SOURCE: SATYAJEET KUMAR/ FOR MY TAKE / IDRW.ORG
Air Force Chief RKS Bhadauria shared his road map to procure nearly 450 fighter jets for the air force in next few decades recently and the bulk of them will be a combination of 83 Tejas Mk1A and 100 Tejas Mk2 and 100 AMCA 5.5 Generation fighter jet giving a major boost to the local fighter jet programs in the country while IAF continues plans to procure 114 jets of ” Rafale Class ” in an International Competition for the fighter jets.
In Bhadauria’s future fleet procurement vision what didn’t cut, it seems to be the ADA proposed Twin-engine Medium Class Omni-Role Combat Aircraft (ORCA) or Twin Engine Deck Based Fighter (TEDBF) program both for Indian Air force and Indian Navy. ORCA aka TEDBF was proposed earlier this year by the ADA and HAL to meet the carrier-based fighter jet requirement of the Indian Navy and a lighter air force variant based on it was also on offer to the Indian Air Force. Few of the journalists who interviewed him also seem to be not aware of the proposed ORCA / TEDBF program due to which any clarity on the program could not be taken from the Air chief.