Seemingly oblivious to the massive financial commitments involved, the Indian Air Force (IAF) is currently considering an extraordinary three-way, near-simultaneous combat aircraft programme in a country still awash with widespread poverty and abysmally low per-capita incomes.According to a cross-section of senior IAF veterans and military analysts, decades of poor planning and the lack of a coherent long-term procurement strategy had left the service with a highly depleted fighter fleet. And, rather than boosting this and augmenting operational capability to meet the growing challenges in its immediate neighbourhood, the IAF has been left scrambling to make up for years of neglect.They said few countries, even amongst the world’s major military powers, could contemplate all three ambitious fighter programmes at once – buying 114 Dassault Rafales to shore up a fleet that has fallen from a sanctioned 42.5 squadrons to just 29, developing the indigenous fifth-generation Advanced Multirole Combat Aircraft (AMCA) and now considering acquiring Russian Sukhoi Su-57 ‘Felons’, potentially with technology transfer and local manufacture.An extravagance India can ill affordThis latter prospect is expected to figure prominently in discussions between prime minister Narendra Modi and Russian president Vladimir Putin in New Delhi on Friday (September 11), a day ahead of the opening of the BRICS summit in the capital.Collectively, all three projects involve an extravagance India can ill afford.The proposed 114-Rafale procurement under the Multi-Role Fighter Aircraft programme – with 96 of them being built locally through technology transfer – is estimated to cost a staggering Rs 3.25 lakh crore ($35-36 billion), but the deal remains under negotiation.Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.The two other two programmes have recently acquired greater salience in IAF planning, with the Su-57 proposal gaining particular momentum ahead of Putin’s arrival in Delhi on Friday. But neither the Su-57 nor the twin-engine AMCA project has a confirmed number of aircraft or a publicly disclosed price.The following cost comparisons are therefore necessarily approximate, based on industry estimates and available reporting rather than official Russian or Indian government figures. Around 40 Su-57s – enough for two squadrons, which the IAF is reportedly considering – together with extensive technology transfer and possible local production could potentially cost an estimated Rs 40,000-50,000 crore.A comparable estimate for the first 40 operational twin-engine AMCAs is considerably higher, at around Rs 80,000-95,000 crore, according to domestic and overseas aviation industry reckoning.This, it should be stressed, is only a working evaluation, not an official programme price, taking into account the Rs 15,000-crore AMCA development programme approved by the government in March 2024 for five flying prototypes and a structural test aircraft. Tentatively, it also includes the likely cost of some 40 production fighters, infrastructure, testing, systems integration and, importantly, their US-origin General Electric (GE) F414 engines, which account for a major part of the expense.Two squadrons of 40 AMCAs would require 80 GE F414 engines which, at the reported current price of around Rs 200 crore each – up from an earlier estimate of Rs 70-80 crore – would alone cost around Rs 16,000 crore. Even if the F414s are eventually made in India, under the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited-GE joint venture announced in 2023, which has run into snafus over the extent of technology transfer and intellectual property rights, the AMCA would still have a significant foreign dependency at its core.It’s nobody’s case that these vast sums would have to be paid upfront.All these assorted platforms would be acquired over several years, as would the AMCA be developed, with payments spread across successive defence budgets. Even then, at times the programmes would overlap financially, but either way, all three would ultimately compete for the same finite fiscal pool.India’s defence capital outlay for Financial Year 2026-27 is Rs 2.19 lakh crore, with Rs 1.85 lakh crore earmarked for service acquisitions, of which the IAF accounts for the largest share, competing keenly with the Indian Navy and Army for a share of these scarce funds.“Much of this financial pressure, and tension, is the product of years of stop-start procurements, delayed indigenous programmes and the absence of a coherent long-term fighter acquisition plan,” said Amit Cowshish, former Ministry of Defence (MoD) financial acquisitions adviser. Better planning and earlier decisions could have avoided some of this confusion, which now appears jumbled and near-insoluble, he said.Besides, the issue, he added, is not whether the government can somehow find the money for all three IAF programmes, but what other capabilities will consequently need to be compromised for the two other services.The AMCA’s indigenous status is not quite as clean as it soundsEach of the IAF’s three programmes is intended to address a different operational requirement.The Rafale buy is aimed at addressing the IAF’s immediate fighter squadron shortage, the proposed Su-57 procurement is targeted at providing the IAF imminent fifth-generation fighter capability, years before AMCA matures to meet growing aerial challenges from both China and Pakistan. China presently operates J-20 fifth-generation fighters in formidable numbers and is reportedly exporting the similarly capable J-35AE platform to the Pakistan Air Force.The AMCA, by contrast, is the IAF’s long-term indigenous attempt and ‘wild card’ to acquire fifth-generation fighter capability. But, unfortunately the first aircraft of the programme is not expected to fly until around 2028-29, with operational service beginning at least six years, if not longer, after that.Moreover, the AMCA’s indigenous status is not quite as clean as it sounds.Its prototypes, limited-series production aircraft and at least the first two squadrons, if not more, as delineated by successive IAF and industry estimates, are configured around the F414 engine, whose delayed manufacture in India and unresolved technology-transfer issues have jeopardised the programme.The UK’s Rolls-Royce and France’s Safran are waiting in the wings with alternative collaborative arrangements with their own engines, more powerful than the F414, but switching the AMCA to either of these two powerpacks would take years and require substantial redesign of the platform, at considerable cost.“The F414 issue makes the AMCA an uncomfortable proposition,” said a military aviation official in Bengaluru, requesting anonymity. India, he observed, is spending heavily to design and develop its own fifth-generation fighter, yet it is totally dependent on an American engine whose availability and technology-transfer terms remain uncertain.Russia, on the other hand, he observed, has already borne the bulk of the Su-57’s development costs and therefore, by scrapping the AMCA and opting for the Russian fighter, the IAF could deploy a mature fifth-generation fighter several years earlier. “In operational terms,” he added, “that would give the IAF something the AMCA cannot – a swifter path to urgently-needed fifth-generation capability.”A cross-section of IAF veterans concurred, highlighting the ‘inordinately high operational cost’ of waiting for the AMCA. They said every additional year this programme takes to materialise is another year in which the IAF’s fighter fleet continues to shrink, while China and Pakistan correspondingly continue to increasingly induct advanced combat aircraft.“For the IAF, the choice is between getting an operational fifth-generation capability sooner with the Su-57 or waiting until 2035 or beyond for AMCA to deliver it,” said a two-star veteran fighter pilot.The AMCA remains untestedFurthermore, the AMCA remains untested, its capabilities completely notional for now. Under these circumstances, he added, declining to be identified, the critical issue presently is what capability the IAF has before AMCA arrives in sufficient numbers to make an operational difference against its two neighbouring adversaries.Some IAF veterans also suggested another option the IAF could consider at this juncture: acquire the Su-57 as an ‘interim’ fifth-generation capability and use the time gained to totally leapfrog the AMCA and concentrate on developing a sixth-generation fighter.Such an idea is no longer fanciful, as former Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan had told parliament’s Standing Committee on Defence in March that India is evaluating participation in the Global Combat Air Programme involving the UK, Italy and Japan, and the Franco-German Future Combat Air System, both of which are working on developing a sixth-generation fighter.They said that rather than spending another decade trying to match China with the flagging AMCA, the IAF could use the Su-57 to acquire operational experience on this fifth-generation fighter, while concentrating on technologies needed for the next, sixth-generation platforms.“The IAF has spent decades playing catch-up in military aviation and now needs a leap of faith to pole-vault to sixth-generation combat platforms,” said the aforementioned two-star veteran. A timely Su-57 acquisition could well provide the ‘breathing space’ to move beyond another generation of technological development and aim instead for sixth-generation capability, he counselled.The IAF, therefore, needs to adopt a hard-headed view of what it can realistically afford and field. It cannot pursue Rafale, Su-57 and AMCA as three largely parallel fighter programmes without recognising the enormous financial burden involved, or that such an over-ambitious plan could stretch its resources to breaking point.No doubt, it can glibly explain to MoD officials the rationale for acquiring each platform: Rafale to restore squadron strength, Su-57 to provide an early fifth-generation capability and AMCA to develop an indigenous one. But its overriding requirement needs to be to decide what can realistically be delivered, when and at what cost, rather than chasing an inchoate force whose operational capability continues to progressively weaken.This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.