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Chandigarh: No detailed analysis or elaborate think-tank evaluation is needed to see that the Indian Air Force (IAF) presently faces a grave and increasingly intractable crisis in fighter numbers and operational capability. Even a cursory, back-of-the-envelope evaluation indicates that its predicament is far more serious than the repeatedly cited shortfall suggests.

The IAF’s enduring dearth of fighter squadrons – currently 29, comprising around 560 aircraft, against a sanctioned strength of 42 squadrons, or roughly 850 platforms – has been iterated so often, that it is hardly news anymore. Nor is the prospect of these depleted numbers shrinking further, as six squadrons of 120-odd legacy SEPECAT Anglo-French Jaguars, dating back to the 1970s, and three upgraded MiG-29 squadrons of around 65 aircraft from the late 1980’s were up for imminent retirement.

But what deserves serious attention is how amateurishly and unimaginatively the world’s fourth-largest and combat-hardened force, blooded in several regional wars, is attempting to make good this numerical and capability deficit. Rather than pursuing a coherent, time-bound plan to arrest the decline in fighter numbers and narrow, or even eclipse, the widening technological gap with its two neighbouring adversaries, its response is little more than a patchwork of long-delayed indigenous programmes and hugely expensive foreign acquisitions.

Inbuilt into this is an extraordinary and increasingly problematic dependence on overseas propulsion for the atmanirbhar, or indigenous, fighters that are slated to constitute the backbone of the IAF’s future combat fleet. More troublingly, the competence of some of these aircraft has itself been questioned by senior IAF officers, especially that of the proposed 4.5-generation Tejas Mk2.

‘Operationally unsuitable’

Air Marshal Nagesh Kapoor, the IAF’s recently retired Vice Chief of Staff, declared in an NDTV interview late last month that the MK2 fighter would be “operationally” unsuitable by the time it entered service in significant numbers, in the mid-2030s. He subsequently qualified his remarks, saying the Mk2 could still perform a “non-cutting-edge role”, but was unlikely to provide the IAF with the frontline capability required against adversaries fielding fifth-generation fighters.

It is precisely such a prospect of an inadequate indigenous fighter arriving late that makes the IAF’s predicament, viewed in its entirety, particularly alarming. Hence, the issue no longer remains simply whether the IAF can field enough aircraft, but whether these will remain relevant to possible wars on both its western and northern fronts.

China’s People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) presently fields some 350-odd J-20 5th-generation fighters and limited numbers of the smaller, but analogous J-35As. Open-source satellite imagery revealed in July 2026 at least 12 J-20s deployed at two bases in Tibet-facing India. Alongside, China is also developing and flight-testing two sixth-generation fighter prototypes-the larger Chengdu J-36 and the smaller Shenyang design widely referred to by analysts as the J-50 or J-XD-underlining the rapid pace at which the PLAAF is progressing.

The Pakistan Air Force (PAF), for its part, currently operates around 20 Chinese J-10CE 4.5-generation fighters, with a further 16 on order, giving it a planned fleet of 36 such aircraft. Armed with the long-range PL-15 air-to-air missiles, these provide the PAF with a significant beyond-visual-range combat capability that effectively manifested itself during Operation Sindoor last year. The PAF is also preparing to induct up to 40 J-35AEs, the export version of this Chinese stealth fighter, with its pilots currently undergoing instruction on it in China. According to Western military analysts, the first J-35AEs are expected to begin arriving in Pakistan by the year-end.

It was against such a combined threat, posed by these two collusive adversaries, and the prospect of having to fight them simultaneously, that the IAF’s 42-squadron requirement took shape sometime in the 1980s, though its hazy and somewhat nebulous origins date back further. But this number has remained essentially frozen, repeatedly echoed by officials,........

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