Chandigarh: The recent pact between Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) and Russia’s United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) to co-produce the Sukhoi Superjet-100 (SJ-100) in India, marks the third – and arguably most ambitious – attempt by both countries to collaborate on a non-combat aircraft programme.Inked in Moscow on Tuesday (October 28), the memorandum of understanding (MoU) envisions assembling and eventually localising production of an unspecified number of the twin-engine jet in India, capable of transporting 100-odd passengers over a range of 3,500 kilometres.And, in a familiar flourish of deja vu, the MoU rekindled optimism in official circles that had once similarly buoyed the now-defunct Multi-Role Transport Aircraft (MTA) and the Saras commuter jet programmes – both stillborn echoes of earlier India-Russia developmental aviation ventures, which had embarrassingly remained grounded.These two programmes, involving HAL in operationally direct and advisory roles, were eventually scrapped around 2015-16 and 2018, after years of labour and expenditure, technological setbacks, indecision, inter-departmental wrangling and lack of overall focus.So much so that few within HAL, or others involved in the two projects from the National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL) in Bengaluru, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and the Indian Air Force (IAF), now care to recall them; except perhaps as cautionary footnotes in India’s long ledger of failed and abandoned aviation ambitions involving Moscow.HAL and Public Joint Stock Company United Aircraft Corporation (PJSC-UAC) Russia signed an MoU for production of civil commuter aircraft SJ-100 in Moscow, Russia on October 27, 2025. Shri Prabhat Ranjan, HAL & Mr. Oleg Bogomolov, PJSC UAC, Russia, signed the MoU in the presence… pic.twitter.com/McN8WQjeSl— HAL (@HALHQBLR) October 28, 2025In the 2012 Ilyushin-278 MTA joint venture, HAL was the principal partner of Russia’s UAC and the Ilyushin Design Bureau, in which both had initially invested $300 million each. Intended as a replacement for the IAF’s fleet of legacy Soviet-era Antonov An-32 ‘Cline’ transport aircraft, which entered service 1986 onwards, the MTA was scheduled to conduct its first test flight five years later by 2017, but never did.At the time, HAL had zealously proclaimed that India would acquire 45 MTA aircraft, to be series-built by its Transport Aircraft Division (TAD) in Kanpur, while Russia would induct 105 and jointly market the platform worldwide.Eventually, in early 2019, the IAF opted for 56 Airbus Defence and Space C-295 transport aircraft, of which 16 would be acquired in ‘fly-away’ condition and the remainder built jointly by Airbus and Tata Advanced Systems Limited at Vadodara.Significantly, HAL was pointedly excluded from the venture and IAF sources privately admitted that this stemmed from years of exasperation over its chronic delays and habitual cost overruns that had come to typify projects undertaken by the public sector behemoth.Thereafter, the MTA project slipped quietly into oblivion and, like so many of HAL’s grand ventures, no one has been held accountable for the money or person-hours sunk into it – nor, it seems, will anyone ever be.“It’s all been neatly swept under the carpet,” remarked a senior IAF veteran, dryly. All such outcomes involving HAL are par for the course for officials from the Ministry of Defence (MoD), he added, declining to be named.Alongside, Russia’s Myasishchev Design Bureau – now absorbed into the UAC – had provided early design inputs for NAL’s twin-engine Saras light transport aircraft, conceived of as a nine-to-18-seat civilian ‘feeder’ aerial platform, operating from small hinterland airfields.Myasishchev’s role was in providing expertise in composite airframe engineering and systems integration – areas in which India’s aviation industry then lacked expertise and arguably still does. HAL was to contribute production know-how, the DRDO its varied systems expertise and the IAF its experience in platform certification and eventual induction.Saras’s prototype, powered by two US-origin Pratt & Whitney PT6A-67A turboprop engines, successfully conducted its maiden test flight in 2004, but the second platform, overweight by some 500 kilograms, crashed in 2009 soon after take-off from HAL’s airfield in Bengaluru, killing two IAF test pilots and one flight engineer on board.Thereafter, Russia’s role in the programme waned completely, and along with HAL quietly withdrew from the venture.Saras’s funding too stopped in 2013, and NAL also discontinued all work on the project, following which all engineers and designers associated with the project were redeployed. But in early 2018, a revised prototype, doggedly reconfigured by NAL to carry 14 passengers, was handed over to the IAF Aircraft & Systems Testing Establishment in Bengaluru and executed a 40-minute flight at an altitude of 8,500 feet and a speed of 145 km/hr.Optimism spiked, and soon after the government pledged Rs 60 billion as down payment to launch Saras’s series production at HAL’s TAD in Kanpur, but linked it to certification, which never materialised. In the meantime, the IAF, reportedly under pressure from the MoD, even signed an MoU for 15 Saras aircraft, but that too quietly faded into oblivion.As with so many such state-run ventures, no official has ever been asked to account for the squandered money, wasted years or the misplaced sanguinity that sustained it. Both the MTA and Saras became emblematic of India’s ad hoc approach to aerospace development – ambitious on paper, poorly structured in practice and responsible for consuming financial resources, without ever producing an operational aircraft.Together these projects underscored how India’s aviation ventures often ended up as exercises in bureaucratic endurance – kept nominally alive, not to deliver capability, but seemingly simply to justify the financial and human resources expended and to demonstrate that developmental efforts were underway.Numerous ambitious programmes, under the patronage of the DRDO, HAL and other state-run defence entities endured invariably for extended periods, in which the services and the MoD persisted in in throwing good money after bad; together they repeatedly revived stalled ventures, ordered reviews and rebranded failures, all under the continuing, yet elusive pursuit of achieving self-reliance in materiel sourcing.MoU ‘short on specifics, long on uncertainty’Meanwhile, under Tuesday’s pact with Russia, news reports indicate that HAL will obtain rights to locally manufacture the SJ-100, while UAC will provide design data, technical support and access to its global production line.Over 200 SJ-100s are believed to be in service with more than 16 airlines, the majority of them Russian or Russia-associated.Online research revealed that Ireland’s CityJet was the first Western airline to lease seven SJ-100 jets from UAC in 2016, five of which were sub-leased to Brussels Airlines the following year. CityJet operated the remaining two on regional European routes, until reliability and maintenance problems, coupled with poor after-sales support from UAC, forced all seven aircraft to be returned to Russia by 2019.Despite early promise, other online accounts stated, the SJ-100 has suffered from chronic supply chain issues and frequent technical glitches, rendering the jet’s serviceability and spare parts ecosystem mired in uncertainty and inconsistency.For all its sleek design and ambition, the SJ-100, it seems, remains a testament to ‘overreach’ – an aircraft that never quite shook off its reputation for being grounded more often than it flew.Furthermore, the HAL-UAC MoU was touted by both sides as a ‘landmark’ event, marking the first time a complete passenger aircraft would be indigenously manufactured after HAL’s licensed production of the British-origin AVRO HS-748 ended in 1988.Officials from both sides said the MoU aligned with India’s Aatmanirbhar initiative, or national drive for technological and industrial self-sufficiency, and would boost regional connectivity under the long-pending Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik scheme. This involves employing short-haul jets, like SJ-100s, to augment regional connectivity by expanding flight services to underserved Indian airports.But despite its ambitious intent, the MoU omits multiple critical details: exact timelines for localisation of manufacturing, export potential, certification modalities under Indian aviation regulators, and how the quantum of technology transfer, always a sensitive and complex issue, would be structured.Beyond the celebratory headlines, aviation analysts said the agreement remained largely a ‘statement of intent, short on specifics and long on uncertainty’. There is no mention of whether critical systems like avionics, engines or composites would be indigenised, or if HAL would continue to rely on Russian and Western suppliers, a particularly risky option considering ongoing sanctions on Moscow for its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.Even more troubling is the geopolitical context: Russia’s aviation industry – civil and military – remains hamstrung by Western sanctions, which have choked access to key components, particularly for engines, avionics and electronic systems, originally supplied by European and US firms.The SJ-100s’ SaM146 engine, for instance, which powered its earlier version, was series-built by PowerJet, a joint venture between France’s Safran and Russia’s NPO Saturn. But after sanctions came into force three years ago, PowerJet ceased maintenance and component supplies to Russia for the engines. The Sam146 engine was then replaced by the locally developed PD-8 power pack, built by Russia’s United Engine Corporation, but that too has since been sanctioned.“With no firm plan available for indigenising or sourcing these sanctioned and embargoed technologies, the SJ-100 programme faces structural uncertainty from the outset,” said a senior aviation industry official in Bengaluru.There was also little evidence of a credible market assessment to justify production in India, he declared, rendering the MoU more symbolic than substantive – a diplomatic ‘flourish’ rather than an industrial breakthrough.Some national security analysts were also of the opinion that both India and Russia viewed the SJ-100 MoU as a ‘low-stakes test case’ to explore how far they could work around US-led sanctions on Moscow, particularly those affecting materiel commerce that remains critical for India, as over 60% of its military equipment is of Soviet and Russian origin.They said that by ‘experimenting’ first in the civilian domain, where the political and strategic costs were lower, both sides could safely probe the durability of the ‘parallel procurement’ of defence equipment using financial mechanisms – like rupee-rouble payments – to bypass sanctions.These and other sanctions-busting mechanisms, analysts said, could well be adapted to obtain defence equipment like additional ‘Triumf’ S-400 air-defence systems and components, systems and sub-assemblies, to not only upgrade the IAF’s Sukhoi-Sui-30MKI multi-role fighters, but to sustain the slew of in-service Russian materiel.“In essence, the SJ-100 project may not just be about civil aviation at all,” said a retired two-star IAF veteran. It could well be a ‘proxy’ for sanction-proofing Indo-Russian defence cooperation from Western pressure, while retaining plausible deniability under the guise of a civilian initiative, he added, declining to be named.