NEW DELHI: Eight years after walking out of the Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA) project with Russia, India is again looking abroad for a leg-up into the next generation of air combat, this time towards a French-led programme whose Franco-German fighter effort has broken down over differences on workshare and industrial responsibilities.
The Defence Ministry has told a parliamentary panel that it has initiated efforts to "co-join" the French-led Future Combat Air System (FCAS), opening the possibility of India entering a sixth-generation fighter programme during its development rather than acquiring a finished aircraft later.
The move has predictably revived memories of the FGFA, which India exited in 2018 amid concerns over cost, technology transfer and the capabilities of the proposed aircraft. The verdict already being written in commentary is blunt: this could become a French FGFA.
Air Cmde Gaurav Mani Tripathi (Retd), a former fighter pilot who has worked on strategy at the apex level in the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) and the IAF and is now Director (Ops and Strategy) at Veda Aeronautics, takes a more nuanced view.
The question, he says, is not simply whether India gets technology transfer but what it gains beyond the operational capability of the eventual aircraft. Genuine technology transfer is difficult, he says, but participation in a complex foreign programme can still build industrial, programme-management and design capabilities. The key, he argues, is whether India has a plan to carry those capabilities into the next programme.
Q. What is the real jump from fifth-generation to sixth-generation combat aircraft?
A. These labels are informal and came out of the West. With the F-22, the defining features were stealth and supercruise, that is, sustaining supersonic speed without engaging afterburner. Then came the F-35, which does not supercruise in the same manner, so supercruise was conveniently dropped from the definition.
What remains is that a fifth-generation fighter is very difficult to detect and very well networked. The sixth generation takes that further. These aircraft are conceived as nodes in a system of systems, sharing information seamlessly and at the heart of it is manned-unmanned teaming. From inception, they are designed to control, task and retask uncrewed platforms flying ahead of them.
Q. If unmanned aircraft can take the first risk, why do you still need a manned fighter?
A. Platforms have become so expensive that your combat potential sits in a few aircraft, while air defences have become far more potent. So you send cheaper, attritable, potentially low-observable uncrewed aircraft ahead to shape the battlespace.
They can take the first engagement and degrade threats, allowing the more expensive platforms behind them to deliver the heavier punch.
This is also why the kill chain is becoming a kill web. You might launch on an input from sensor A while platform B guides your missile as you turn away. Losing one or two nodes degrades the web, not collapses it.
Q. If unmanned teaming is central to sixth-generation combat, where does that leave the Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA)?
A. Manned-unmanned teaming does not make AMCA less relevant. These uncrewed platforms are called collaborative combat aircraft (CCA), and India already has the CATS Warrior programme, which must be encouraged in the fullest possible manner.
Fifth-gen fighters are being modified for teasing with CCAs and so shall the AMCA. Ultimately, the objective is to get the weapon onto the target and the manned platform remains the heavier weapon-carrying asset. In Operation Sindoor, it was the air-launched missiles striking the bases and ground facilities that delivered the effect.
Q. India has watched the Franco-German FCAS partnership break over workshare. What went wrong and what should India learn from it before entering?
A. France has always maintained a genuinely independent aerospace capability, from the early Mirages to the Rafale. That independence has cost money but it means France has retained the ability to design something like this.
Germany has significant aerospace capability too but has not independently designed a fighter in a long time. The disagreement over workshare and the division of development responsibilities became a major problem. My reading is that Germany wanted more original R&D work rather than work France had already done.
Q. Is calling a possible Indian entry into FCAS "another FGFA" a fair comparison?
A. The basic question is fair. An aircraft that works delivers operational capability, but what about long-term developmental capability, IP, industrial capability and design capability?
Genuine technology transfer hardly ever happens. It needs a peculiar set of circumstances: either your benefactor has no choice but you or they are in distress, as Russia was in the late 1990s.
Q. If France does not hand over its most sensitive IP, what can India realistically gain from FCAS?
A. Look at Turkey and South Korea. Both started out building aircraft with heavy foreign involvement, and both went on to develop far more sophisticated indigenous capabilities of their own.
Or look at what Maruti did to our automotive industry. What arrived with it was not just a car. It was skills, techniques and the ability to run a complex programme, from inventories and supply chains to manufacturing processes and the wider ecosystem. And the pool of trained manpower Maruti created did not stay put. As it grew, it moved, carrying those skills across to other companies. You may not absorb the technology itself, but you learn a great deal from partnering with somebody more capable than you. It is like batting at the non-striker’s end while Sachin Tendulkar is on strike.
Q. Take the engine example. If the foreign partner retains the engine core, what does India actually learn that it can carry into the next generation?
A. Suppose Safran designs the core entirely: compressor, combustion chamber and turbine. HAL as a partner still learns the casing, ducting, exhaust, heat shields, thermal management, the gearboxes and the fuel feed, which is a very big thing because fuel and air must mix correctly regardless of speed, altitude and temperature.
Having learned the peripherals with a foreign core, in the next programme you indigenise one module of the core, then the next, then the hot section. That is incremental innovation.
We are not at level zero. We already have capabilities in jet-engine development. The issue is improving reliability, materials and performance.
Q. What would make an FCAS partnership a success for India and what would make it another FGFA?
A. I will not comment on specifics because the shape of any agreement is presumably still being worked out. But in principle there is nothing wrong with a foreign partnership, provided you are committed to a long-term, structured programme and you plan your next iteration in time.
If you do not do that, then yes, call it a failure. A purely indigenous effort will also cost money, and with no fifth generation behind us, the timelines would be far longer.
So I don't think it can be dismissed offhand. I think it is a good idea, provided there is a clear plan for what comes next.
Q. Should India be planning the fighter after FCAS before it even joins FCAS? And where does the private sector fit in?
A. The private sector needs to be brought in early. Bring it in late, with no visibility of future orders, and it cannot make the investments because capability and capacity both have to be created.
These are cutting-edge programmes and we know the limitations of our industrial base. Much of the machinery will have to be imported. We are not France, Israel, Japan, the US or Germany, where precision machine tooling has been a historical strength.
So decide early what can go out to the private sector. If networking is the core of the sixth generation, then by all means keep its development within the government. But the broader industrial ecosystem should be brought in early.
The important thing is not simply to participate in the programme. It is to ensure that what India learns from it becomes the foundation for the next indigenous programme.
