The Tejas Crisis: Inside the Mk1A Production Slippages
The Tejas Crisis examines why the Mk1A programme fell years behind schedule despite massive investment and expanded production capacity. From GE F404 engine delays and HAL’s missed delivery promises to sensor integration, Uttam’s deferral and IAF squadron shortages, the article examines what went wrong, and what must change to deliver all 180 fighters by 2032.
DEFENCE NEWS
The Tejas Mk1A crisis is not a design failure. It is a production, contracting and accountability failure. India signed for 83 aircraft in February 2021 and for another 97 in September 2025. As of late August 2026, the Indian Air Force has received zero Mk1A fighters. The first jet was due in February–March 2024. That date is now more than two and a half years behind. Airframes exist. Engines arrived late and in dribs. Software and Air Staff Qualitative Requirements still sit between “ready” and “accepted.” The IAF is flying with 29–31 fighter squadrons against a sanctioned 42. That is the story.
The contract that was treated as a press release
On 13 January 2021 the Cabinet Committee on Security cleared 73 Mk1A fighters and 10 trainers. On 3 February 2021 the Ministry of Defence handed HAL a contract of nearly ₹48,000 crore. The delivery clause was explicit: first three aircraft in the third year, then 16 a year, all 83 inside eight years. First handover was therefore February–March 2024. The first production aircraft, LA5033, only flew on 28 March 2024. It did not fly with a contracted production engine. It did not go to a squadron.
MoD then compounded the Challenge. In September 2025, while the first aircraft was still undelivered, it signed a second contract for 97 Mk1A jets-68 fighters and 29 trainers, worth ₹62,370 crore. Deliveries on that order start only in FY2027–28 and run six years. India now has 180 jets on paper and none of the new variant in service. Signing a second mega-order before proving the first was industrial optimism dressed as policy. A ministry that cannot enforce year-three delivery on a flagship “Buy Indian-IDDM” contract has no business announcing year-eight completion of 180 airframes.
GE restarted a dead line. HAL sold a live schedule.
HAL ordered 99 GE F404-IN20 engines in 2021. GE had shut the IN20 line after earlier Tejas work. Restart plus post-pandemic supply chains produced a two-year hole. The first engine arrived on 25–26 March 2025, about two years late. Five engines were in hand by early 2026, six by April, seven by mid-July. One of those had a post-delivery snag and had to be cleared again. GE had talked of 12 engines in FY2025–26; it delivered six. Talk of 20–22 more by December 2026 remains a forecast, not a crate count.
HAL’s problem is not only GE. It is the habit of announcing numbers the factory cannot meet. In May 2024 the then CMD said 16 Mk1As in FY2024–25 and a rise from 16 to 24 a year. In February 2025 HAL said 12 by year-end. In May 2025 it said GE’s problems were over and 12 engines by December. FY2025 ended with no induction. In February 2026 five jets were “fully ready”; nine more had flown and waited for engines. IAF Chief Air Chief Marshal A.P. Singh had already said at Aero India 2025 that he had been promised 11 aircraft ready by February and that not one was. He said he had “no confidence in HAL.” That was not rhetoric. It was a customer describing a vendor that treats guidance as marketing.
An airframe without its production engine is inventory, not a fighter. HAL built faster than the critical imported item arrived. That is a planning failure, not fate. A serious integrator holds 12–18 months of strategic stock on flight-critical foreign parts before it ramps a line. HAL did not.
Integrating the Fighter’s Systems Is Real Challenge
Mk1A is not Mk1 with a sticker. It needs AESA radar, a new electronic-warfare suite, upgraded mission computing, smart displays, a new Digital Flight Control Computer and a weapons set that includes Astra and ASRAAM. The DFCC was flight-tested in 2024. Weapons trials have been claimed complete. Certification and IAF acceptance have not.
ADA and DRDO develop subsystems. HAL integrates. CEMILAC certifies. The IAF writes ASQRs and decides what is combat-capable. That chain has no single owner with a stopwatch. Concurrent design during serial build is how programmes slip. When radar software, EW behaviour, mission computer and weapons envelopes are still iterating in 2025–26, every late change multiplies flight-test and clearance work. HAL has asked for relaxations so it can hand over jets with “major” contracted capabilities and close gaps later. The IAF has signalled it will take aircraft if they are combat-capable and the rest is contractually time-bound. That is a customer lowering the bar because the alternative is empty hangars. It is not a success.
MoD’s response, as of the June 2026 review chaired by the Defence Minister, is to talk about penalties and another review in three months. Liquidated damages after a two-year miss are not programme management. They are bookkeeping.
Uttam Was Kept for Later: What It Means for India’s Indigenous Radar
The first 83 aircraft will keep the Israeli EL/M-2052 AESA and associated ELTA EW architecture, built in India under ToT. Uttam and the indigenous Swayam Raksha Kavach suite are locked to the second order of 97, where indigenous content is advertised above 64 percent. Earlier talk of Uttam from aircraft 41 of the first batch is dead.
The operational case for not swapping radars mid-line is real: late sensor change means another integration, weapons and certification cycle. The industrial case is ugly. India spent years on LRDE’s Uttam. It then structured the urgent order so that software control, configuration changes and a slice of combat identity sit with a foreign OEM for the entire first fleet. That is not “Israeli radar is bad.” It is India choosing delivery risk reduction by parking its own sensor programme in the second tranche. ADA and DRDO own the readiness gap that made that choice look rational. HAL and MoD own the decision to live with a split fleet—ELTA jets now, Uttam jets later—without an ironclad retrofit path.
The IAF is already paying in squadrons
Sanctioned strength is 42 fighter squadrons. Actual strength in 2025–26 is 29–31, the lowest in decades. The last MiG-21 Bison units retired in September 2025. Jaguar, Mirage 2000 and MiG-29 fleets are ageing into the 2030s. Mk1A was the only programme that could put large numbers of new fighters on the ramp this decade. It has put none.
Parliament and the service have said the shortfall hurts preparedness. ACM Singh’s public loss of confidence in HAL was the service stating that the vendor’s clock is not the war clock. The IAF is not blameless if late ASQR changes and incomplete-acceptance fights added months. It is entitled to refuse a jet that cannot fight. It is not entitled to a system in which MoD, HAL, ADA and CEMILAC can miss a contracted year-three delivery and still sign year-seven promises.
The Road to 180 Tejas Mk1A Fighters
The Tejas Mk1A programme still has a credible path forward. HAL now has three active production lines, including Nashik, with a combined stated capacity of 24 aircraft annually. Around 30 Mk1A airframes are already at different stages of completion, including seven with engines. If GE increases output and achieves its promised 30+ F404 engines annually from 2027, the existing backlog can begin converting into actual deliveries. Alongside this, the second 97-aircraft order introduces Uttam AESA radar and Swayam Raksha Kavach into the production configuration. Under these conditions, completing all 180 aircraft by FY2032–33 remains achievable.
The priority now is execution: stabilise the production configuration, close remaining certification and integration issues, maintain sufficient stocks of critical imported components, and ensure that HAL's three lines are continuously supplied. Private industry should also be used to strengthen critical sub-systems and reduce single-source dependencies.
Tejas has already demonstrated India's ability to design and manufacture a modern indigenous fighter. The next test is consistent serial production and timely acceptance. HAL, ADA, DRDO, CEMILAC and the IAF need to work to a stable configuration with clearly assigned responsibility for the critical path.
The 2032–33 target is achievable. The challenge is no longer proving that Tejas can be built, but ensuring that engines, systems, certification and production move together fast enough to put 180 fighters into IAF service.