Chandigarh: The impending discussions between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Vladimir Putin on Friday (September 11) in New Delhi over India’s possible purchase of Russia’s fifth-generation Sukhoi Su-57 ‘Felon’ fighters, and the technology behind them, prompt a highly consequential question: does Moscow’s Su-57 offer and the Indian Air Force (IAF)’s eagerness to acquire it, sound the death knell for India’s own fifth-generation Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) programme – or at least consign it to a moribund existence?This question remains highly pertinent, as the AMCA programme has faced serious turbulence over its General Electric (GE) F414-INS6 engine, around which its potential prototypes and initial variants are configured. Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) and GE have been negotiating the domestic manufacture of this 98-kilonewton (kN) engine in India under their 2023 agreement, which envisaged substantial technology transfer.But over the past three years these talks appear to have reached an impasse over issues related to the quantum of critical technology transfer by GE, its intellectual property rights (IPR) over the engine, manufacturing arrangements and overall project costs.Parallel discussions between GE and the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and its Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) for around 15 F-414 engines needed for AMCA prototypes and limited series production, as well as for the Indian Navy’s Twin-Engine Deck-Based Fighter (TEDBF), are also deadlocked.Recent news reports, quoting unnamed industry officials, also revealed that the cost of each F-414 engine has reportedly risen almost threefold – from an earlier estimate of around Rs 70-80 crore to more than Rs 200 crore – further jeopardising both the twin-engine AMCA and TEDBF programmes.Moreover, the AMCA’s development timeline, even if its engine problems are somehow resolved, remains extended, with the first prototype not expected to fly before 2028-29 and operational induction unlikely before the mid-2030s when its series production is scheduled to begin.But by then, the IAF’s fighter squadron strength is projected to have declined well below its current 29 squadrons, against an authorised 42, as six legacy SEPECAT Jaguar squadrons, dating back to the 1970s, are expected to begin retiring, outpacing the induction of replacements, including additional Dassault Rafales and the indigenous upgraded Tejas Mk1A fighters.Consequently, the IAF risks entering the next decade still waiting for the AMCA, while China already fields fifth-generation fighters and Pakistan, its closely aligned nuclear and military partner, is preparing to acquire one such advanced platform from Beijing.China’s J-20 is already operational, while the Pakistan Air Force is expected to begin receiving the Shenyang J-35AE fifth-generation stealth fighter from Beijing in late 2026 or early 2027, with the fleet eventually reaching around 40 aircraft by the early 2030s, according to overseas defence industry assessments. Concurrently, China is also in an advanced stage of developing its sixth-generation combat aircraft.It is this looming operational capability gap with regard to its restive neighbours that has prompted a wide cross-section of serving and veteran IAF officers and defence analysts to advocate the swift acquisition of Su-57s.China’s J-20 is already operational, while the Pakistan Air Force is expected to begin receiving the Shenyang J-35AE fifth-generation stealth fighter (representative image) from Beijing in late 2026 or early 2027. Photo: 中国新闻社/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0.“With Pakistan poised to imminently take delivery of J-35AEs, the IAF’s most likely and viable course is to close the capability gap by swiftly acquiring two or more Su-57 squadrons or around 40 aircraft,” said Air Marshal Sanjeev Kapoor (Retd), the IAF’s former director general of inspection and safety. This, he added, can be a timely recourse to the evolving strategic situation in our turbulent region.Other senior IAF veterans concurred.“Against prevailing strategic uncertainty, the Su-57 appears a remarkably capable alternative, offering the IAF instant operational gratification as it confronts the twin challenges of its adversaries acquiring fifth-generation fighters and its own fighter fleet steadily shrinking,” said another three-star veteran, declining to be named. Russia, he added, is offering not only to transfer an unspecified number of Su-57s to the IAF, but also to facilitate their local production through ‘extensive technology transfer’.The Su-57 is a twin-engine fifth-generation fighter designed for air-to-air and air-to-ground missions, with a low-observable airframe, active electronically scanned array radars, infrared search-and-track and electronic-warfare systems. It can carry weapons internally, including long-range air-to-air missiles and precision-guided strike weapons. The Russian Air Force has effectively deployed the Su-57 in its war with Ukraine and its weapons and onboard systems continue to evolve.Ahead of Putin’s arrival in Delhi on Friday, Russian officials reiterated Moscow’s willingness to export Su-57s to India and to provide know-how for their series manufacture.“We have advanced strategic ties with India and will thus discuss the possibilities of whether the technology [for the Su-57s] can be made available to it,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday. Such military cooperation is of great importance, but it can’t be discussed openly and publicly, he said, confirming that selling India Su-57s was on Putin’s agenda when he meets PM Modi before the two-day BRICS summit begins in Delhi Saturday.Defence analysts and industry officials interpreted Peskov’s remarks as potentially indicating that India could receive access to the Su-57’s source codes governing its software and onboard systems – an especially valuable capability that could allow India to modify the fighter, integrate locally designed weapons and sensors onto it, and upgrade it as threats evolved, without remaining wholly dependent on the original equipment manufacturer.The significance of such access is underscored by France’s Dassault, which has been unwilling to hand over its Rafale fighters’ source code to the IAF, leaving it to seek ‘interface-level access’ instead to integrate indigenous weapons and systems onto the French platform.Principally, however, the Su-57’s lure for the IAF is heightened by the growing uncertainty surrounding the AMCA itself, particularly its propulsion aspect. The enduring problems with the under-development fifth-generation fighter’s F-414 engine have become serious enough for India to begin looking for alternatives, even as the AMCA remains configured around the US powerplant.Last month, Reliance Industries and the UK’s Rolls-Royce announced plans to jointly develop a new combat-aircraft engine in India for the AMCA, initially targeting more than 120 kN of afterburning thrust and far greater technology transfer than is being offered for the F-414. France’s Safran is separately negotiating with the DRDO to co-develop a 110-kN-class engine and is also offering extensive transfer of critical engine technologies and related IPR.There is another question ahead of Putin’s Delhi visit: will India end up buying Su-57s and building them locally through technology transfer to replace the long-planned AMCA (model pictured above) configured around a US engine whose acquisition was proving highly problematic? Photo: X/@SpokespersonMoD via PTI.Both initiatives hold out the possibility of eventually giving India a sovereign combat-aircraft engine, but neither offers an immediate solution to the AMCA’s dependence on the F414 and neither powerpack is likely to be operational soon.“The ADA, working in tandem with the IAF, is trapped in a vicious bind over the F-414 from which it cannot escape easily,” said a military aviation industry official. Besides, re-designing the AMCA around a new engine will not only be costly but also time consuming, a luxury that the IAF cannot afford in light of its fast declining fighter numbers and the palpable fifth-generation threat it faces in its neighbourhood, he added, declining to be named.This, according to the aforementioned three-star veteran, is where the Su-57 could solve the IAF’s immediate fifth-generation capability gap, while quietly making the AMCA, and its related engine woes, redundant.“Once the IAF has the Su-57 in service and India’s defence industry begins producing the aircraft locally, the pressure to persist with an indigenous fifth-generation fighter like AMCA would inevitably diminish,” he said. The AMCA, he added, could remain ‘alive’ on paper, but slowly lose its purpose if the Su-57 gives the IAF the capability it needs and Indian industry gets much of the know-how it had earlier hoped to accrue via the indigenous fifth-generation fighter programme.Meanwhile, the possible Su-57 deal also exposes the IAF’s abysmal future operational planning processes, when its prevailing situation with regard to acquiring Su-57s is viewed against what happened with Russia’s Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA) programme almost a decade ago.Based on the Russian PAK-FA (Perspektivny Aviatsionny Kompleks Frontovoy Aviatsii) design that later evolved into the Su-57, the FGFA programme saw the Ministry of Defence, HAL and the IAF withdraw from it in 2017-18, despite having invested $295 million in the programme. Collectively, they had expressed dissatisfaction over project costs, technology sharing and workshare arrangements, along with concerns about the aircraft’s overall maturity, including its stealth and operational efficiency.Yet years later, the IAF is back; considering the same fighter it had once rejected, this time because its own fifth-generation fighter programme is in trouble and still years from fruition. Ironically, what the IAF had previously rejected now looks like providing a way out of its operational dilemma.But military planners maintained that if acquired, the Su-57 would come with another problem – it would add yet another fighter type to an already unwieldy IAF fleet.The IAF operates six different fighter types: the Soviet/Russian MiG-29 and Su-30MKI, the French Mirage 2000H and Rafale, the Jaguar and the indigenous Tejas Light Combat Aircraft. Each requires its own supply chain for spares, maintenance and overhaul arrangements, training, weapons integration and ground-support equipment. Adding yet another fighter type, especially an advanced fifth-generation platform with its own logistics and maintenance requirements, would hardly simplify an already unwieldy support system.In conclusion, that leaves AMCA facing an uncomfortable and awkward question: will it survive Putin’s visit?And also, will India end up buying Su-57s and building them locally through technology transfer to replace the long-planned AMCA configured around a US engine whose acquisition was proving highly problematic?After years of stressing atmanirbharta or self-reliance in its materiel requirements, acquiring Su-57s would, for the BJP-led government, ensure that the IAF arrives right back from where it initially started in the 1960s – with Moscow-origin fighters like MiG-21s.