Indian Air Force needs serious firepower! IAF chief highlights urgent need to produce 35-40 fighter jets every year

India needs to develop the capability to produce at least 35-40 fighter aircraft every year to meet the requirements of replacing ageing fleets, Air Chief Marshal AP Singh said even as he pitched for developing indigenous capabilities for defence manufacturing.

Speaking at the Chanakya Dialogues conclave in New Delhi on Friday on the theme of 'Bharat 2047: Atmanirbhar In War', the Indian Air Force chief clarified that it is not impossible to meet the target of producing 35-40 fighter jets a year.

Reiterating that the Indian Air Force prefers "homegrown" systems even if they offer "slightly lesser performance"," he said, "I am very convinced in my mind that even if a homegrown system gives me a slightly lesser performance... if it is 90 per cent or 85 per cent of what I get in the world market, we will go for homegrown system because that is the only way we can get over with always looking outward to get our systems."

He, however, observed that a homegrown system cannot just happen overnight and said there is a need to support the ecosystem to produce them. "So for that, the Indian Air Force is fully committed to any R&D project," the IAF chief said.

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"So those capacities, I understand, cannot come up overnight. But we need to start pushing ourselves towards that. Now like the LCA Mk1A production, HAL has promised that from next year onwards, we will have 24 aircraft being made per year... plus some Sukhoi or some other aircraft... we are looking at numbers like 30 per year possible by HAL alone," he said.

"If some private industry comes in for a make in India, let us say, we add another maybe 12-18 aircraft per year from their side. So we are reaching that number. So that is possible," the IAF chief said.

Further, he stressed the importance of domestic defence equipment to fight long wars, saying, "We need to be able to take on this long protracted war, for which we need the capacity to be able to come up with a production rate that will be required for the weapons during war."

He pointed out that in case of a long war, India will have to rely on a mix of what is there in store and should have the confidence that the industry can produce the weapons required.