Nilgiri
INT'L MOD
In my view, the issue isn't HAL, but GE. The Tejas production rate bottleneck is the GE engine supply. India can produce as many Tejas aircraft as it receives engines, but definitely no more than that. Even if India had a production line capacity of 100 jets per year, they couldn't produce more than the number of jet engines they receive. The only options are to engage GE and force them to go out of their way to supply more engines, or to develop the Tejas with an alternate engine like the RD-33, M88, or EJ200, and have the Tejas with two different engines. This can be achieved by leveraging GE's interest, perhaps by offering to purchase more engines for the next order of 97 Tejas Mk1A aircraft if they can give reliable guarantee to supply all engine as per indian timelines, or by simply developing those 97 jets with a different engine.
Yes that's what I meant by chokepoint.
The hypotheticals are 20/20 regd other powerplants (and I have long thought things go lot better if India aligned the Tejas ecosystem with the mirage one incl the powerplant "inside out" from the 80s itself), but we can now only work with the reality we have.
Anyway if GE does deliver 12 F404 this year, there is a higher likelihood of 24 deliveries the next year. So it will be interesting to see if 12 are indeed delivered this year.


