India has been talking about its own stealth fighter for well over a decade. Now it has a date. Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh says the first prototype of the Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) is targeted to fly in September 2028.
Speaking at the NDTV Defence Summit in New Delhi on Sunday, 27 September, Singh also put a date on the Tejas Mk2, India's next medium-weight fighter: its first flight should come between June and September 2027. And he confirmed what had been reported for months. The state-owned manufacturer Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) will not build the AMCA prototypes.
Informazioni rapide
- Programma: Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA), India's planned fifth-generation stealth fighter
- Primo obiettivo di volo: September 2028, according to Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh
- Prototypes: Five flying prototypes plus one structural test aircraft
- Motori: General Electric F414 on the initial prototypes
- Bidders: Tata Advanced Systems; L&T, BEL and Dynamatic; Bharat Forge, BEML and Data Patterns
- Bid deadline: 30 October 2026
- Tejas Mk2: First flight targeted between June and September 2027
A Deadline for a Stealth Fighter
The AMCA will be built by a private-sector development-cum-production partner working with the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA), which keeps design authority. According to SSBCrack and idrw, the programme documents require a first flight within 30 months of the contract award, all five prototypes within 64 months, and 1,800 flight-test sorties within 84 months. The government is paying for the prototype phase in full, an estimated ₹15,000 crore.
Bids are now due by 30 October 2026. The Aircraft Integration and Flight Testing Centre that will host the test campaign is being built at Puttaparthi in Andhra Pradesh, according to idrw.
Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh on the AMCA, Rafale and Tejas at the NDTV Defence Summit. Video: NDTV World.
Why HAL Is Out
HAL has built almost every Indian combat aircraft. It will not build this one, at least not yet. Of the seven groups that expressed interest, only three met the technical and financial criteria. HAL, which had bid with two smaller partners, was not among them.
Singh said HAL had failed on some fairly routine technical grounds, without naming them. Earlier reports had linked the exclusion to a scoring rule that penalised bidders whose order book exceeded three times their annual turnover, which HAL's does by a wide margin. HAL may still take part when the aircraft moves to series production.
The Stealth Gap
India's air force does not operate any stealth aircraft. China flies the J-20 in large numbers and has shown more stealth types since. Singh said the government has made no decision on buying foreign fifth-generation fighters such as the Russian Su-57 as a stopgap. Instead, India is relying on an AI layer in its Integrated Air Command and Control System to get more out of its existing fighters.
Meanwhile, Singh said HAL has 27 Tejas Mk1A airframes on the assembly line, and GE has promised to deliver four F404 engines a month for the rest of the year. The Indian Air Force expects to form its first operational Mk1A squadron before the end of the financial year.
September 2028 is two years away. For a programme that has spent years on drawing boards and exhibition stands, it is the first date anyone in Delhi has been willing to put on the record.
Sources: NDTV Defence Summit, Livefist, SSBCrack, idrw, The Economic Times
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