India's Privatisation Push: Tata Advanced Systems & 2 Others In Race To Build 5th Gen Stealth Jet

The Defence Ministry has issued the Request for Proposal (RPF) for the indigenous fifth generation Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (ACMA) project to three shortlisted private bidders including Tata Advanced Systems.

This also marks the first time in India when the state-led Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) has been kept out of the race, while private bidders such as Larsen and Toubro-Bharat Electronics Limited, and a Bharat Forge-BEML-led consortium have been selected.

The winning bidder will become part of this Rs 15,000 crore project and create five prototypes of the ACMA at a Greenfield facility in Andhra Pradesh.

This project was cleared by the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) aimed at designing and developing the indigenous multirole fighter jets.

In May last year, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh gave green light to this programme execution model for AMCA, under which HAL had to bid independently or in partnership with other firms to get the contract for manufacturing the aircraft.

This had marked a deviation from the past when such projects would be handed over directly to HAL.

The Defence Ministry had then said that the execution model approach provides equal opportunities to both private and public sectors on a competitive basis.

The AMCA is expected to be a 25-tonne twin-engine aircraft with advanced stealth features, which means it can avoid getting detected by enemy radars.

This would mean the aircraft would emit a low electromagnetic signature which enemy radars would not be able to detect, but at the same time have advanced sensors and weapons to detect and take down enemy aircraft.

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The aircraft will have an internal fuel tank with 6.5 tonnes capacity. It will also have an internal weapons bay in its belly for a range of weapons — including indigenous ones.

According to plans, the AMCA Mk1 will fly on the existing 90kN class engine (GE 414 engines from the US), and AMCA Mk2 will be powered by a stronger engine to be developed indigenously by GTRE in collaboration with a foreign defence major.