In a major fillip to Make in India, the Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) on Wednesday approved a proposal worth over `38,000 crore for procurement of 83 indigenously designed and manufactured Tejas light combat aircraft (LCA) for the Indian Air Force (IAF). The aircraft are manufactured by the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL).
The DAC chaired by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has given the nod for the acquisition, but the final clearance will come from the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The DAC is the apex body for approving the acquisition proposals of the armed forces.
Incidentally, the DAC meeting held on Wednesday was the first one since the separation of duties between Department of Defence (DoD) and Department of Military Affairs (DMA) following the creation of Chief of Defence Staff in January this year.
The HAL which will produce the upgraded version of the fighter jet has already inked a deal for supplying 40 Tejas and the IAF has already inducted one squadron (18-20) jets.
Designed by Aircraft Development Agency (ADA) under the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and manufactured by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), Tejas will be the backbone of IAF in future.
While orders of 40 Tejas aircraft were earlier with the HAL in initial configurations, the DAC on Wednesday paved the way for procurement of 83 of the more advanced Mk1A version of the aircraft from HAL by finalising the contractual and other issues.
This procurement will be a major boost to ‘Make in India’ as the aircraft is indigenously designed, developed and manufactured with participation of several local vendors apart from the HAL.
The DAC had given initial clearance for the 83 LCA-Mk1A aircraft in November 2016 and the IAF issued the Request For Proposal (RFP) in December 2017. However, negotiations have been stuck due to the steep price quoted by HAL which the IAF had said was more than the price of a Su-30MKI.
The 83 jets are in addition to the 40 LCA already ordered by the IAF in two batches of 20 each in the Initial Operational Clearance (IOC) and Final Operational Clearance (FOC) configurations.
Officials said approval was also accorded for acquisition of indigenous Defence equipment for about Rs 1,300 crore. The proposals were for procurement of Aerial Fuses and Twin-Dome Simulators for Hawk Mk32 aircraft for the Indian Air Force.
