could still perform a “non-cutting-edge role” alongside smaller numbers of more advanced aircraft, thereby providing a rationale for retaining the programme, even as the IAF notionally pursued more capable fighters.A sharp irony“You can have a certain number of those 5th generation and 6th generation fighters, but given the size of the country, you won’t be able to deploy them everywhere,” he argued. So those gaps which continue to remain to be filled will have to be filled by this (Mk2) class of aircraft, he added.Or, put differently, the Mk-2 could have a place in the IAF, without necessarily being the fighter it needs, to boost declining combat squadron numbers that have fallen from a sanctioned 42 to just 29. Of these, six squadrons comprise the legacy Anglo-French SEPECAT Jaguars, dating back to the 1970s and now operated only by the IAF, that were due for imminent retirement.But there is a sharp irony here, as a one-star IAF veteran fighter pilot pointed out: there is a difference between a “useful” aircraft like the Mk-2, for numerically making up squadron numbers and the “right” one for frontline combat. For years, the IAF had regarded the Mk-2 as the next logical step in its fighter evolution, but that logic was now “not even remotely” valid given the technological leap that China – and, by association, Pakistan – had attained, he warned, declining to be named.Either way, the Mk-2 remains an increasingly problematic proposition, not least because its development is tied to another protracted and unresolved issue: its US-origin General Electric F414-INS6, 98-kN (kilonewton) engine, around which the fighter has been designed by the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA).General Electric (GE) is believed to have so far supplied 6-8 F414s for the Mk-2’s development, but the wider arrangement for indigenously manufacturing the engine, necessary to series-build the fighter, has dragged on since the 2023 GE-Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) agreement covering technology transfer for local production. These F-414 negotiations are reportedly stalled on the extent of technology transfer to HAL, particularly access to sensitive manufacturing know-how and intellectual property rights (IPR), which GE is reportedly loath to surrender in full.Moreover, the ongoing F-141 saga is not confined just to the Mk-2 but also to the IAF’s more ambitious indigenous 5th-generation Advanced Multirole Combat Aircraft (AMCA) programme. A separate standoff presently prevails over F414’s for the AMCA and for the Indian Navy’s proposed Twin-Engine-Deck-Based-Fighter (TEDBF), as each engine’s cost is believed to have escalated almost three times from an earlier estimated price of Rs 70–80 crore to around Rs 200 crore per unit.Hence, with the same engine intended for far, to power AMCA prototypes, its limited-series production (LSP) aircraft as well as its first 40-odd Mk1 variants, two of the IAF’s critical indigenous fighter programmes, including the Mk2, are precariously linked to an unsettled foreign powerplant. This is no mere industrial glitch, as any further disruption to the F414 engine flow – and there are likely to be numerous – could seriously jeopardise the IAF’s long-overdue modernisation and capability development in a highly troubled neighbourhood.In his televised interview, AM Kapoor also questioned the AMCA’s prospects, maintaining that its development and trials could take nearly another decade and, more critically, its initial variants ‘may also miss initial technological benchmarks’ by the time they become available for induction. Furthermore, in yet another revealing display of post-retirement candour, the IAF’s former VCOAS himself posed the question of whether the service could afford to keep climbing the fighter-generation ladder one rung at a time.Why, he asked, does the IAF go through the “Gen 4, Gen 4.5 steps” when “the next best thing is already being thought of”?The Air Marshal’s answer to his question was equally straightforward: he forthrightly said India should unhesitatingly consider joining international programmes like the European Future Combat Air System (FCAS) comprising France, Germany and Spain and the UK-Italy-Japan-led Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP), either individually or both, that were both working on developing advanced 6th-generation fighters. Significantly, India was recently admitted as a “dialogue partner” in GCAP, giving it access to programme discussions and information rather than the technology itself, and in recent weeks has begun formal efforts to join FCAS.Kapoor also severely criticised HAL for its tardiness in delivering Tejas fighters to the IAF, which he said was a matter of ‘huge’ concern. “Why must it be that a machine that was promised to us many years back with a certain set of capabilities, continues to be denied to us (the IAF) on one pretext or the other?” he said. Why must we (the IAF) be hamstrung because someone somewhere (HAL) has not been able to keep their promises?” he added.The former Vice Chief’s frustration with HAL echoed that of Air Chief Marshal A.P. Singh, who at the Aero India show in Bangalore in February 2025 publicly berated HAL over its failure to deliver the upgraded Tejas Mk-1A to the IAF. Incensed over HAL’s inability to have 11 Mk1As ready, albeit without their F-404 engines at the Air Show, Singh said he was “just not confident” of the public sector company’s ability to deliver these fighters as it was simply not operating in “mission mode”.“Admittedly HAL has become something of a soft target and punching bag for the IAF, politicians and the defence establishment, routinely blamed for delays that are often rooted in a much wider procurement and development ecosystem”, said the aforementioned one-star veteran. But that, he added, does not absolve HAL of responsibility for its own production failures, nor does it explain why successive IAF chiefs and other senior officers have been far less forthright about these shortcomings whilst still in service, he added.The tortuous history of TejasThe IAF’s Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) programme – later named Tejas – has had a tortuous history.Initiated by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and ADA in 1981, and formally sanctioned two years later, it was intended as an indigenous replacement for the ageing Soviet-era MiG-21. Its prototype, fitted with a GE-F404IN20 engine – after extended and hugely expensive attempts by the DRDO to locally develop the Kaveri powerpack miserably failed – conducted its maiden test flight in 2001. Thereafter, the IAF ordered 40 Tejas Mk-1s, in two batches of 20 each, including eight twin-set trainers, in an Initial Operational Clearance (IOC) contract in March 2006 and a Final Operational Clearance (FOC) contract in December 2010.The IOC aircraft were originally due by December 2011, and the FOC aircraft by December 2016, but both deadlines were overshot by years. IOC-I was eventually granted in 2011, followed by the more substantive IOC-II in December 2013, but the first Tejas squadron was formed at Sulur in Tamil Nadu only in July 2016. Subsequently, FOC to Tejas Mk1 was not awarded until February 2019, nearly three years after the original deadline, leading finally to the establishment of the second Tejas squadron in May 2020.Thereafter, the IAF ordered 83 upgraded Mk-1As in February 2021 – 73 fighters and 10 twin-seat trainers – in a Rs 46,900-crore contract featuring an active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar, mid-air refuelling capability, improved electronic warfare and avionics systems and enhanced weapons capability over the original Mk-1, as well as reduced weight and easier maintainability.A further 97 aircraft – 68 fighters and 29 trainers – were ordered on 25 September 2025 for Rs 62,370 crore, taking the total Mk-1A order to 180 aircraft.Retirement remains remarkably liberatingAlongside, ADA and HAL have been developing the substantially more capable Tejas Mk-2, whose prototype was originally promised for 2022. HAL’s latest update, at the Farnborough Air Show in July 2026, put the Mk-2’s maiden flight sometime between March and July 2027. That, in turn, gives rise to an obvious question: did the IAF press the government for an alternative? Or did it simply continue backing the Mk-2 while privately recognising that the fighter would arrive too late to meet the threat it was originally intended to confront?Against this diffident and supine institutional backdrop, retirement for someone like AM Kapoor remains remarkably liberating, allowing officers like him to give vent to an opinion which, operationally, is by all criteria seemingly apposite.For what he can now say so unequivocally on television after hanging up his uniform prompts the rather awkward and somewhat embarrassing question of whether he expressed the same view with equal force whilst still at Air Headquarters – and, more notably if he had, whether it would have made any difference.In India’s defence establishment, as in other areas of government, candour is a luxury reserved for retirement. Speaking truth to power whilst in service, it seems, is simply not done – it’s far too risky.