Boost To India’s Stealth Fighter Jet Programme: Defence Ministry To Seek CCS Nod For Developing AMCA Prototype

The development of indigenous Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA) for the Indian Air Force (IAF) is getting closer to realisation as the Ministry of Defence (MoD) led by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh is set to seek the nod of the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) for development of prototype and detailed design of the much talked about Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA), reports Times of India.

Under the AMCA project, the aim is to build an indigenous twin-engine FGFA with advanced stealth and supercruise abilities, capabilities to perform data fusion and multi-sensor integration with the Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radars. The project is to be led by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).

The costly and complex project gains major significance as currently, there are only two true fully-operational FGFAs around - the FA-22 Raptor and the F-35 Lightning-II - which are both owned by the United States of America (USA).

It should be noted that the other fighter jets which claim to be FGFAs - The Chinese J-20 and the Russian Sukhoi PAK-FA - do not have the requisite supercruise ability and the required stealth capability as offered by the counterparts from the USA.