NEW DELHI: The Indian Air Force (IAF) has begun the long-pending search for a successor to its Hawk Mk-132 advanced jet trainers, floating a Request for Information (RFI) for around 150 aircraft that will prepare its fighter pilots for the increasingly complex demands of modern air combat.
The Stage-III (F) trainers will be the final link in the training chain before pilots move to operational fighter squadrons. They will have to familiarise rookie pilots with airborne radars, electronic warfare systems and beyond-visual-range missiles before they graduate to frontline fighters such as the Rafale and Tejas and eventually the Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA).
The RFI for “trainer aircraft for Stage-III (F) and associated equipment” has been issued to Indian and global manufacturers, with responses due by October 5. Trials will be conducted in India on a no-cost-no-commitment basis.
The programme is still at the market-sounding stage. An RFI allows the armed forces to seek information from manufacturers on available platforms, technical capabilities, indigenous content, technology transfer and delivery schedules. It is not a tender or a commitment to procure. The subsequent Request for Proposal (RFP) is the formal bidding stage, when eligible vendors submit technical and commercial offers against the finalised requirements.
The RFP is tentatively scheduled for December 2027, with deliveries to be completed within 60 months of the effective date of the contract. Even if this schedule is maintained, the first aircraft is unlikely to reach an IAF flying training base before the mid-2030s.
The IAF has specified “Buy (Indian) or better” as the preferred procurement category and asked manufacturers to spell out the scope, depth and range of technology transfer they can offer.
For foreign manufacturers, therefore, the competition will involve more than offering an aircraft that meets the IAF’s performance requirements. They will also have to demonstrate how much of its production, technology and supply chain can be brought to India.
The likely foreign contenders include Leonardo’s M-346 Master and Korea Aerospace Industries’ T-50 family. Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd’s proposed HLFT-42 is the principal Indian option.
The procurement is to follow a single-stage, two-envelope process, with technical and commercial bids submitted separately. Aircraft that clear the technical evaluation will undergo field trials in India before the contract is awarded to the lowest technically compliant bidder.
The IAF has contracted 106 Hawk Mk-132 aircraft in two tranches. The first contract, signed in March 2004, covered 66 aircraft, of which 24 were supplied directly from the United Kingdom and 42 were licence-produced by HAL. A further 40 aircraft were contracted from HAL in 2010. The IAF’s sanctioned strength for the Hawk was 106 aircraft, while the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence recorded an existing strength of 104 in 2017-18. The 123 figure cited for the Indian Hawk fleet includes 17 aircraft ordered for the Indian Navy.
The Hawk Mk-132 entered IAF service in February 2008 and has since been the principal Stage-III trainer, taking pilots through advanced flying and weapons training before they move to operational fighters. The aircraft has therefore occupied a critical position in the IAF’s fighter-pilot training pipeline for nearly two decades.
“The need for a successor is not simply about the age of the airframes. The combat environment in which a new fighter pilot will operate has changed substantially since the Hawk entered service. Modern fighters rely on networked sensors, electronic warfare, long-range missiles and increasingly sophisticated data links. The IAF now wants those capabilities reflected in the training aircraft itself,” a source said.
The global Hawk production line has also closed. The United Kingdom, which operates Hawk T1 and T2 aircraft, issued an RFI on August 7 for their replacement. Britain is pursuing a Hawk successor based around Boeing’s T-7 training system, under a partnership involving BAE Systems, Boeing and Saab.
India’s experience with indigenous trainer programmes, meanwhile, has been marked by long development timelines and supply-chain constraints. The HTT-40 basic trainer, cleared by the Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) for 106 aircraft in 2020 and eventually contracted for 70 aircraft for about Rs 6,800 crore, saw its first series-production aircraft fly from Bengaluru only in October 2025, eight years after the prototype’s first flight.
The programme subsequently faced delays in the supply of Honeywell TPE331-12B engines. HAL had to manage the initial production schedule around the availability of engines, highlighting the dependence of even an indigenous aircraft programme on critical imported components.
The issue has a direct bearing on the IAF’s new trainer requirement. The force is already dealing with delays in the supply of GE Aerospace’s F404-IN20 engines for the Tejas Mk-1A. Any new trainer programme that depends heavily on overseas components could face similar vulnerabilities unless the manufacturing and supply chain are progressively localised.
At the intermediate training stage, the HJT-36, renamed Yashas at Aero India 2025, has been in development for about two decades and has undergone extensive work to address its handling characteristics.
HAL’s proposed supersonic HLFT-42, showcased as a scale model at Aero India 2023 and pitched as a potential Hawk successor, is yet to reach the critical design review stage.
A new training paradigm
The IAF is seeking considerably more from the new trainer than it gets from the Hawk. The RFI calls for fly-by-wire control, a glass cockpit with configurable hands-on-throttle-and-stick controls, navigation integrating the homegrown satellite system NavIC with GPS and GLONASS and zero-zero ejection seats. The aircraft is also required to be resistant to departures and capable of automatically recovering to controlled flight if the pilot releases the controls.
The larger shift is in embedded simulation. According to the document, the IAF wants embedded virtual avionics and an embedded virtual electronic warfare (EW) suite, along with the ability to simulate missile seeker heads during flight. A secure data link is to connect the aircraft with a 360-degree full-motion dome simulator and a scenario generator as part of a Live-Virtual-Constructive training environment.
The system is also expected to support holographic debriefing. The IAF has specified hot refuelling and rearming with a turnaround time of less than 30 minutes, an engine change within an hour, AI-based predictive maintenance and an open architecture that permits future software and hardware upgrades from sources other than the original manufacturer.
The requirement comes as the IAF continues to operate with a depleted fighter fleet. With 29 fighter squadrons against an authorised strength of 42.5, the force has limited room to use frontline aircraft for training tasks that can be shifted to a dedicated advanced trainer.
The new aircraft is therefore intended to do more than replace the Hawk. It will form the training bridge between the IAF’s current fighter fleet and its next generation of combat aircraft, while reducing the pressure on frontline fighters to perform training duties.