The Cabinet under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has approved procurement of 73 light combat aircraft (LCA) Tejas Mk-1A fighter aircraft and 10 LCA Tejas Mk-1 trainer aircraft at the cost of Rs 45,696 crore along with design and development of infrastructure sanctions worth Rs 1,202 crore.
The LCA Mk-1A variant is an indigenously designed, developed and manufactured state-of-the-art modern 4+ generation fighter aircraft.
This aircraft is equipped with critical operational capabilities of active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar, beyond visual range (BVR) missile, electronic warfare (EW) suite and air-to-air refuelling (AAR) will be a potent platform to meet operational requirements of the Indian Air Force (IAF).
It is the first buy (Indian-indigenously designed, developed and manufactured) category procurement of combat aircraft with an indigenous content of 50 per cent which will progressively reach 60 per cent by the end of the programme.
The Cabinet has also approved infrastructure development by IAF under the project to enable them to handle repairs or servicing at their base depot so that the turnaround time would get reduced for mission-critical systems and would lead to an increased availability of aircraft for operational exploitation.
This would enable IAF to sustain the fleet more efficiently and effectively due to the availability of repair infrastructure at respective bases.
The manufacturing of LCA by Hindustan Aeronautics (HAL) will give a further push to Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative and boost indigenisation of defence production and the defence industry in the country.
About 500 Indian companies including MSMEs in the design and manufacturing sectors will be working with HAL in this procurement.