India has just fired the starting gun on one of the biggest military aircraft competitions in the world. On August 12, 2026, its Defence Ministry issued a formal request for proposals for sixty new medium transport aircraft, opening a contest worth roughly one trillion rupees, or about $10.5 billion.
The prize is not only an airlifter to replace India's ageing Soviet-era transports. It is the right to build that airlifter, at scale, inside India.
Quick Facts
- Programme: India's Multi-Role Transport Aircraft (MTA)
- RFP issued: August 12, 2026
- Quantity: 60 aircraft
- Value: Roughly $10.5 billion
- Payload class: 18 to 30 tonnes
- Frontrunners: Embraer C-390 Millennium and Lockheed C-130J Super Hercules
- Local content: At least 40%, rising toward 60%, with assembly and MRO in India
- Replacing: The ageing Antonov An-32 fleet
India goes shopping for airlifters
The Multi-Role Transport Aircraft programme is meant to fill the gap between India's small tactical transports and its heavy strategic jets, replacing a fleet of Soviet-origin An-32s that have been hauling cargo for decades. The requirement calls for an aircraft in the 18 to 30 tonne class that can operate not just from big air bases but from rough, high-altitude strips in places like Ladakh and the northeast.
The first aircraft would arrive built abroad. The rest would be assembled in India, under the government's Make in India push, with local content starting at 40 percent and climbing toward 60.
C-390 versus C-130J
Two aircraft sit at the centre of the contest. Embraer's C-390 Millennium is the newer, larger option, a jet-powered airlifter that can carry around 26 tonnes and cruise near the speed of a small airliner. It is paired with India's Mahindra Defence.
Against it stands Lockheed Martin's C-130J Super Hercules, the proven turboprop workhorse flown by air forces the world over. It carries less, about 19 tonnes, but India already operates twelve of them and builds C-130J parts through Tata, giving it a ready-made industrial story. Airbus had offered the bigger A400M, but at roughly 37 tonnes it sits above the weight class India specified.
Not just a plane, a factory
What makes this contest so valuable is that India wants the winner to plant roots. The successful bidder must set up a final assembly line and a maintenance and overhaul base in the country, turning a purchase into a permanent piece of India's aerospace industry.
That is why the fight is about more than payload charts and runway performance. Whichever aircraft wins, its maker gets a decade of Indian production, and a foothold in one of the fastest-growing military aviation markets on the planet.
Sources: Aerospace Global News, Indian Ministry of Defence, Lockheed Martin, Embraer
0 Comments