# Inside Ukraine’s Wild Drone Strike on Russia | Ft. Sandeep Unnithan | IOD S3 Ep 9

An episode of [In Our Defence](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1617244439), 9 Jun 2025, 55 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/66417239/09_jun_25_iod_9_june_128.mp3

In this episode of In Our Defence, veteran defence journalist Sandeep Unnithan joins host Dev Goswami to break down Ukraine’s daring drone strike deep inside Russian territory — an operation that has stunned the world. Using covertly disguised container trucks and remotely launched drones, Ukraine struck key Russian airbases housing Tu-95 bombers and A-50 AWACS, marking a significant escalation in the four-year-old war. Produced by Prateek Lidhoo Sound mix by Aman Pal

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: This is India Today Podcasts.
[0:05] Speaker 2: Welcome to Season three of Another Defense, the podcast that
[0:08] Speaker 2: takes you inside the world of conflict. I'm your host,
[0:12] Speaker 2: Deve Goswami, and every week I sit down with experts
[0:15] Speaker 2: and retired officers from the Army, Navy and Air Force
[0:19] Speaker 2: to decode all things to do with India security and
[0:22] Speaker 2: explore what it truly means to serve. Get ready for
[0:26] Speaker 2: stories of strategy, sacrifice and strength. This is in our Defense.
[0:34] Speaker 2: Welcome to Another Defense. This week, India's quest to design
[0:39] Speaker 2: and develop its own true blue Indian fifth generation fighter
[0:42] Speaker 2: jet got a big push with the government clearing what's
[0:46] Speaker 2: what they call the execution model. The way I see it,
[0:49] Speaker 2: that's just a term I think they use to sort
[0:51] Speaker 2: of say that the roadmap of how this project will
[0:53] Speaker 2: now go forward in terms of who will be involved
[0:58] Speaker 2: for designing and developing this fighter jet that has been
[1:01] Speaker 2: sort of cleared by Defense man Estrajna saying this clearance
[1:04] Speaker 2: comes around a year after the Cabinet Committee on Security
[1:07] Speaker 2: cleared Piece fifteen thousand core for this project. That money
[1:10] Speaker 2: will be used to design and develop. If I'm not wrong,
[1:12] Speaker 2: on five prototypes of what is not as the AMKA
[1:15] Speaker 2: the Advanced medium Combat Aircraft. Very, very crucially, the statement
[1:21] Speaker 2: on the execution model clearance sort of opened this project
[1:25] Speaker 2: up for the private sector, allowing the private sector to
[1:29] Speaker 2: enter territory that was previously the sole domain of the
[1:33] Speaker 2: Hindustan Innats Limited, a state owned aerospace company. So why
[1:39] Speaker 2: is this such a big deal? What is the AMCA?
[1:42] Speaker 2: Can the AMCA even see the light of day without
[1:45] Speaker 2: India being able to develop its own fighter jet engine.
[1:48] Speaker 2: We're going to be discussing this and a lot more
[1:50] Speaker 2: on this episode, and for that I have Sandy punitan Hi.
[1:54] Speaker 1: Thanks for being with me, Hi there, thanks for having
[1:56] Speaker 1: me back.
[1:57] Speaker 2: Sandy, before we begin, tell me if I, if I,
[2:00] Speaker 2: if I would be wrong to say that the length
[2:04] Speaker 2: of your career has sort of spanned the exact time
[2:08] Speaker 2: in India's quest to develop its own fighter jet, not
[2:11] Speaker 2: the Amkar per, but whether it's Ages Mark one A
[2:15] Speaker 2: and so on and so forth. So you probably have
[2:17] Speaker 2: seen this from maybe the time you started off as
[2:20] Speaker 2: an intern somewhere to now where you've finished around thirty
[2:24] Speaker 2: years covering the world of defense, and you've seen this project.
[2:27] Speaker 3: That's an interesting way to frame that question today. But
[2:31] Speaker 3: you know, it is. You know, aviation is a very,
[2:34] Speaker 3: very time intensive business, and it's taken the rest of
[2:39] Speaker 3: the Western world decades to reach where they are today
[2:43] Speaker 3: in the way they've designed their own engines and they're
[2:46] Speaker 3: making their fifth and even sixth generation fighter aircraft. In
[2:50] Speaker 3: our case, we began this journey well in the sixties
[2:52] Speaker 3: with the marut which we abandoned in the seventies because
[2:55] Speaker 3: of the engine worries, and then we restarted that, we
[3:00] Speaker 3: rebooted the program. I would say that with the light
[3:02] Speaker 3: combat aircraft in nineteen eighty three, but yeah, you're right.
[3:05] Speaker 3: So it's around the time that I entered journalism, which
[3:08] Speaker 3: was in the nineties, the light combat aircraft started to
[3:11] Speaker 3: get developed, and you saw the first glimmer of hope
[3:16] Speaker 3: when finally, in two thousand and one, the LCA finally flew.
[3:20] Speaker 3: But that's you know, it's more than twenty five years
[3:22] Speaker 3: now the LCAs entered squad in service, and the Mark
[3:26] Speaker 3: one A hopefully should be entering the Air force in
[3:29] Speaker 3: large numbers.
[3:32] Speaker 2: Before we get into the anchor and why this statement
[3:35] Speaker 2: on the execution models so significant, I want to actually
[3:38] Speaker 2: first get you to decode this generation confusion that I
[3:44] Speaker 2: have it's like, you know, understanding Gen Alpha, Gen Z millennials.
[3:49] Speaker 2: It's sort of like that for me when you have
[3:50] Speaker 2: Generation four, Generation four point five, Generation five. And very interestingly,
[3:54] Speaker 2: by the event, this is something that missed my RADA
[3:57] Speaker 2: in February when a full skilled display model of the
[4:00] Speaker 2: AMCA was put up at the Aero India. Sure, there
[4:02] Speaker 2: was a PIB press release on that in which they
[4:05] Speaker 2: called it five point five. So I want to understand,
[4:08] Speaker 2: what are these different aircraft generations? Yeah, and how do
[4:11] Speaker 2: you end up putting a particular aircraft in one particular slot.
[4:15] Speaker 3: Well, yeah, interesting question they've you know, given the fact
[4:17] Speaker 3: that you're talking about a fifth generation fighter aircraft. Now,
[4:20] Speaker 3: these generations are used to refer to fighter jets, which
[4:24] Speaker 3: began to be introduced beginning in the closing stages of
[4:28] Speaker 3: the Second World War. That is when you saw the
[4:30] Speaker 3: first first generation fighter jets entering squad in service, the
[4:36] Speaker 3: two two Schwalb that the Germans produced, and of course
[4:41] Speaker 3: the Gloucester Meteor. These are the first two fighter jets
[4:44] Speaker 3: to enter squad in service. And then you had the
[4:47] Speaker 3: Vietnam War, well south the Korean War before that in
[4:51] Speaker 3: the fifties, where you had the first fighter jets actually
[4:54] Speaker 3: that you know, dueled in the skies over Korea, where
[4:58] Speaker 3: you had the Meek fifteens, and then later the seventeens
[5:00] Speaker 3: and you had the F eighty six saber jets.
[5:03] Speaker 1: Those were the second generation of fighter jets.
[5:06] Speaker 3: Vietnam War you saw possibly the third generation of fighter jets,
[5:09] Speaker 3: which were bigger, which had more combat endurance, you know,
[5:14] Speaker 3: larger payloads. And this continued till the seventies when you
[5:18] Speaker 3: saw what you have today in most air forces of
[5:21] Speaker 3: the world. I mean, we of course operate some third
[5:24] Speaker 3: generation modified aircraft the mid twenty ones. It's probably one
[5:27] Speaker 3: of the last of those air forces operating the mid
[5:30] Speaker 3: twenty ones. But then you had in the seventies the
[5:32] Speaker 3: fourth generation fighter aircraft coming in, which was primarily the
[5:35] Speaker 3: F fourteens, F fifteenths, the Sukhoi twenty sevens, the mid
[5:39] Speaker 3: twenty nines. These are all fourth generation aircraft. But somewhere
[5:42] Speaker 3: in the late nineties you began this a lot of
[5:46] Speaker 3: countries started going towards what is called the fifth generation
[5:49] Speaker 3: fighter aircrafts, which is basically a generation jump over the
[5:53] Speaker 3: fourth generation. So if you look at the third and
[5:55] Speaker 3: fourth generations, aircraft didn't have very big app between them,
[6:01] Speaker 3: but in terms of capabilities and whether it's ordnance capability.
[6:05] Speaker 1: Stealth, now, stealth was very important.
[6:07] Speaker 3: That was the X factor in all of these fifth
[6:10] Speaker 3: generation aircraft that started to be developed in the late
[6:13] Speaker 3: nineties on.
[6:14] Speaker 1: And the United.
[6:15] Speaker 3: States of course, was way ahead of the curve when
[6:17] Speaker 3: they developed two fifth generation aircraft F twenty two and
[6:20] Speaker 3: the F thirty five, and of course the Russians followed suit,
[6:23] Speaker 3: but the Chinese caught up rather quickly. So you have
[6:26] Speaker 3: fifth generation aircraft which have stealth is the most important characteristic,
[6:32] Speaker 3: and you have supercrews, which is the ability to fly
[6:36] Speaker 3: at extended supersonic speeds without firing your after burners, and
[6:40] Speaker 3: a whole lot of other capabilities like sense of fusion
[6:43] Speaker 3: and those kinds of things, very advanced electronics and communications
[6:47] Speaker 3: and data links and all of that. So it's primarily
[6:49] Speaker 3: the United States that's way ahead of the world in
[6:52] Speaker 3: fifth generation fighters. The Chinese are catching up. They have
[6:56] Speaker 3: two fifth generation fighter aircraft in squad and and they
[7:00] Speaker 3: have a sixth generation working on two sixth generation prototypes
[7:05] Speaker 3: as well. The Russians have, you know, been a little
[7:08] Speaker 3: slope because of primarily resource constraints, technology constraints. They've built
[7:15] Speaker 3: a SOO fifty seven, which a lot of people argue
[7:17] Speaker 3: is not a true fifth generation fighter aircraft. It has
[7:20] Speaker 3: certain limitations. But we have been in the game. They've
[7:24] Speaker 3: from around two thousand and eight or nine when we
[7:27] Speaker 3: began the quest for a fifth generation fighter aircraft, the AMCA,
[7:30] Speaker 3: which you mentioned, the Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft program, which
[7:34] Speaker 3: is still we've only seen a prototype. We've only seen,
[7:39] Speaker 3: you know, a model model, a scale model. We yet
[7:42] Speaker 3: to see a prototype, I must clarify, and we are
[7:45] Speaker 3: in twenty twenty five. We're still a decade away from
[7:48] Speaker 3: getting these planes into service. So it's a dream. It's
[7:53] Speaker 3: been in the pipeline for very long. And you know,
[7:57] Speaker 3: we are wrestling with a lot of issues there, I
[7:59] Speaker 3: mean numbers. We are yet to even get Gen four
[8:04] Speaker 3: and Gen four point five fighter jets. So the fifth
[8:07] Speaker 3: generation is a is a little way down the line.
[8:10] Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's bet on the line, but it's happening,
[8:14] Speaker 2: and I think India is solidly behind the idea that
[8:18] Speaker 2: it's gonna at at some point end up developing its
[8:22] Speaker 2: own filed geration fighter jet. And it does not does
[8:24] Speaker 2: not want to depend on foreign supplies for obvious reasons.
[8:30] Speaker 2: The very significant thing of the government statement that came
[8:33] Speaker 2: out a couple of days ago was that it did
[8:36] Speaker 2: not mention hindusan Unatics Limited even once.
[8:40] Speaker 1: Uh.
[8:40] Speaker 2: Now that's strange because in media headlines you can work
[8:44] Speaker 2: basic Google search, you will always see this term hal
[8:48] Speaker 2: And because it was always believed it was a given
[8:52] Speaker 2: kiban I got to h L and I'm guessing people
[8:55] Speaker 2: within the h also believe that, which is probably why
[8:59] Speaker 2: what is happening is happening. So the statement basically says
[9:02] Speaker 2: a consortion can come come together. It can be public companies,
[9:05] Speaker 2: it can be private companies. So basically Halsale has has
[9:08] Speaker 2: has a way in into this project. But what the
[9:11] Speaker 2: government is saying is that we will take it on merits.
[9:15] Speaker 2: Whoever since the best bid, whoever seems the most competent,
[9:18] Speaker 2: whoever gives the promises, the best timelines, and perhaps you
[9:21] Speaker 2: know is realistic enough in terms of what they're offering
[9:24] Speaker 2: and what they're proposing, they'll get the contract to design
[9:27] Speaker 2: and develop this tradition. Fighter chet, I want your overview
[9:32] Speaker 2: of how did we reach her, how long was it coming,
[9:36] Speaker 2: and whether what's happened in the last couple of years
[9:39] Speaker 2: with respect to delays of the Tanges Mark one a
[9:41] Speaker 2: UH and the grounding of the Droove helicopters after a
[9:45] Speaker 2: series of crashes that took place. In both cases, there
[9:50] Speaker 2: have been fingers pointed at HL Withdrew. There have been allegations,
[9:55] Speaker 2: very very very quiet though, that DHL was not very
[9:59] Speaker 2: receipt active to feedback from the Air Forces, that from
[10:02] Speaker 2: the forces that were using through helicopters in terms of
[10:05] Speaker 2: some technical issues that they felt the helicopters had and
[10:08] Speaker 2: with TAGES, even though HL said it was a supply
[10:10] Speaker 2: chain issue, there has been questions about what was hl's
[10:13] Speaker 2: role itself in terms of the delays to tages Mark
[10:15] Speaker 2: one name. The reason I say that and mentioned that
[10:18] Speaker 2: is just this morning before we recorded this Air Force
[10:21] Speaker 2: Chief Air Marshal thing, wasn't it at an event where
[10:24] Speaker 2: he gave a very nice quote where he said, once
[10:27] Speaker 2: a timeline is given. Sorry, he said, timeline is a
[10:30] Speaker 2: big issue. Not a single project that I can think
[10:33] Speaker 2: of has been completed on time. That's a huge statement.
[10:35] Speaker 2: And then he went on to say that at times
[10:38] Speaker 2: while signing the contract, we are sure it is not
[10:41] Speaker 2: going to come up on time. So yes, and the
[10:45] Speaker 2: your overview of how did we reach a point where
[10:48] Speaker 2: hl which so far thought keylting.
[10:54] Speaker 1: But absolutely they'll fight for it.
[10:58] Speaker 3: But but you know they if you didn't mention the
[11:00] Speaker 3: other fight, which is actually the Blackswone event in the
[11:04] Speaker 3: middle of all of this, which has operations Sindur. Yes,
[11:07] Speaker 3: and that is the blackswone event. That's actually I think
[11:11] Speaker 3: it's accelerated a whole lot of programs. It's changed mindsets
[11:15] Speaker 3: also in the government because you know, they finally you
[11:18] Speaker 3: have a political leadership that understands airpower and it's very
[11:23] Speaker 3: significant because you know, if you look at the way
[11:26] Speaker 3: airpar has been used since nineteen forty seven nineteen sixty two,
[11:30] Speaker 3: you had Prime Minister Nehru not authorizing the use of
[11:35] Speaker 3: airparer because he was afraid of escalating the conflict. Whereas
[11:39] Speaker 3: there are people who are arguing now with the benefit
[11:42] Speaker 3: of hindsight of course, that had the Indian Air Force
[11:44] Speaker 3: been deployed, then the outcome of the sixty two war
[11:48] Speaker 3: would have been entirely different. You know, we had a
[11:50] Speaker 3: far superior air force than the Chinese Air Force at
[11:52] Speaker 3: that time, which was their fighter jets, were grounded because
[11:55] Speaker 3: the Soviets had pulled out of their cooperation, so you
[11:59] Speaker 3: could have lost ground in nineteen sixty two. Now you
[12:02] Speaker 3: jump to seventy one, perfect textbook application of airpower, no questions,
[12:07] Speaker 3: no debates. You come to nineteen ninety nine, where again
[12:11] Speaker 3: the government of the day is very restrained in the
[12:14] Speaker 3: use of air power, where the Prime Minister says you
[12:17] Speaker 3: can use the air Force, but do not cross the
[12:20] Speaker 3: LC whereas the Air Force said, look, this is not
[12:23] Speaker 3: the way to use airpower. Air power means you have
[12:25] Speaker 3: to you cannot draw a line of control in the sky, right,
[12:29] Speaker 3: you have to go across the border. But now what
[12:31] Speaker 3: you're seeing in the last five years is a better
[12:34] Speaker 3: understanding of airpower with this government. Six years to be precise,
[12:37] Speaker 3: twenty nineteen when Balacote used I have fighter jets for
[12:41] Speaker 3: the first time crossing over into Pakistan, bombing one terror camp,
[12:45] Speaker 3: one mission, one target. And in twenty twenty five, of course,
[12:49] Speaker 3: operations in the multi phase multi level escalation where air
[12:54] Speaker 3: force is used as coersive airpower for the first time
[12:58] Speaker 3: since nineteen seventy one, and also prior to that, in
[13:01] Speaker 3: twenty twenty when China mobilizes opposite Ladakh, you have the
[13:05] Speaker 3: Indian Air Force going in right away, and I was
[13:07] Speaker 3: there on the ground.
[13:08] Speaker 1: I saw those fighter.
[13:08] Speaker 3: Jets landing in lay a big understanding of airpar on
[13:13] Speaker 3: the part of this government. So operations in there, I feel,
[13:17] Speaker 3: is that black swan event that will really reshape the
[13:20] Speaker 3: way airpower is understood, air assets are looked at, The
[13:26] Speaker 3: air force is going to be taken very, very seriously
[13:28] Speaker 3: from now, Not that it wasn't earlier, but now you've
[13:32] Speaker 3: actually seen a demonstration of airpower.
[13:34] Speaker 1: You've seen the way the.
[13:36] Speaker 3: IA fighter jets standoff attacks, precision strikes on eleven thirteen targets,
[13:42] Speaker 3: nine targets taken out on the first day of counter terrors.
[13:47] Speaker 3: You know, missions in conjunct with the Indian Army, of course,
[13:52] Speaker 3: but the tenth of may belonged entirely to the Indian
[13:54] Speaker 3: Air Force. So I think a lot of how the
[13:57] Speaker 3: government is going to react is going to be shaped
[13:59] Speaker 3: by the events of operations in and the fact that
[14:01] Speaker 3: the IF's requirement for fighter aircraft, for stealthy fighter aircraft
[14:06] Speaker 3: is going to be top priority now on. So while
[14:10] Speaker 3: earlier it was a given that HL would be the
[14:13] Speaker 3: default setting when it came to productionizing the AMCA. It's
[14:16] Speaker 3: no longer the case because there's been a considerable discussion
[14:21] Speaker 3: within the government and the points that you made a
[14:23] Speaker 3: Chief Marshall Apcing's criticism of the HL. There are other
[14:28] Speaker 3: service chiefs also who believe that HL has not been
[14:31] Speaker 3: delivering as promised. So there's a lot of angst within
[14:36] Speaker 3: the services among the service chiefs about hal's ability to
[14:40] Speaker 3: deliver as promised. So they're saying that, look, give the
[14:44] Speaker 3: private sector a chance, you know, bring them also on board,
[14:47] Speaker 3: create competition. You can't have a monopoly of aircraft production
[14:52] Speaker 3: and helicopter production. HL is loaded with work, you know,
[14:57] Speaker 3: they have multiple fighter jet programs to deliver on.
[15:01] Speaker 1: They have the LCA.
[15:02] Speaker 3: Mark one A, they have the Mark two and of
[15:06] Speaker 3: course many other helicopter programs as which so they have
[15:08] Speaker 3: a lot of orders. They're not short of orders. It's
[15:11] Speaker 3: not that you take the AMKA away from them, they're
[15:13] Speaker 3: going to stop functioning or they'll go into bankruptcy. They
[15:16] Speaker 3: have plenty of orders. There is an order for a
[15:19] Speaker 3: possible program for the Sukhoi thirty upgrades right, which is
[15:24] Speaker 3: something we should have started working on twenty years ago,
[15:26] Speaker 3: which we didn't, but that's possibly a discussion for another day.
[15:30] Speaker 3: But you know, here the services, in their wisdom, have
[15:34] Speaker 3: looked at different models. The government also has been looking
[15:37] Speaker 3: at different models, and I can only think of the
[15:40] Speaker 3: Advanced Technology Vessel, the nuclear submarine project, you know, everything
[15:45] Speaker 3: would have suggested that Mazagon Docs be given the contract
[15:50] Speaker 3: to build submarines because they were the only shipyard that
[15:52] Speaker 3: had the ability to be you know, build submarines at
[15:55] Speaker 3: that time, smaller subs. Of course, they had built two
[15:58] Speaker 3: German submarines, but the government brought in Larsen and two
[16:01] Speaker 3: bro as the main partner to actually fabricate the pressure
[16:04] Speaker 3: hulls of the nuclear submarines. And today you have four submarines.
[16:08] Speaker 3: If your four nuclear submarines over six thousand tons displacement
[16:12] Speaker 3: in the water to commission to be commissioned in the
[16:16] Speaker 3: next year or two. A huge program, possibly our most
[16:20] Speaker 3: complex defense programs platforms as well. So here you're looking
[16:24] Speaker 3: at the government possibly looking at another model like this one,
[16:28] Speaker 3: like the Arihan class, the ATV project, where you'll have
[16:31] Speaker 3: the private sector either working in competition with or in
[16:35] Speaker 3: cooperation with the public sector. Hall is not completely out
[16:39] Speaker 3: of the race. Right, they're still there, but it's not
[16:42] Speaker 3: a guarantee order for them. They will have to compete
[16:45] Speaker 3: with Larsen and two Bro, They'll have to compete with Tassel,
[16:49] Speaker 3: Tata Advanced Systems Limited, all of these private sector players,
[16:53] Speaker 3: and whoever gets gives the best bid wins. So it's
[16:57] Speaker 3: a sense of the government bringing in competition into the
[17:01] Speaker 3: aviation space military aviation space.
[17:03] Speaker 1: But of course the dice is heavily loaded in hl's favor.
[17:06] Speaker 3: Right, they have plant, machinery, train, manpower, all of that.
[17:11] Speaker 1: Right.
[17:12] Speaker 3: They have facilities in Marashrine in Bengaluru, of course, it's
[17:16] Speaker 3: in the news last couple of days, and of course
[17:19] Speaker 3: Cora put in Urisha where they make the fighter jet engine.
[17:22] Speaker 1: So you're looking at a behemoth. HL is a behemoth.
[17:26] Speaker 3: It's a public sector behemoth, of course, and you have
[17:29] Speaker 3: the private sector saying, hey, give us a chance. Tata's
[17:32] Speaker 3: has been building up very slowly over the last fifteen years.
[17:35] Speaker 3: They've started small, and today they're in a position where
[17:38] Speaker 3: they're you know, actually assembling major aircraft, transport aircraft, not
[17:42] Speaker 3: fighter jets, of course, but for them to make that
[17:44] Speaker 3: leap again, they will have to the government will have
[17:48] Speaker 3: to take that leap of faith with them whether TASEL
[17:51] Speaker 3: actually has hesit in them to deliver a fifth generation
[17:54] Speaker 3: fighter aircraft. So it's a very complicated program and you know,
[17:58] Speaker 3: as you mentioned, it's not so much about the technology,
[18:01] Speaker 3: it's about the model as well. While that statement from
[18:05] Speaker 3: the Defense Minister is welcome, we've still not got a
[18:09] Speaker 3: lot of clarity on how they're going to go about it.
[18:11] Speaker 3: For instance, who's going to allocate workshare if there is
[18:15] Speaker 3: a partnership if there is to say the government says, look,
[18:18] Speaker 3: we want HL to make the AMCA in partnership with TASSEL,
[18:22] Speaker 3: But then who decides the work allocation because the tatas
[18:25] Speaker 3: will say, look, I don't want to work with HL,
[18:27] Speaker 3: that that is a possibility, right, I want to have
[18:31] Speaker 3: this work share and you know so, and they will
[18:34] Speaker 3: not trust Defense Ministry because HL is a Defense Ministry child, right,
[18:38] Speaker 3: it's a child of the Department of Defense Production. So
[18:42] Speaker 3: there are arguments that they're very strong arguments being made
[18:47] Speaker 3: for the Nessays Office to be brought in, like the
[18:50] Speaker 3: National Security Council Secretary at NSCs should be the body
[18:54] Speaker 3: that will actually be a neutral judge who will decide
[18:57] Speaker 3: who gets the work share, how this program is to move.
[19:00] Speaker 3: It's an extremely complicated program, as I mentioned, not just
[19:05] Speaker 3: for the technology reasons, the fact that you need this
[19:07] Speaker 3: kind of cutting edge technology to be developed in the
[19:11] Speaker 3: platform itself, with the stealth, with the super cruise, with
[19:14] Speaker 3: your in you know, your weapon based sense of fusion,
[19:20] Speaker 3: all of these cutting edge technologies. You have to develop
[19:22] Speaker 3: it in parallel with this conundrum of public sector and
[19:27] Speaker 3: private sector. So it's it is a kind of challenges
[19:30] Speaker 3: that is going to make the LCA look like a
[19:33] Speaker 3: walk in the park, and it is. And to add
[19:36] Speaker 3: to all of this, you have your two front war
[19:40] Speaker 3: threat where you have China which has what three hundred
[19:43] Speaker 3: plus fifth generation fighters which would very happily transfer forty
[19:48] Speaker 3: of them to the Pakistan Air Force to put us
[19:50] Speaker 3: on tenter hooks. So it is a very very complicated
[19:54] Speaker 3: set of you know, problems, and the AMCA is flying
[19:58] Speaker 3: straight into this heavy whether if it actually manages to
[20:02] Speaker 3: fly in the timelines that we envisage it to.
[20:04] Speaker 2: Yeah, I very like your point a lot, the one
[20:08] Speaker 2: you said right now, that this is more than just
[20:10] Speaker 2: developing this advanced fighter jet about sort of It's like,
[20:14] Speaker 2: you know, because for so many years. You've had this
[20:18] Speaker 2: set system of how things work in Indiamene it comes
[20:20] Speaker 2: to production of aviation equipment for for defense, for the military. Uh.
[20:25] Speaker 2: And now you're trying to sort of, you know, shake
[20:27] Speaker 2: that up and bring in new people and bring in
[20:29] Speaker 2: new players, and bring in a new way of working
[20:32] Speaker 2: workshare allocation like you said that sort of like you know,
[20:35] Speaker 2: makes me. It reminds me of the time, you know,
[20:37] Speaker 2: I used to make the roster for my team right
[20:42] Speaker 2: and have this device right.
[20:44] Speaker 3: Uh.
[20:46] Speaker 2: How is hil taking the statement that came out from
[20:49] Speaker 2: from from the government And the reason I asked that
[20:51] Speaker 2: is uh for somebody who's been doing this podcast for
[20:54] Speaker 2: around two and a half years now, Uh, and has
[20:57] Speaker 2: the benefit of having had having chatted with defense and
[21:00] Speaker 2: journalists like you. Honestly, I am not surprised with the
[21:05] Speaker 2: path the government has chosen. Yes, it's a it's a
[21:08] Speaker 2: controversial decision. Yes, it requires uh, it requires that you know,
[21:13] Speaker 2: kara attitude. But they've done it, and they've done it
[21:16] Speaker 2: in this in the sense they've said that's what we're
[21:18] Speaker 2: going for right now. But you never know what the
[21:20] Speaker 2: ultimate decision is going to be. By the way, it
[21:21] Speaker 2: could aryable for under Hl's umbrella, like you know, to
[21:24] Speaker 2: make We don't know that yet, but the intent has
[21:27] Speaker 2: been signaled.
[21:28] Speaker 1: Yes.
[21:28] Speaker 2: Uh so did HIA also see this coming? Are they
[21:32] Speaker 2: prepared for this challenge or are they you know taking
[21:35] Speaker 2: that negative look? Gay, what is happening with us?
[21:38] Speaker 3: You know? How can this this happen? I think h
[21:41] Speaker 3: A is very mature company. I mean it's been around
[21:42] Speaker 3: for almost one hundred years so and I think they
[21:46] Speaker 3: saw this coming with a kind of uh, you know,
[21:48] Speaker 3: deep dissatisfaction that the services had, especially over the Advanced
[21:53] Speaker 3: Light Helicopter ALH, the grounding of the fleet. There were
[21:56] Speaker 3: some serious issues there, technical issues which the services have
[22:01] Speaker 3: you know, raised with HL and as you mentioned, it
[22:05] Speaker 3: just happened since that all of these things happened at
[22:07] Speaker 3: the same time.
[22:08] Speaker 1: They converged, and you know it.
[22:10] Speaker 3: Was what is it that they say about troubles they
[22:13] Speaker 3: come in battalions, so something like that for HL. But
[22:17] Speaker 3: I think hl is is a very mature player. It
[22:19] Speaker 3: is a strategic asset, There's no doubt about it. It's
[22:22] Speaker 3: a national strategic asset. It's been created over several decades.
[22:26] Speaker 3: There is a reason why it was built and it continues,
[22:30] Speaker 3: but there is also a need for competition to be
[22:33] Speaker 3: brought in, right, and this has worked well in the past.
[22:36] Speaker 3: It has served the national interest. So I'm saying that
[22:38] Speaker 3: there is an interest above HL or what they think
[22:42] Speaker 3: about it. There is a supreme national interest that we
[22:44] Speaker 3: need a fifth generation fighter aircraft to be flying in
[22:48] Speaker 3: squadrons less than a decade from now, given the kind
[22:51] Speaker 3: of pressure that you know we're facing on our borders
[22:55] Speaker 3: with both Pakistan and China, and the fact that we
[22:59] Speaker 3: have no option but to develop our own fifth generation
[23:01] Speaker 3: fighter aircraft because otherwise what is going to happen is
[23:04] Speaker 3: that you will be in a perennial import mode.
[23:08] Speaker 1: Right.
[23:09] Speaker 3: I think the other countries are friends, our allies see that,
[23:13] Speaker 3: which is why you see this very intense jocking from
[23:16] Speaker 3: the Americans to sell us the F thirty five, from
[23:19] Speaker 3: the Russians to sell us the two fifty seven. Right,
[23:23] Speaker 3: the Americans, they want to offload the F thirty five
[23:25] Speaker 3: on us. But I think after operations, ind I get
[23:30] Speaker 3: the sense that there is a rethink in the government.
[23:33] Speaker 3: Is the United States a reliable strategic partner when it
[23:37] Speaker 3: comes to fighter jets? So we've bought everything from the
[23:40] Speaker 3: Americans except fighter aircraft that's always been, you know, the
[23:44] Speaker 3: crown jewel that we don't want to give the Americans. Russians, yes,
[23:48] Speaker 3: the French, of course, but the Americans maybe not now.
[23:51] Speaker 3: And I think President Trump's statements during operations Sindur might
[23:55] Speaker 3: have contributed to this alarm that's been raised in in
[24:00] Speaker 3: the government. So I think they'll be looking at developing
[24:04] Speaker 3: our own aircraft. It is, of course, it's a critical requirement,
[24:07] Speaker 3: like I said, and they will possibly look at a
[24:10] Speaker 3: small number of fifth generation fighter aircraft imported, like two squadrons,
[24:16] Speaker 3: perhaps just to bridge a certain gap, right, But the
[24:19] Speaker 3: rest of it, it is, there is no option. It's
[24:22] Speaker 3: a ten factor for us. There is no alternative to
[24:24] Speaker 3: indigenous aircraft. So I mean to answer your question in short,
[24:28] Speaker 3: I'm sure HL saw this coming. There's been plenty of
[24:32] Speaker 3: uh surround sound to suggest that this was indeed happening.
[24:36] Speaker 3: And there is the drd chief, the former DRDO chief
[24:40] Speaker 3: is submitted to report some months back to the government
[24:42] Speaker 3: which actually spoke of a model, a consortium kind of model.
[24:46] Speaker 3: That's uh that that's Sarasworth, doctor v. K.
[24:49] Speaker 1: Saraswort's report.
[24:51] Speaker 3: And there've been a number of reports, you know, from
[24:53] Speaker 3: the government, Rajas Kumar Sing's report which was submitted in
[25:00] Speaker 3: March the Defense Secretary. The serving Defense secretaries asked for
[25:04] Speaker 3: uh need to focus on the Air Force. Very unusual
[25:07] Speaker 3: for a single service report to be prepared by the
[25:10] Speaker 3: government looking at the Indian Air Forces, warries, wars and
[25:14] Speaker 3: all of that.
[25:14] Speaker 1: So there is a.
[25:15] Speaker 3: Greater understanding of a the threat that we face, be
[25:19] Speaker 3: the ways forward, the options before the government. So I
[25:23] Speaker 3: think it's this is it, like you said, now or never?
[25:26] Speaker 2: Yeah, Uh, I want to talk about the other side
[25:29] Speaker 2: as well, the Indian Air Force because of something that
[25:33] Speaker 2: the Air Air Chief said a few months ago when
[25:36] Speaker 2: he was at airnd actually and video went viral of
[25:39] Speaker 2: him giving a dressing down to HL officials. So he
[25:42] Speaker 2: did not quite like that. Actually, he was at a
[25:44] Speaker 2: conclave a few months later, our conclave a few months
[25:46] Speaker 2: of a few weeks later, and he basically said that
[25:49] Speaker 2: was like you know, it was sort of a constructive
[25:51] Speaker 2: discussion between me and HL, the HL guys and you
[25:54] Speaker 2: the media kind of too get a.
[25:55] Speaker 1: Different hot movement.
[25:56] Speaker 2: Yeah, but in that in that in that video, there
[26:00] Speaker 2: was a point when he said, key, this is not
[26:02] Speaker 2: about blame gaming. This is because when I point a
[26:04] Speaker 2: finger at you, they are pointing at me. And he
[26:07] Speaker 2: basically went on to refer to I forgot his exact words,
[26:10] Speaker 2: but he went on to refort refer to the time
[26:12] Speaker 2: of the theages development when there's a lot of controversy
[26:14] Speaker 2: about and HL says this that Air Force also played
[26:18] Speaker 2: a huge role in the delays because they kept changing
[26:20] Speaker 2: the requirements. Not quite possible. So how involved and how
[26:32] Speaker 2: clear is the Air Force about what it wants from
[26:35] Speaker 2: its fifth generation aircraft? And do you see something? Do
[26:39] Speaker 2: you see a model of what's happened with the Indian
[26:41] Speaker 2: Navy happening for the AMCA where the Navy has been
[26:46] Speaker 2: deeply involved in the designing, uh developing, trialing and commissioning
[26:50] Speaker 2: of almost any project, because of which I personally believe
[26:54] Speaker 2: all their ships, all their submaries that have been Indian
[26:56] Speaker 2: made have been usually you know, the projects, projects have
[26:59] Speaker 2: been flawless, not not majored, not no, no major issues
[27:02] Speaker 2: over there. So yeah, how clear is the Air Force
[27:05] Speaker 2: with its ANCA dreams? And or do you see what
[27:09] Speaker 2: happened with the is happening once again?
[27:10] Speaker 3: Is that also a well you know again, they've you've
[27:13] Speaker 3: hit the nail on the head with the tages. I
[27:15] Speaker 3: think the Air Force took a slightly stand offish point
[27:19] Speaker 3: of view, and you know, the emphasis on indigenous platforms
[27:24] Speaker 3: was not as much then as it is now today.
[27:27] Speaker 3: It's an article of faith for this government, right, there's
[27:29] Speaker 3: no escaping the fact that, and it's been said time
[27:32] Speaker 3: and again, and you have seen with operations in the
[27:35] Speaker 3: Indigenous solutions really coming off age. And one solution was
[27:41] Speaker 3: something that BrahMos Corporations suggested to the Indian Air Force
[27:44] Speaker 3: a long time ago, which was an air launched Bramos
[27:47] Speaker 3: and that was an entirely bramoscop idea which the Air
[27:51] Speaker 3: Force of course picked up, embraced and then developed for
[27:54] Speaker 3: two scadents, inducted it in two scadents and that has
[27:57] Speaker 3: been used with devastating efficiency in the second, second wave
[28:03] Speaker 3: of obsendor, second and third waves of obsdur So Indigenous
[28:08] Speaker 3: solutions for Indian wars, that is an article of faith now.
[28:12] Speaker 3: It wasn't the case a couple of years back, which
[28:15] Speaker 3: explains why the Air Force had a stand offish kind
[28:18] Speaker 3: of attitude. They weren't as closely involved with the LCA
[28:23] Speaker 3: program as possibly the Navy was in developing the naval
[28:27] Speaker 3: version of the LCA and pure. The important part to understand,
[28:32] Speaker 3: Dave is whenever I talk to the ADA and the
[28:35] Speaker 3: aircraft developers and designers, they always emphasize on the spiral
[28:41] Speaker 3: development issue, which is that you take an aircraft at
[28:44] Speaker 3: Mark one, you develop it to Mark one A, possibly
[28:49] Speaker 3: even Mark one B, and then you go on to
[28:52] Speaker 3: Mark two. Don't ask for everything on the first Mark
[28:57] Speaker 3: one should be Mark five or Mark six. There are
[29:00] Speaker 3: other countries, you know, countries that have a you know,
[29:03] Speaker 3: very rich, long lineage of fighter aircraft development development. Understand
[29:09] Speaker 3: that you gradually induct aircraft and then you keep on
[29:12] Speaker 3: improving them through their lifetimes. So in our case, for instance,
[29:17] Speaker 3: we've not done that. It was for Parika to intervene
[29:21] Speaker 3: and then work out this one alpha program for the LCA,
[29:25] Speaker 3: where he said he told the Air Force he understood technology.
[29:27] Speaker 3: So he told the Air Force, look, don't make all
[29:30] Speaker 3: these requirements on the LCA for the Mark one. Let
[29:34] Speaker 3: the Mark one be inducted in smaller numbers. There is
[29:37] Speaker 3: going to be a gap between Mark one and Mark
[29:39] Speaker 3: two while they work on Mark two. You induct the
[29:41] Speaker 3: Mark one alpha in limited numbers again, so you have
[29:44] Speaker 3: that eighty three or so Mark one A is coming in.
[29:49] Speaker 3: So this kind of spiral development model is understood, and
[29:52] Speaker 3: I think the Air Force now gets it, and I
[29:54] Speaker 3: think they would have seen the lessons from the LCA
[29:58] Speaker 3: and they would imbibe those in the AMCA. And it's
[30:02] Speaker 3: really important here as well, because in AMCA also you
[30:05] Speaker 3: have two models. You have the Mark one, which is
[30:09] Speaker 3: not as effective and as stealthy as the Mark two.
[30:13] Speaker 3: The Mark two is supposed to be the final configuration
[30:15] Speaker 3: with you know, the full works, the internal weapon base,
[30:21] Speaker 3: some of the external you know, payload external hard points
[30:25] Speaker 3: as well. So that is going to be the final
[30:27] Speaker 3: version of the AMCA, and possibly that would come in
[30:30] Speaker 3: the late twenty thirties. Now you know, there is a
[30:32] Speaker 3: question you ask about the five point five. So this
[30:37] Speaker 3: Gen five point five is a way of saying that
[30:40] Speaker 3: we are fully aware of the fact that we are
[30:41] Speaker 3: behind the curve on the fifth generation fighter aircraft, but
[30:45] Speaker 3: we are going to load the fifth generation with a
[30:49] Speaker 3: little more than what a normal fifth generation aircraft would be.
[30:52] Speaker 3: It won't be like a base model. It'll be a
[30:54] Speaker 3: base model plus a lot of other enhancements. That have,
[30:57] Speaker 3: you know, like artificial intelligence, those kind of things.
[31:01] Speaker 1: Sense of fusion.
[31:02] Speaker 3: We will make sure that it is better than a
[31:05] Speaker 3: fifth generation fighter that exists in the world.
[31:08] Speaker 2: Right, we'll talk more about this, especially about a crucial
[31:12] Speaker 2: component that is at the heart of fighter jet, which
[31:15] Speaker 2: is the jet itself. But after a quick break, what
[31:17] Speaker 2: is the coolest back of the two thousandth Oh? For me,
[31:21] Speaker 2: it was the Pulse Pulse Puls two hundred that no, actually, no,
[31:26] Speaker 2: what else other? So the CBC was the coolest? What
[31:29] Speaker 2: else could you have? Fiero Pharo that one motorcycle, that's
[31:35] Speaker 2: one motorcycle from TVs which was so underrated, Hero Honda sleek.
[31:42] Speaker 2: Why do you always pick the most eighties?
[31:47] Speaker 1: What is that pic?
[31:48] Speaker 2: What is Alex hundred? ALEX hundred came in nineteen What
[31:53] Speaker 2: are you talking about? My uncle uh booked Hero Honda
[31:58] Speaker 2: hundred s s in the eight tease.
[32:00] Speaker 3: Yes, that's a fourth row, Yes, of course, No, yes,
[32:07] Speaker 3: he booked a CD hundred s s late eighties.
[32:10] Speaker 2: I'm talking about eighty six eighty seven.
[32:12] Speaker 3: ESD created the enthusiast in India at some level, or
[32:16] Speaker 3: maybe at a very big level.
[32:17] Speaker 2: Yes, I think So, what about the pulser one thirty
[32:21] Speaker 2: five ls.
[32:22] Speaker 1: That was that was.
[32:23] Speaker 2: A god that learned that at the genes. Welcome back, Sandip.
[32:33] Speaker 2: I now want to talk about the engine because I
[32:37] Speaker 2: think that's one topic that often gets missed when talking
[32:40] Speaker 2: about fighting fighter jets, and it only gets highlighted when
[32:43] Speaker 2: you have something of the sort that happened with they
[32:45] Speaker 2: just mark one in the delays, because that is when
[32:47] Speaker 2: people realized, oh, hey, by the way, engine in the
[32:50] Speaker 2: US can have oh look, oh what is going Very
[32:56] Speaker 2: I thought was shelved. I thought that project got off
[32:59] Speaker 2: two nowhere it was it was the engine was designed
[33:02] Speaker 2: by d R d O Lab. I forgot the forgot
[33:04] Speaker 2: the g TR, the g GR GTR sorry, yes, the
[33:07] Speaker 2: g t R E Gas Turbuying research and something establishment established, yes,
[33:12] Speaker 2: right uh it I think that there were trials but
[33:16] Speaker 2: never got anywhere. And I think I I I thought
[33:19] Speaker 2: it had been shelved. But for the last year or so,
[33:22] Speaker 2: especially after you saw delays for the t S mark one,
[33:25] Speaker 2: because we are waiting for engines from the US, which
[33:27] Speaker 2: now I think started arriving.
[33:29] Speaker 1: Uh.
[33:30] Speaker 2: There was some chatter about Kavery and as recently as
[33:33] Speaker 2: this week there was this huge social media trend or
[33:35] Speaker 2: fund the Carver engineer, like you know, I'll help fund
[33:38] Speaker 2: the cat, but get it going. How crucial do you
[33:41] Speaker 2: think developing an Indian jet engine is for the AMCA project?
[33:45] Speaker 2: Or do you think there's no point reinventing the wheel
[33:48] Speaker 2: when you have global behemoths who can who can you know,
[33:53] Speaker 2: designer and can give you a jet engine? But then
[33:56] Speaker 2: you obviously run into problems like the kind you saw
[33:58] Speaker 2: with the s mark one A. So how important is
[34:01] Speaker 2: it for us to have our own edg.
[34:02] Speaker 1: Yeah you know, uh.
[34:05] Speaker 3: They I cannot, but overemphasize the point that without your
[34:10] Speaker 3: own engine, you are nowhere in the fighter jet business.
[34:15] Speaker 3: Without without your own engine, all you're designing are airframes.
[34:20] Speaker 3: You're just building airframes and you're waiting for a foreign
[34:23] Speaker 3: jet engine to come there and fit into your airframe
[34:26] Speaker 3: and uh, you know, fly your.
[34:28] Speaker 1: Fighter jet fighter jet.
[34:30] Speaker 3: It's like it's the heart of your you know, fighter
[34:33] Speaker 3: aircraft program. If you're not you know, building those jet
[34:37] Speaker 3: engines yourself, you're in serious trouble. And you know, fighter
[34:41] Speaker 3: jet engine it's easier said than done because only four
[34:45] Speaker 3: countries have done it now and the fifth countries just
[34:48] Speaker 3: joined the club.
[34:49] Speaker 1: After much struggle.
[34:50] Speaker 3: And blood and treasure and store you know, stealing I
[34:54] Speaker 3: pr is Chinese, they finally got it with their W
[34:58] Speaker 3: series jet engines. But this is literally the crown jewels
[35:03] Speaker 3: of any countri's you know secrets, defense secrets.
[35:07] Speaker 1: They will never part with it.
[35:10] Speaker 3: We've been friends, allies almost with the Russians for so
[35:13] Speaker 3: many decades. They've never given us the fighter jet engine
[35:17] Speaker 3: know how or know why. All we've been doing for
[35:20] Speaker 3: the last twenty twenty five years is we've been assembling
[35:23] Speaker 3: the AL thirty one FP engines for the soo thirties.
[35:26] Speaker 3: We don't have the know how to build our own
[35:28] Speaker 3: engines for two decades, we've just been building those engines, right.
[35:32] Speaker 3: So this even the French for that matter, the French,
[35:36] Speaker 3: the Russians, whoever are closest allies, they will never give
[35:39] Speaker 3: you the engine technology. So the short answer is you
[35:42] Speaker 3: have no option but to build your own. And Kaveri
[35:46] Speaker 3: was a great project it began, but it didn't meet
[35:49] Speaker 3: the required can trust that they wanted the neutrons that
[35:53] Speaker 3: they wanted, which is almost touching ninety. It could only
[35:56] Speaker 3: get to about fifty or so, which is why the
[35:59] Speaker 3: government shelve that program in twenty fourteen and they've decided
[36:03] Speaker 3: to use the Kaveri, the dry thrust engine. You don't
[36:05] Speaker 3: need after bonus for the UKF so the UK which
[36:08] Speaker 3: was called the Kathak also at some point that is
[36:10] Speaker 3: going to be powered by this version of the Cavery,
[36:12] Speaker 3: the dry thrust engine, And in the future you're going
[36:17] Speaker 3: to look at a Cavery two point zero with either
[36:20] Speaker 3: the Russian collaboration or the French you know, helping you out.
[36:25] Speaker 3: But the short thing is that you have no way
[36:29] Speaker 3: but to develop your own fighter jet engines. And you
[36:31] Speaker 3: know it's not it's not such a big hurdle as well,
[36:36] Speaker 3: if you put your mind to it. If you decide
[36:38] Speaker 3: that this is a national strategic program and it is
[36:42] Speaker 3: not just a GTR program, that's a problem. You know,
[36:46] Speaker 3: you can't say, oh, GTRE, you was supposed to develop
[36:49] Speaker 3: the cavery. They have not done it. We gave them
[36:51] Speaker 3: all the resources. It cannot be a GTR program. It
[36:54] Speaker 3: has to be an all of nation approach. You have
[36:57] Speaker 3: to identify the problem. You have to look at it.
[37:00] Speaker 3: Where am I hitting hurdles? Is it that testing? Do
[37:03] Speaker 3: I have the testing facilities for the engine? Firstly, we don't.
[37:06] Speaker 3: That's a problem the metallurgy. Who can get me the metallurgy,
[37:10] Speaker 3: who can do this? It has to be an ol
[37:13] Speaker 3: of government approach.
[37:14] Speaker 1: It has to be.
[37:15] Speaker 3: Driven top down. All of these countries that have built
[37:17] Speaker 3: it so far, the Chinese being the fifth, they understood it,
[37:20] Speaker 3: they got it, which is why they went helful leather.
[37:23] Speaker 3: In our case, I'll give you another example of how
[37:26] Speaker 3: we went about getting the nuclear reactor for the nuclear submarine.
[37:30] Speaker 2: Right.
[37:30] Speaker 3: This is again a technology that only five countries in
[37:33] Speaker 3: the world have perfected. We got ours because we decided
[37:37] Speaker 3: somewhere in the nineties, in the late nineties, that we've
[37:40] Speaker 3: tested nuclear weapons, the best way to launch nuclear weapons
[37:44] Speaker 3: is from under the water. Nuclear submarine is the way
[37:47] Speaker 3: to do it. But our nuclear submarine design hasn't gone anywhere.
[37:51] Speaker 3: We don't have the reactor. The most important thing of
[37:53] Speaker 3: a nuclear sub is the reactor. Compacting a huge reactor
[37:57] Speaker 3: into a pressure hull of a submarine is the altar
[38:01] Speaker 3: engineering marvel in defense. We didn't have the technology then,
[38:05] Speaker 3: so we went to the Russians. The Russians helped us,
[38:08] Speaker 3: but with an earlier version of the nuclear reactor. Now
[38:11] Speaker 3: the Chinese have also been helped by the Russians similarly,
[38:14] Speaker 3: and they've built on that expertise. Now I'm coming back
[38:16] Speaker 3: to that spiral development thing. You don't just take an engine,
[38:20] Speaker 3: use it and then throw it and say no, I'm
[38:22] Speaker 3: now going to start, you know, DiNovo start a new engine.
[38:25] Speaker 3: You go spiral development. You keep improving that engine, you know,
[38:29] Speaker 3: improving its output, which is what they've done with a
[38:32] Speaker 3: nuclear reactor design. Now that is an insurmountable you know target.
[38:39] Speaker 3: At some point it appeared that, oh, we'll never get
[38:41] Speaker 3: our own reactor. But today, I mean, look at it.
[38:43] Speaker 3: We have four nuclear subs in the water, two are
[38:46] Speaker 3: on deployment, a third is on and two more around
[38:50] Speaker 3: sea trials. Right, So if we could do it with
[38:52] Speaker 3: nuclear submarin it's the most complex reactor technology, we can
[38:57] Speaker 3: certainly do it with the fighter jet and start small
[38:59] Speaker 3: and then keep building on it, pushing, pushing, and then
[39:03] Speaker 3: we'll get it. And we have no option, like I said,
[39:06] Speaker 3: we have no option but to design and develop our
[39:08] Speaker 3: own fighter jet engines.
[39:09] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like you point that, Yeah, of course you
[39:12] Speaker 2: can do it, just to set your mind to it,
[39:14] Speaker 2: because again you've developed, like you said, the miniaturized reactor
[39:18] Speaker 2: for nuclear subs, you send rockets, you've sent a rover
[39:22] Speaker 2: to the Moon, You've developed the Promos missile, which that
[39:25] Speaker 2: is something that comes close to sort of the engine.
[39:28] Speaker 2: But you know, my friends and Ada would be very
[39:33] Speaker 2: unhappy with that comparison because they said, look, or g
[39:36] Speaker 2: try a fighter jet engine has to work all the time, right.
[39:40] Speaker 1: Bramos is a one way ticket.
[39:43] Speaker 3: The Mars rocket, the Moon rockets, these are all one
[39:46] Speaker 3: way mission.
[39:47] Speaker 1: You know you're not coming back.
[39:49] Speaker 3: But here the jet engine has to, you know, be
[39:51] Speaker 3: it has to run all the time. It has to
[39:53] Speaker 3: you know, variations of speed and you know, acceleration, all
[39:56] Speaker 3: of those things. Uh, it has to you know, it's
[39:59] Speaker 3: the heart. It's the heart, right, it has to go
[40:02] Speaker 3: on for several years.
[40:03] Speaker 2: Yes, all right, but a quick follow up, so we
[40:07] Speaker 2: have no option but to do it. Yeah, are we
[40:09] Speaker 2: doing it? So? The reason I asked that is is
[40:11] Speaker 2: it part of this to piece fifteen thousand core project
[40:15] Speaker 2: that the engine will be developed simultaneously as part of
[40:18] Speaker 2: this project or is this disbursement of money or only
[40:22] Speaker 2: going to be for developing, like you said, the airframes
[40:24] Speaker 2: the technology that will sort of work on that plane,
[40:26] Speaker 2: et cetera. And the engine development will happen separately or
[40:30] Speaker 2: do we have no knowledge about this?
[40:32] Speaker 3: We have as far as I understand that the engine
[40:34] Speaker 3: development is separate from this, and that is where we're
[40:37] Speaker 3: looking at. The foreign collaborators. Foreign collaborations, partnerships with either
[40:43] Speaker 3: France or with Russia. We have a tech agreement with
[40:47] Speaker 3: the US as well with the G four one four.
[40:49] Speaker 3: That's one a third line of possibility that we're looking at.
[40:54] Speaker 3: So now the hope is that these countries will give
[40:58] Speaker 3: us the technology to build our our own engine. But
[41:01] Speaker 3: if you are to develop your own engine, I believe
[41:03] Speaker 3: you have to go you have to go solo, and
[41:06] Speaker 3: you have to get some kind of consultancy, design assistance
[41:10] Speaker 3: and all that. Without that, it's not going to happen.
[41:12] Speaker 3: Because the reason we bailed out of the Soup fifty seven, yes,
[41:17] Speaker 3: fifth generation of fighter aircraft. We were part of it
[41:20] Speaker 3: to begin within two thousand and nine or so, and
[41:23] Speaker 3: we had a joint venture. We put down a lot
[41:25] Speaker 3: of money up I think it was a couple of
[41:29] Speaker 3: hundred million dollars if I remember correctly, And in twenty
[41:33] Speaker 3: seventeen or eighteen, the government decided to pull out of
[41:36] Speaker 3: the fifth generation fighter aircraft because the Russian program, because
[41:41] Speaker 3: they felt that Russia was not giving us the technology
[41:44] Speaker 3: we wanted. We were already coming into an aircraft that
[41:48] Speaker 3: had already been developed and designed, so there was nothing
[41:51] Speaker 3: for us to learn from that, so which is why
[41:53] Speaker 3: they pulled out and said, look, we will go our
[41:56] Speaker 3: independent part with AMCAR. So here we are twenty twenty five.
[42:00] Speaker 2: Yeah. Right, So what happens to the Air Force's current
[42:05] Speaker 2: and pressing need for fighter jets? So you have the
[42:09] Speaker 2: Mark one is coming eighty three, ninety seven more or
[42:12] Speaker 2: if I'm not wrong on the order, but there is
[42:16] Speaker 2: still the question of what do you do with the
[42:18] Speaker 2: number of fighters that you need right now, because, like
[42:20] Speaker 2: you said, is going to take around a decade or
[42:22] Speaker 2: so at least to sort of see the light of day.
[42:26] Speaker 2: And that I'm guessing is what you say for the
[42:28] Speaker 2: prototyping of it, then if you're happy with it, you
[42:30] Speaker 2: place orders, then the production comes at that there's more
[42:33] Speaker 2: more delays. There's the there's this talk that there might
[42:38] Speaker 2: be a new MRFA that tender global competition once again
[42:42] Speaker 2: between different fighter jets. You have the US offware of
[42:46] Speaker 2: F thirty five, so you have always had the option
[42:48] Speaker 2: of buying more offhile jets because you already have them
[42:50] Speaker 2: in service, so makes sense. Just get a couple of
[42:52] Speaker 2: more squadrons from there. There is They just mark two?
[42:55] Speaker 2: Is it even coming? Is that shelved? So while we
[42:58] Speaker 2: talk of ANKA, what about these other questions, other projects?
[43:02] Speaker 2: Like I said, they just mark two?
[43:03] Speaker 1: Is it there? Is it not?
[43:04] Speaker 2: What do we know about that? And or rather what's
[43:07] Speaker 2: your outlook on that?
[43:09] Speaker 3: Well, you know, interesting question they've Now the fact is
[43:11] Speaker 3: that the air force isn't a crisis. If you talk
[43:14] Speaker 3: to which will where you look at it, I mean
[43:17] Speaker 3: thirty one squad's sanctioned strength of forty ft threats are
[43:23] Speaker 3: increasing by the day. The PLA Air Force at one
[43:28] Speaker 3: point was a pretty down market air force in the
[43:31] Speaker 3: two thousand and ones when India had a one is
[43:35] Speaker 3: to three ratio with the Pakistan Air Force, and now
[43:38] Speaker 3: almost a quarter century later, that ratio has come down
[43:42] Speaker 3: to one is to one point five because the Pakistan
[43:45] Speaker 3: Air Force has been steadily building up its capabilities. It's
[43:49] Speaker 3: been upgrading its fighter aircraft, It's been acquiring new fighter aircraft,
[43:54] Speaker 3: primarily Chinese the jay tens and the JF seven's and
[44:00] Speaker 3: JF seventeen's. So you're looking at an Indian Air Force
[44:03] Speaker 3: that has been acquiring fighter jets through a method that
[44:09] Speaker 3: I can only call it rebrrogation, right, Whereas what you
[44:11] Speaker 3: need is actually you need a dam burst of fighters.
[44:14] Speaker 3: You have the Air Force chief saying I need something
[44:16] Speaker 3: like forty to fifty fighter jets to be inducted every
[44:19] Speaker 3: year if I am to just stand here right to
[44:24] Speaker 3: maintain my thirty one squad in numbers, Because you're looking
[44:27] Speaker 3: at twenty thirty five. You said AMCA starts coming in
[44:29] Speaker 3: a decade from now, what will the Air Force look
[44:32] Speaker 3: like without the AMCA, without you know, more fighters. You're
[44:37] Speaker 3: looking at all your MIK twenty nine's out of service.
[44:40] Speaker 3: You're looking at most of the Mirages going, all your
[44:42] Speaker 3: Jaguars going MIKE twenty ones will just retire in a
[44:46] Speaker 3: year or two. Two squadns that's left. So every aircraft
[44:49] Speaker 3: but for your Raphael and your Sokoys are going to
[44:53] Speaker 3: mean service. So you need something like two to three
[44:56] Speaker 3: hundred fighter aircraft to come in. That's a very large number,
[45:00] Speaker 3: so which is why they're saying we need forty aircraft
[45:03] Speaker 3: a year. That's a very very ambitious target. And to
[45:07] Speaker 3: add to that, now the air Force is saying forty
[45:09] Speaker 3: two aircraft are not Forty two fighter aircraft squadons are
[45:13] Speaker 3: not going to be enough for us. They're projecting a
[45:15] Speaker 3: requirement of something like sixty fighter aircraft squadons by two
[45:20] Speaker 3: zero four to seven. It's a very ambitious number. You're
[45:23] Speaker 3: going to hear more of this action in the next
[45:25] Speaker 3: couple of months, given how concerned the Indian Air Force
[45:28] Speaker 3: is about following scadon numbers. There's another view that says
[45:33] Speaker 3: that they're projecting a higher number sixty squadns, in the
[45:36] Speaker 3: hope that they at least get to maybe forty to
[45:39] Speaker 3: forty five squadrons lasting.
[45:42] Speaker 1: Yeah. So well, but if you look at it, there
[45:44] Speaker 1: is a serious thread.
[45:45] Speaker 3: You're looking at the Pla Air Force, which has got
[45:47] Speaker 3: three hundred plus fifth generation fighters and which is inducting
[45:50] Speaker 3: fifth generation fighter aircraft at the rate of forty to
[45:54] Speaker 3: fifty a year. So you have them focusing only on
[45:58] Speaker 3: Gen five aircraft park air forces at Gen four Gen
[46:02] Speaker 3: four point five, they're looking at two squadns of fifth
[46:05] Speaker 3: generation fighter aircraft and why do you need fifth fighter aircraft?
[46:09] Speaker 2: Now?
[46:09] Speaker 1: The interesting thing is that sell the aircraft like this.
[46:14] Speaker 3: Have the ability to look at to penetrate air spaces
[46:18] Speaker 3: which are heavily guarded by gbads, the ground based air
[46:21] Speaker 3: defense networks like the S four hundred, the HQ nines
[46:26] Speaker 3: and all of that. So the role of sell the
[46:29] Speaker 3: fifth generation fighter aircraft become all the more critical in
[46:32] Speaker 3: such heavily you know, defended air spaces. The only way
[46:35] Speaker 3: you can penetrate a D bubbles, for instance, is through
[46:39] Speaker 3: stell the aircraft, which is why the Americans are going
[46:41] Speaker 3: helpful leather for the sixth generation new generation air dominance fighters.
[46:47] Speaker 3: The Chinese are building up on all of their things.
[46:49] Speaker 3: It's a technology race at the end of the day.
[46:52] Speaker 3: You know, ground based air defenses are becoming more complex
[46:56] Speaker 3: and more sophisticated. Therefore the fighter jets will have to
[46:59] Speaker 3: be you know, stay a step ahead of them. So
[47:03] Speaker 3: it's a big race for numbers. The Air Force is
[47:06] Speaker 3: looking at larger numbers. They're looking at as an expanding
[47:09] Speaker 3: hole in their fighters cordon capabilities. And like you mentioned,
[47:15] Speaker 3: the the mr MMRCA is being revived as the Multi
[47:20] Speaker 3: Role Fighter Aircraft requirement. There is a requirement the Air
[47:22] Speaker 3: Force believes that they would need something like seventy or
[47:25] Speaker 3: seventy two fighters to come in very quickly. The problem again,
[47:29] Speaker 3: they was that these are very very expensive. You know
[47:32] Speaker 3: how much the Navy is spent for that twenty six
[47:36] Speaker 3: aircraft Rafael Deal rafaele M.
[47:39] Speaker 1: They spent seven billion dollars. That's that's a lot of money.
[47:42] Speaker 3: If you look at seven into you know, seven into
[47:47] Speaker 3: three times that thing, you're looking at anything about twenty
[47:51] Speaker 3: billion dollars twenty twenty five billion dollars for just that
[47:55] Speaker 3: seventy two aircraft requirement for the Indian Air Force. So
[47:58] Speaker 3: then it becomes you know, battle for resources. Then the
[48:01] Speaker 3: government will have to sit and look, look do I
[48:03] Speaker 3: need to import these aircraft? How many can I build
[48:07] Speaker 3: within the country. So it's it is it's going to
[48:09] Speaker 3: be a very complex, you know argument for the Indian
[48:12] Speaker 3: Air Force to make.
[48:13] Speaker 2: A quick follow up there as well. I get that
[48:16] Speaker 2: it's complex in terms of how many can we afford
[48:19] Speaker 2: right now? But why are we still thinking about which
[48:22] Speaker 2: one to go for? The reason I asked that is key.
[48:25] Speaker 2: You already had a competition that a file was the winner.
[48:28] Speaker 2: Your Air Force is very happy with it perform exceptionally.
[48:30] Speaker 2: Do you have the recent conflict with Pakistan. You also
[48:34] Speaker 2: bought the same the naval version for the for the Navy.
[48:37] Speaker 2: So you have that fighter and service, you have the
[48:40] Speaker 2: necessary repair equipment and all the ecosystem that you need
[48:44] Speaker 2: to support a fighters. Yet they know how, etcetera. So
[48:47] Speaker 2: why are you even considering any other aircraft? Why just
[48:50] Speaker 2: do like you figure out the finances, go to the
[48:52] Speaker 2: balance sheets, according just place more orders for.
[48:56] Speaker 1: I wish it was that easy.
[48:59] Speaker 2: Why is it not?
[49:00] Speaker 3: But you know so, yeah, again, the raphile is the
[49:04] Speaker 3: down choice, down select for the Indian Air Force when
[49:06] Speaker 3: the MRC was selected, which they didn't go through. Finally
[49:10] Speaker 3: they just bought thirty six of them. The Navy's got
[49:13] Speaker 3: twenty six of them. So yes, there is a strong
[49:16] Speaker 3: case to be made for buying more rafiles that you
[49:19] Speaker 3: just do seventy two more transfer technology built you know
[49:23] Speaker 3: in country, get a production line going, bring down costs,
[49:27] Speaker 3: bring in MROs, those kind of things, find a way
[49:30] Speaker 3: of building it indigenously. There's another voice that says that, look,
[49:34] Speaker 3: if you do that, you're going to kill our LC
[49:37] Speaker 3: Mark two for instance, because you know, finally, at the
[49:40] Speaker 3: end of the day, you know resources are not infinite
[49:44] Speaker 3: and when the government is looking at the pie. He's
[49:46] Speaker 3: going to decide, Look, do I import these aircraft? Do
[49:50] Speaker 3: I build them indigenously? Do I develop the engines here?
[49:55] Speaker 3: Do I import? You know, it's a complex, complicated argument
[49:59] Speaker 3: for the to make when it's deciding on imports, such
[50:03] Speaker 3: high end imports. So big ticket items like this seventy
[50:07] Speaker 3: plus imports are going to be looked at with very,
[50:11] Speaker 3: very great alarm by the government. So if you look
[50:15] Speaker 3: at it all, historically, all the purchases historic, I mean,
[50:19] Speaker 3: in the last ten years have been smaller numbers. The
[50:22] Speaker 3: requirements projected were much larger. Air Force wanted one hundred
[50:25] Speaker 3: and twenty six. Government came down to thirty six. Navy
[50:28] Speaker 3: wanted fifty plus for the deck based fighters imported ones,
[50:33] Speaker 3: they came down to twenty six. So my sense is
[50:36] Speaker 3: that they will go for a mix of a smaller
[50:38] Speaker 3: number of rafiles with a larger number of indigenous fighters
[50:43] Speaker 3: like the LCA Mark two. The numbers will always come
[50:47] Speaker 3: from indigenous fighters, they will never come from imports because
[50:51] Speaker 3: those imports, I mean, the cost is horribly you know,
[50:55] Speaker 3: there is no comparison. It's like for the price of
[50:58] Speaker 3: one raphile you could buy probably three LC marktos.
[51:02] Speaker 2: Yeah, right, right, last point on this episode. Uh, and
[51:06] Speaker 2: I'm going to talk about the Indian Navy because I
[51:08] Speaker 2: think when it comes to fighter jets, the Navy gets
[51:12] Speaker 2: the short end of the stick because of its small requirements. Right,
[51:15] Speaker 2: so never no one talks about it. But the Navy
[51:18] Speaker 2: also has equal concerns. Right, because you have two aircraft
[51:22] Speaker 2: carried in service, the vikranth Uh, there is a thought
[51:27] Speaker 2: that the Navy will go in for a report reports
[51:29] Speaker 2: is but another order of krant type of aircraft carrier.
[51:33] Speaker 2: I see one alpha Yeah, yeah, slightly more weight, if
[51:38] Speaker 2: I'm not wrong, is what it has been talked about.
[51:39] Speaker 2: We don't know the specifics yet, but there is some
[51:41] Speaker 2: talk about that.
[51:42] Speaker 3: Uh.
[51:43] Speaker 2: Right now you have around, if I'm not wrong, forty
[51:47] Speaker 2: five odd mcwein and case the naval variants. We don't
[51:50] Speaker 2: know the exact number for some reason, I don't know why. Uh,
[51:53] Speaker 2: you've placed orders for you are about to place orders
[51:56] Speaker 2: for the file from from from France. But the Navy
[51:59] Speaker 2: also needs fighter the AMCA is I'm guessing solely for
[52:07] Speaker 2: the air force. The Navy has rejected the LC enable
[52:10] Speaker 2: naval variant they wanted what is now as known as
[52:13] Speaker 2: the TED DEV the twin engine deck based So where
[52:17] Speaker 2: is that in all of this or is the AMCA
[52:19] Speaker 2: development going to lead to something for the Navy as well?
[52:23] Speaker 2: What does Navy get out of whatever we are investing
[52:25] Speaker 2: in when it comes to right.
[52:27] Speaker 3: So THEVE as you mentioned, the Navy has a requirement
[52:30] Speaker 3: for fighter jets, but it's much smaller than what the
[52:32] Speaker 3: air forces requirements are. So they have to basically replace
[52:35] Speaker 3: the mid twenty nines forty odd mid twenty nines that
[52:38] Speaker 3: are in service mid twenty nine case, and the Navy
[52:41] Speaker 3: would look at air wings for two carriers and possibly
[52:44] Speaker 3: the third, So you're looking at something like about sixty
[52:47] Speaker 3: fighter jets. That's not a lot of fighters, it's about
[52:50] Speaker 3: three squadns plus. Naval requirements are usually much smaller than
[52:54] Speaker 3: what it is for the Indian Air Force. So the
[52:56] Speaker 3: way forward is the twenty six raphiles are going to
[52:59] Speaker 3: be the intel which will replace the first of the
[53:03] Speaker 3: mid twenty nines as they go out of service. The
[53:05] Speaker 3: mid twenty nine have been in service for about two
[53:07] Speaker 3: decades now. It's not been a very happy experiment for
[53:11] Speaker 3: the Indian Navy because these were completely untested aircraft when
[53:15] Speaker 3: they were bought the Russian Navy. The Soviet Navy actually
[53:18] Speaker 3: pioneered the use of the mid twenty nine K, but
[53:20] Speaker 3: it was not purpose built for aircraft carrier operations. It
[53:24] Speaker 3: was a land based fighter which was then converted into
[53:27] Speaker 3: a carrier based fighter in our case, you know, a
[53:30] Speaker 3: stow Bar.
[53:32] Speaker 1: Fighter jet.
[53:33] Speaker 3: Now they believe that the twenty six rafiles will be
[53:39] Speaker 3: an interim and then you will have the ten BF
[53:42] Speaker 3: coming at some point, that twin engine deck based fighters.
[53:44] Speaker 3: Because you know, the life of an aircraft carrier, as
[53:47] Speaker 3: you know, is much longer than the life of a
[53:49] Speaker 3: fighter jet. So an aircraft carrier has a life of
[53:52] Speaker 3: about almost half a century fifty years, and a fighter
[53:56] Speaker 3: jet would have a you know thing of effective combat
[53:59] Speaker 3: life twenty five thirty years. So you possibly would have
[54:02] Speaker 3: an aircraft carrier looking at two different fighter variants, and
[54:06] Speaker 3: here in this case, the Wikma, THEA and of course
[54:09] Speaker 3: the new ions V grant came with the mid twin
[54:11] Speaker 3: end case, they will switch over at some point to
[54:14] Speaker 3: the RAPHA ale MS and they will also possibly have
[54:18] Speaker 3: that ted BF. Now there is a requirement for an
[54:20] Speaker 3: AMCA fifth generation fighter jet. We're looking at smaller numbers again,
[54:25] Speaker 3: but that's not a high priority. It's not a top
[54:28] Speaker 3: priority for the ADA or for the Indian Navy right now.
[54:34] Speaker 3: Though if you ask me, they should have started with
[54:37] Speaker 3: developing a naval variant of the AMCAF first, given how
[54:41] Speaker 3: complex this platform is. Carrier operations are very, very extremely
[54:46] Speaker 3: complex to develop aircraft that can withstand, you know, the
[54:52] Speaker 3: stresses of landing on a deck, all of those those
[54:56] Speaker 3: problems would have been solved first and then adapting them
[55:00] Speaker 3: for land based uses. Not as you know, it's not
[55:04] Speaker 3: as difficult as it is the other way around. So
[55:07] Speaker 3: you're you're going to have a challenge now to take
[55:09] Speaker 3: a fighter jet that's you know, developed for land based
[55:13] Speaker 3: operations for the Indian Air Force and then marinizing it
[55:16] Speaker 3: and you know, strengthening the undercarriage and doing all of that.
[55:19] Speaker 1: That's going to be a big, big task.
[55:22] Speaker 3: But I think it is primarily the amcar You should
[55:25] Speaker 3: look at it primarily as an Indian Air Force requirement.
[55:27] Speaker 3: Small numbers for the Indian Navy, I mean, if it
[55:31] Speaker 3: comes well and good, but focuses to get it for
[55:34] Speaker 3: the air Force because the numbers are much air force
[55:37] Speaker 3: needs something like tense coadrons of amcas. They committed to
[55:40] Speaker 3: buying about between eight and ten squadrons. Navies requirements, of course,
[55:44] Speaker 3: don't matter as much as the Air Force requirements.
[55:47] Speaker 2: Right. One final, very quick point, if I could ask
[55:50] Speaker 2: you to speculate and do just plain guess work based
[55:54] Speaker 2: on just your gut feeling, based on what you know
[55:57] Speaker 2: of the situation now and based on whatever you've seen
[56:00] Speaker 2: the years. How do you see the project Ancorp project
[56:03] Speaker 2: panning out over the next fifteen years. Whom do you
[56:05] Speaker 2: see the contract being given to. When do you see
[56:08] Speaker 2: the first flight happening, whether the test flight or the
[56:11] Speaker 2: Air Force flight and stuff like that's just plain guesswork
[56:13] Speaker 2: from you. What do you see for the project?
[56:16] Speaker 3: You know, I wish I'm an optimist eternal optimist there.
[56:20] Speaker 3: I mean, I think the first flight they're promising twenty
[56:23] Speaker 3: twenty eight in the next three years. They must do it.
[56:27] Speaker 3: We have no option. We have to do it. This
[56:29] Speaker 3: has to be a top down kind of thing. Dictats
[56:33] Speaker 3: have to be passed like you cannot because we've already
[56:35] Speaker 3: lost a lot of time. We have to develop that aircraft.
[56:38] Speaker 3: You have to get it flying in the next year.
[56:39] Speaker 3: To get the prototypes flying in the next three years,
[56:42] Speaker 3: and you know, start the induction process and try and
[56:46] Speaker 3: compress deadlines as much as possible. See where you know
[56:51] Speaker 3: again that all of government approach needs to come in.
[56:54] Speaker 3: It has to be treated as a national project. It
[56:56] Speaker 3: cannot be treated as oh, it's just an Air Force
[56:58] Speaker 3: project or it's a DADO project or something. You have
[57:01] Speaker 3: to get a consortium going and it has to be
[57:03] Speaker 3: steered at a very top lint. So I think if
[57:07] Speaker 3: all goes well, if given the new prominence to airpower
[57:12] Speaker 3: that this government has given, I would think twenty thirty
[57:16] Speaker 3: five is not an impossible, unsurmountable problem to get the
[57:21] Speaker 3: AMCA inducted by twenty thirty three. Twenty thirty three is
[57:26] Speaker 3: ideally the time that you should be looking at, which
[57:28] Speaker 3: is the next eight years or so to start inducting
[57:31] Speaker 3: the AMCA. And again I'm emphasize mark one. Start with
[57:34] Speaker 3: Mark one and then slowly build up on Mark one.
[57:37] Speaker 3: Don't emphasize that. Look, we need everything in the first marketself,
[57:42] Speaker 3: right in the first couple of scad ins itself. So
[57:45] Speaker 3: I think given all of this and the new enlightenment
[57:49] Speaker 3: has come out with airpower and the consortium approach, I
[57:53] Speaker 3: would think it would be if I were to have that,
[57:56] Speaker 3: I guess. I think it would be a consortium of
[57:59] Speaker 3: HL and tatas that will execute this project. I don't
[58:02] Speaker 3: see HL being completely put out of it. It's it's impossible.
[58:06] Speaker 3: You cannot, you know, uh, cut out your biggest aircraft manufacturer,
[58:12] Speaker 3: your only aircraft, only fighter jet manufacturer from this contract.
[58:16] Speaker 3: So I think it will be a consortium of HL,
[58:19] Speaker 3: Tassel and possibly other private players are also kind of
[58:22] Speaker 3: pitching it will be a consortium approach to the government
[58:25] Speaker 3: will follow.
[58:27] Speaker 2: I think the I'd rather put it out. It will
[58:29] Speaker 2: be a sort of a national building model. Yes, everything
[58:32] Speaker 2: every know how that you have in the country will
[58:34] Speaker 2: be used for this to ensure that it happens and
[58:37] Speaker 2: it happens on time. Absolutely great, the great chat. I
[58:41] Speaker 2: had got lots of insights from you and a lot
[58:44] Speaker 2: I had a lot of fun. So thanks so much
[58:46] Speaker 2: for me, Thanks for having me there. That's it for
[58:49] Speaker 2: this week's defense dose. For more, tune in next week.
[58:51] Speaker 2: Till then, stay safe and do not cross any boundaries
[58:53] Speaker 2: without a passport.

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.