CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu has lost out to Andhra Pradesh in securing the proposed Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) flight testing and integration complex, a key defence aerospace project linked to India’s fifth-generation stealth fighter programme, with the union government backing Andhra Pradesh for the facility.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and AP Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu laid the foundation stone for the Rs 15,000-crore AMCA defence hub in Puttaparthi on Friday. The development comes in spite of the technically superior infrastructure conditions offered by Tamil Nadu, according to highly-placed sources. However, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is yet to give an official reason for the decision.
The Tamil Nadu government had been in talks with DRDO for the past three years to anchor the project in Hosur. The proposal envisaged the AMCA flight testing and integration complex to be developed alongside the proposed Hosur airport, with the testing facility on one side and the passenger terminal on the other.
Officials familiar with the discussions also noted that the original runway at the Andhra site was about 2.1 km long, when compared to the proposed 3.5-km runway planned at Hosur. Hence, AP would need to extend the runway to 3 km by procuring additional land for the facility.
TN had offered 100 acres free for project
However, officials pointed out that the revised runway length may still fall short of requirements for conducting abort tests, a critical aviation safety procedure in which a take-off or mission is intentionally terminated to verify whether an aircraft can safely stop or recover during an emergency. Aircraft manufacturers such as Boeing and Airbus, as well as defence agencies, routinely conduct abort tests before certifying new aircraft systems. Sources said such tests typically require a runway length of 3.5 km.
Tamil Nadu had also offered to provide 100 acres of land free of cost, as requested by the DRDO for the project, apart from the 3.5-km runway of Hosur airport. The proposed facility would have been located close to the headquarters of the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) – the nodal agency for the design and development of India’s Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) – in Vimanapura, Bengaluru. Officials said this proximity, considering the ADA headquarters is located around 40 km from Hosur, could have enabled better integration with the existing airspace infrastructure.
Despite these highly favourable terms on offer, sources said the DRDO was subsequently directed to pursue the project in AP, where land was identified near the Sri Sathya Sai Central Trust in Puttaparthi. So far, the DRDO has not officially stated any reason for shifting the site.
The development comes amid intensifying competition among southern states to attract high-value manufacturing and aerospace investments. Officials cited the case of South Korean footwear maker Hwaseung Enterprises, which had earlier signed an MoU with the TN government for a Rs 1,720-crore non-leather footwear manufacturing facility, but later shifted the proposed investment to Kuppam in Andhra Pradesh. Officials further said that concerns were growing that political considerations were resulting in TN losing out on strategic investments. DRDO officials could not be reached for comment.
