India’s Next Indigenous Fighter Jet Expected To Make Its First Flight By 2032

India’s next indigenous fighter jet, the Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA), is likely to fly for the first time by 2032, The Hindu has reported.

The fighter, a fifth-generation aircraft, will have stealth features. This means that the fighter will have a low radar cross-section, making it difficult for the enemy to spot it. Instead of material stealth, which involves using materials which absorb radar waves to reduce cross-section, India is using the geometric stealth. In this approach, the shape of the aircraft is such that it has minimum radar footprint.

“The AMCA will initially be based on geometric stealth, we can look at material stealth at a later stage,” the daily quoted a source as saying.

The report says that the Indian Air Force has provided land to the Defence Research and Development Organisation to set up facilities for the project.

The agencies involved in the project will be using various technologies and expertise developed while working on the Light Combat Aircraft.

“Apart from the technologies developed from the LCA project, the new fighter programme is important as technologies coming in through that will flow into the AMCA project,” another official source said.

While the fighter jet will initially fly with two General Electric-414 engines, indigenous engines can be installed later.

The agencies have frozen the basic design after wind tunnel testing. They will now be working on three critical technologies that need to be developed for the jet -- stealth, thrust vectoring and super cruise.

China has already developed and pushed into service its stealth fighter.