India may be one step ahead in its aim to join the list of nations capable of designing and producing next-gen combat aircraft with defence minister Rajnath Singh on Tuesday approving the Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) Programme Execution Model.
The Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) statement said the move was a significant push towards enhancing India’s indigenous defence capabilities and fostering a robust domestic aerospace industrial ecosystem.
Under the approved execution model framework, the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) will lead the project in collaboration with private industry partners. This is an important step towards harnessing the indigenous expertise, capability and capacity to develop the AMCA prototype, which will be a major milestone towards ‘Aatmanirbharta’ (self-reliance) in the aerospace sector.
The Execution Model approach provides equal opportunities to both the private and public sectors on a competitive basis. They can bid either independently or as a joint venture, or as consortia. The entity/bidder should be an Indian company compliant with the laws and regulations of the country, the statement said.
ADA will shortly issue an Expression of Interest (EoI) for the AMCA Development Phase, the statement added. The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has committed to delivering the AMCA by 2035.
“This journey began only in 2024, when the Cabinet Committee on Security sanctioned the project,” DRDO Chairman Samir V Kamat had previously said. “It will take ten years, and we have committed to delivering the platform by 2035.”
Other fifth-gen fighters such as the U.S. F-35 or China’s J-20 also took over a decade to develop, facing technological hurdles in their journey.
“We learnt a lot from the Kaveri engine, but that was fourth-gen. Now we’re aiming for sixth-gen engine tech,” said Kamat. Discussions with international partners are underway.
Following the announcement, the stock markets reacted strongly to the development, with shares of defence and related companies rising by around 6 per cent at the time of reporting.
The stocks of defense and allied sectors such as Hindustan Aeronautics (HAL), Cochin Shipyard, Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers (GRSE), Bharat Dynamics (BDL), BEML, Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders (MDL), Ideaforge Technology and Bharat Electronics, Apollo Micro Systems, Paras Defence and Space Technologies were up between 1 to 6 per cent.
Following the news, the Nifty India Defence index reached 8,674.05, a fresh 52-week high.
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