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Chandigarh: For decades, India’s military aviation establishment has been burdened by a critical and enduring existential handicap: it could design a combat aircraft, but not develop its engine.

Yet, rather remarkably, in recent months, it has begun to confront the opposite conundrum: a potential embarrassment of “engine riches” for its most ambitious indigenous 5th-generation Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) programme, being jointly pursued by the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA), the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL).

This apparent engine abundance, however, comes with a paradoxical caveat: the more propulsion options emerge, the less certain the AMCA’s actual powerplant appears. In reality, only one of these alternatives is currently a functioning engine, and even that remains clouded by uncertainty over its price, technology transfer and local manufacture. The other three exist variously as proposals, negotiations or distant possibilities.

F414, despite its selection, remains far from a settled proposition

The curious – and potentially absurd – part is how India’s military-aerospace establishment has arrived at this quixotic state of affairs.

At the heart of the AMCA’s propulsion conundrum is the US General Electric (GE) F414-IN-S6 engine, already selected for the fifth-generation fighter’s Mk1 prototypes and, potentially, the first two squadrons or even possibly more of its initial Mk1 production variant. Yet the F414, despite its selection, remains far from a settled proposition, with its eventual place in the AMCA programme still uncertain, bedevilled by cost, intellectual-property issues and related issues.

This uncertainty is further exacerbated by parallel negotiations over the F414 itself

One strand involves HAL and GE working towards local manufacture of the engine under the much-publicised June 2023 understanding announced during prime minister Narendra Modi’s US visit. The other involves the ADA and DRDO seeking imported F414s for the AMCA prototypes and limited series models. The latter has become particularly contentious, with reports that the engine’s estimated price has risen from around Rs 70-80 crore to more than Rs 200 crore apiece – almost three times the earlier figure – while the broader arrangements for local F-414 production remain under discussion.

Consequently, there is considerable speculation within the........

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