While Indian Air Force is a reluctant participator in Indian indigenous fighter aircraft research and development and which has killed past efforts in favor of imports, its Chief of Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal F H Major calls for a technology roadmap by the government for the aerospace industry and a greater role by the private sector in defence design and development to help the Indian aerospace industry become a major player in the global market.

He was speaking at the two-day 2nd International Conference on “Energising Indian Aerospace Industry: New Partnership, New Opportunities,” organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in partnership with Society for Aerospace Studies, Centre for Airpower Studies and Indian Air Force.

Marshal of the Indian Air Force, Arjan Singh, in his presidential remarks, said India lagged behind in designing aircraft and urged both the private and public sector to use all production resources to overcome this challenge. He said India has a lot of catching up to do with the advanced countries in terms of technology in the aerospace industry.

Air Commodore Jasjit Singh, Director, Centre for Air Power Studies, called for creating new partnerships and strengthening old ties in the manufacturing sector to help India leverage on the opportunites that the global market was throwing up. He said in the new global balance of interest, India was uniquely placed, and had a pivotal role to play. Air Commodore Singh suggested organizing specialized workshops to address the problems faced by the Indian aerospace industry.

It may be recalled that Indian Air force preferred importing aircrafts rather than sustained development of HF-24 Marut aircraft. Indian Air Force opted for Jaguar Aircraft while rejecting HF-73 design and did not pursue the development, thus killing the fledgling Indian aircraft development. Today IAF wants to import aircrafts which have undergone sustained development for almost 30 years. F-16′s, F-18′s, MiG-29′ etc have been around since 1970′s.

While India government nationalized fledgling aerospace companies, IAF drove nail in aerospace development coffin. Major aerospace developing countries have benefited by spin offs from defence aerospace development. Its fortunate that the Department of Space did not have Indian Air Force as customers. IAF waited for 20 years to import an trainer aircraft while killing a number of its pilots.

While it sets high standards in Air Staff Requirement for the Light Combat Aircraft – Tejas project, it is high time that it sets high standards for its own performance.