NEW DELHI: India’s defence minister has approved a framework for building the country’s most advanced stealth fighter jet, the defence ministry said on Tuesday, amid a new arms race with Pakistan weeks after a military conflict between the neighbours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Indian state-run Aeronautical Development Agency, which is executing the programme, will shortly invite initial interest from defence firms for developing a prototype of the warplane, envisaged as a twin-engine 5th generation fighter, the ministry said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The project is crucial for the Indian Air Force (IAF), whose squadrons of mainly Russian and ex-Soviet aircraft have fallen to 31 from an approved strength of 42 at a time when rival China is expanding its air force rapidly. Pakistan has one of China’s most advanced warplanes, the J-10, in its arsenal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Militaries of nuclear-armed neighbours India and Pakistan faced off in four days of fighting earlier this month, which saw the use of fighter jets, missiles, drones and artillery by both sides before a ceasefire was announced by US President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was the first time both sides utilised drones at scale and the South Asian powers are now locked in a drone arms race, according to Reuters<\/em>‘ interviews with 15 people, including security officials, industry executives and analysts in the two countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is pertinent to note that the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) shot down six IAF fighter jets, including three Rafales, one Su30MKI and one MIG-29 Fulcrum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n India will partner with a domestic firm for the stealth fighter programme, and companies can bid independently or as a joint venture, the defence ministry said in a statement, adding that the bids would be open for both private and state-owned firms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In March, an Indian defence committee had recommended including the private sector in military aircraft manufacturing to shore up the capabilities of the Indian Air Force and reduce the burden on state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd, which makes most of India’s military aircraft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Air Chief Marshal Amar Preet Singh has previously criticised Hindustan Aeronautics for slow delivery of light combat Tejas aircraft, a 4.5 generation fighter, which the firm blamed on slow delivery of engines from General Electric due to supply chain issues faced by the US firm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NEW DELHI: India’s defence minister has approved a framework for building the country’s most advanced stealth fighter jet, the defence ministry said on Tuesday, amid a new arms race with Pakistan weeks after a military conflict between the neighbours. Indian state-run Aeronautical Development Agency, which is executing the programme, will shortly invite initial interest from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5813,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","inline_featured_image":false,"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_3859443944190656_798604363342440":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5812"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5814,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5812\/revisions\/5814"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}