A year after Defence Minister Rajnath Singh approved the execution model for India's fifth-generation fighter jet programme, Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA), granting equal opportunities to both private and public sectors in the development of the aircraft, three consortia are expected to receive Request for Proposal (RPF) from the defence ministry next month.
The bidders for the programme include Tata Advanced Systems Limited, which is bidding as an independent entity, a Larsen & Toubro–Bharat Electronics Limited-led consortium, and a consortium led by Bharat Forge along with BEML and Data Patterns.
Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh, while speaking at a session on 'Geostrategy, Supply Chains and Strategic Resilience' during the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Annual Business Summit 2026, said, "We have ended up in the AMCA shortlisting process with three private sector-led consortia. Two of them are a happy blend of private and public, one is entirely private, and hopefully they will receive RFPs in the next month or so."
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He said with this, India would, hopefully, end up with an additional production line alongside what state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) already has, creating the kind of healthy combination the country needs to build its aerospace industry at scale.
The defence ministry had said under the execution model, the companies can bid either independently or as a joint venture or as a consortium. The entity/bidder should be an Indian company compliant with the laws and regulations of the country.
HAL is out of the race to develop AMCA as the DPSU is already involved in several big-ticket projects, including LCA Tejas.
