New Delhi: When Air Marshal Ashutosh Dixit takes over as Indian Air Force (IAF) Chief of Staff on October 31, he will inherit a fighter force at a crossroads, with immediate and critical decisions ahead that could shape its combat-aircraft fleet for decades.These include three urgent and consequential strategic choices, albeit closely intertwined: whether to acquire Russian Sukhoi Su-57 ‘Felon’ fighters as an interim 5th-generation bridge ahead of developing similar indigenous stealth capability via the long-delayed Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) programme; whether to persist with the US-origin General Electric F414-INS6 engine for the Tejas Mk2 and AMCA; and how — or even whether — the IAF should simultaneously enter the 6th-generation fighter race.Underpinning this triad of dilemmas is the more overarching question of what kind of an Air Force Dixit wants to build: one that merely adds numbers to arrest the prevailing precipitous decline in fighter squadrons, one that prioritises technological capability, or somehow a force that miraculously manages to achieve both goals, despite severe financial constraints.The argument for the IAF acquiring Su-57s is quite straightforward.It currently has no 5th-generation fighter, while China has already fielded hundreds of J-20 stealth aircraft and is swiftly moving towards inducting the more advanced J-35As and developing increasingly sophisticated 6th-generation platforms. Meanwhile, Beijing’s collusive military ally Pakistan is expected to begin receiving Chinese J-35AE (Export) fighters imminently, with its pilots already undergoing training to operate them in China. All this is adding quiet panic and urgency to the IAF’s own 5th-generation combat-aircraft plans, including its growing interest in acquiring Su-57s. Also read: Will the Russian Su-57 Kill India’s AMCA?Moreover, the Advanced Multirole Combat Aircraft (AMCA, even on an optimistic timetable, remains at least a decade away. The IAF has itself unofficially acknowledged that these delays could force it to consider inducting an alternative 5th-generation aircraft. Consequently, the Su-57 has emerged as its default interim option, providing the IAF with a stealth capability while it waits for the AMCA. However, no formal decision on the aircraft has yet been taken, outgoing ACM A.P. Singh said at his annual press conference last week, ahead of the IAF’s 94th anniversary on October 8.Within the IAF, the thinking is that two squadrons, or around 40-odd Su-57s, could give the service operational experience with a 5th-generation aircraft, provide a hedge against further AMCA slippage and begin closing the growing stealth-fighter gap with both China and Pakistan. Such a move also has the advantage of building on the IAF’s long experience with Russian combat aircraft, particularly the Su-30MKI, which forms the backbone of its fighter fleet with some 260-odd of them in service. The IAF has decades of experience operating, maintaining and upgrading Soviet/Russian-designed aircraft, including producing them under licence, giving the service an established Russian support and maintenance ecosystem into which the Su-57 could potentially be absorbed.Russia, for its part, has over the past 2-3 years repeatedly offered India industrial participation and access to Su-57 technology for licensed manufacture. That makes Moscow’s proposal potentially more attractive than merely a straightforward off-the-shelf purchase and mirrors the earlier Su-30MKI arrangement, under which Moscow transferred the licence and technical documentation for production of this fighter type in India in 2000.But, as always, there is a serious counterargument, with former ACM R.K.S. Bhadauria recently warning in a televised appearance that a Su-57 purchase by the IAF would end up diverting finances, manpower and institutional attention from AMCA and, eventually, even supersede it as the ‘easier option’. A cross-section of three-star IAF fighter pilot veterans were similarly circumspect. “If Su-57s are acquired, it will be up to ACM Dixit to ensure that they remain a tightly defined capability bridge and do not become another open-ended fleet like the Su-30MKI,” said one veteran. Otherwise, the IAF could repeat its familiar habit of adopting an interim solution that eventually becomes permanent, he cautioned, speaking on condition of anonymity.A decision on the F414 engineSecondly, the decision on the F414 engine for the Tejas Mk2 and AMCA would, without doubt, be the more important issue confronting Dixit.The F414 is far more than just an engine India intends to buy from the US: it is the powerplant on which a substantial part of the IAF’s future fighter fleet now critically depends. Under an agreement announced during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 2023 state visit to Washington, GE and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) agreed to produce the 98-kN engine in India for the upgraded 4.5-generation Tejas Mk2. The same powerplant is also designated for the AMCA’s prototypes, limited-series production (LSP) aircraft and at least its first two operational squadrons. Three years ago, the proposed GE-HAL arrangement was billed as a landmark transfer of technology between two strategic allies, with intellectual property rights (IPR) for the engine also being passed onto India. Over the past year, however, the F414 arrangement has run into a series of complications, further confounded by the fact that there are two separate sets of negotiations with GE, with different problems plaguing each.The problems plaguing the F414 arrangement The first is between HAL and GE for the long-term production in India of 99 F414s for the Tejas Mk2 and, subsequently, the AMCA. The second is between the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO)-Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) combine, responsible for designing the AMCA, and GE for the outright purchase of 14-15 similar engines needed for the prototypes of the indigenous 5th-generation fighter and its LSP units.More significantly, this F-414 deal is now being negotiated against a distinctly less congenial India-US economic, political and diplomatic relationship, as their prolonged and increasingly difficult bilateral trade talks have stalled over tariffs, market access and Washington’s demand that Delhi curb its purchases of Russian crude. Earlier this week, Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman offered little cause for optimism, saying these trade talks had reached a “plateau” beyond which further “giving or taking” would be “very, very difficult” for both sides.Numerous media reports, quoting official sources, have in recent weeks also indicated that the F414’s price for the DRDO-ADA has risen almost threefold, from an earlier estimate of Rs 70-80 crore per engine to more than Rs 200 crore. And though the reported commercial deadlock remains disputed, this reported increase and the standoff in F-414 negotiations have prompted the DRDO to examine alternatives for the AMCA, including Britain’s Rolls-Royce and France’s Safran.Rolls-Royce recently announced a strategic partnership with Reliance Industries to jointly develop and manufacture an indigenous combat engine for the AMCA, with a proposed thrust of more than 120 kN (kilonewtons) and full technology transfer. Safran, in turn, is in discussions over a parallel proposal to co-develop a high-thrust fighter engine, also in the 120-kN class, with the DRDO’s Gas Turbine Research Establishment, with extensive technology transfer envisaged.For HAL, though, the larger and potentially more consequential problem lies in its negotiations with GE over producing the F414 locally. These have become entangled in questions of the quantum of technology transfer, production arrangements, cost, IPR issues and the investment required to establish an Indian manufacturing line, with GE reportedly seeking more than $800 million for the facility, amongst other niggling differences. These negotiations also cover maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO), spare-parts support and warranties. The choice facing DixitDixit therefore faces a particularly difficult choice: the AMCA has already been designed around the F414, making an engine change at this stage expensive and technically complicated. The F414 has consequently left the IAF with something approaching a fait accompli: it can seek an alternative, but only at considerable cost and delay. “The ensuing complications surrounding the F414 present a daunting prospect for the IAF,” said the aforementioned three-star veteran. With India-US trade negotiations having plateaued, he warned that the engine agreement could itself become hostage to the wider bilateral impasse, potentially complicating already protracted negotiations over its price, technology transfer and production in India.Meanwhile, there is a third, and considerably more ambitious, decision for Dixit: whether India should begin pursuing a 6th-generation fighter programme, even as it struggles to get the AMCA past the drawing board and off the ground.Former Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan offered one possible answer in May 2026, when he told The Week that India could not afford to wait for the AMCA to be developed before pursuing a 6th-generation fighter programme. India, he revealed, was discussing participation in one of two overseas projects: the UK-led Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP), involving Italy and Japan, or the Franco-German Future Combat Air System (FCAS). Both programmes envisage moving beyond the traditional stand-alone combat aircraft towards fielding manned-unmanned teaming and autonomous systems, networked sensors and advanced electronic warfare systems, increasingly assisted by artificial intelligence.IAF veterans and analysts said the attraction for India joining such a 6th-generation fighter programme is obvious: access to advanced technologies, design practices and systems that could take decades to develop independently, if at all. No doubt, the eventual price would be dependence on foreign partners and a struggle over how much technology and IPR the IAF and Indian industry would be permitted to acquire. But given the pace at which combat aviation is evolving, they argued, that price could well be worth paying in the long run if it gives India a foothold in technologies it would otherwise struggle to develop on its own.What does Dixit want the IAF to look like?In the meantime, lurking underneath all these complex and difficult decisions is the more fundamental question for Dixit: what does he want the IAF to look like when he eventually hands it over to his successor?Will his priority simply be to add numbers and arrest the steady decline in fighter squadrons, or to build a smaller but considerably more capable force, able to fight a vastly changed and different 21st-century air war? The fundamental problem is that the IAF has neither the money nor the luxury of time to wait for one before addressing the other, as its adversaries rapidly upgrade their aerial capabilities. Its predicament remains dire, with its declining fighter numbers difficult to ignore. It presently has 28-29 fighter squadrons against an authorised strength of 42, the force level originally envisaged sometime in the 1980’s to execute a two-front conflict, which includes six SEPECAT Jaguar squadrons, commissioned in the 1970s. Moreover, even with the proposed induction of upgraded Tejas Mk1As — albeit plagued by GE-F404INS20 after-burning engine delivery delays — Tejas Mk2s and Dassault Rafales and eventually the AMCA, replacing aircraft at anything like the required rate of 36–40 platforms annually, as ACM A.P. Singh indicated last week, appears wishful. And even if these inductions are, by some miracle, accelerated, platform numbers alone will not restore the IAF’s primacy in the region as the People’s Liberation Army Air Force is rapidly deploying 5th-generation stealth fighters, longer-range weapons, increasingly sophisticated sensors and networked combat systems, with 6th-generation combat platforms waiting in the wings. The Pakistan Air Force, too, is acquiring stealth capability, leaving the IAF’s fighter fleet both numerically and technologically deficient. Such a worsening predicament makes Dixit’s choices interconnected: acquiring an interim 5th-generation fighter could provide an immediate capability the IAF lacks, but would most definitely mop up funds needed for larger fleet replacement with similarly capable aircraft. Pushing ahead with the AMCA could meet the IAF’s capability ambitions in the longer term, but does little to solve the enduring fighter shortages in the nearer term. Moreover, joining a 6th-generation fighter programme could prevent the IAF from falling technologically further behind its inimical neighbours, but would add another expensive commitment to an already crowded and hugely costly slate. Consequently, the real test for the new ACM will be whether he can bring some coherence to these competing demands, stop considering each aircraft programme in isolation and instead determine how all the different platforms can fit into a single, coherent fighter force.But above all, there is one particularly uncomfortable and enduring conundrum, emanating from the Tejas experience which Dixit will have to confront: an indigenous airframe without an indigenous engine is a recipe for disaster. And that perhaps is the hardest lesson the new IAF Chief of Staff will have to absorb and somehow try to resolve.