It is useful because it tells what kind of thinking leads to short-sighted decisions.
IMHO, here, India's stupidity in managing inventory is main issue. F404 did not have any domestic customers left in USA. India should have placed order to stock pile them as producing those engines was not a priority for GE. This was possible as early as 2014 when FOC was at hand.
Second point, US has a habit of taking money and not supplying goods. It has happened fairly often. So putting money in such a vendor's hand is stupidity.
I don't think so. India should even now go for a variant powered by a non-American engine. It will not take 30-40 years for that to mature. At worst 2-3 years. It will give India flexibility. And India is going to produce this fighter all the way till late 2030s anyway.
Not to mention, starting such effort will put a lot more pressure on GE. Infact, from now on, ALL the platforms should be moved away from American engines or atleast variants not having American engines should be invested in.
China had gone through an analogous phase when its own planes did not have a quality Chinese engines. J-20 has shuffled a few engines, including Russian ones. It is not impossible to manage variants.
