India’s Mk2 and AMCA First Flights Still Need GE Engines

Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh said the LCA Mk2 prototype will fly no later than September 2027, and the AMCA in September 2028. He set those marks at a defence summit in Delhi on September 27, and he already left room to slip. Mk2 test flights are due next year, he said, “probably around June or September next year.”

Both jets are still drawn around General Electric’s F414. Hindustan Aeronautics Limited does not yet build that engine in India, and HAL is not the firm that will build AMCA prototypes.

Singh Puts Mk2 First Flight in a June-to-September Window

The Mk2, also called the Medium Weight Fighter, is ADA’s and HAL’s heavier Tejas. It is meant to replace the Jaguar, Mirage 2000 and MiG-29. Singh’s ceiling is September 2027. The working window he described is June to September 2027.

The airframe is a 17.5-tonne jet with a 6.5-tonne payload. HAL’s own sheet lists a close-coupled canard and 11 hard points, plus the Uttam AESA radar and an infrared search and track set. Planned weapons include Astra, Rudram, guided bombs and BrahMos-NG. The missions on the card are air superiority, deep strike and the suppression of enemy air defences.

AMCA is the twin-engine stealth programme. Singh put the first prototype in the air in September 2028, and he added “hopefully.” The Mk1 is due to carry about 1,500 kg in an internal bay, with outer hard points when stealth matters less. ADA keeps design authority. Prototypes will use GE F414 engines, the same family as Mk2.

Didn’t qualify on some fairly routine technical grounds which they somehow failed to meet.

Rajesh Kumar Singh, Defence Secretary, NDTV Defence Summit

That line was about HAL and AMCA, not about the flight dates. It is the other half of the same afternoon. The calendar he read out assumes a builder for the stealth jet and an engine for both.

The Engine That Has to Arrive First

Mk2 is a single-engine aircraft designed around the F414-INS6, which GE rates in the 22,000 lb thrust class F414-INS6, or 98 kN. AMCA Mk1 is a twin, so each prototype needs two running engines and spares. ADA has been shopping for 15 off-the-shelf F414s to cover five flying prototypes. People close to those talks have described a sharp jump in the price GE quoted for that small batch. GE has not posted a public figure.

The larger HAL deal is separate. It is meant to put F414 production in Bengaluru with about 80% process transfer, first for 99 engines tied to Mk2, then for early AMCA Mk1 squadrons. As of June 2026, eight F414s had already come in for Mk2 development and test. The commercial contract for local build is still open. HAL’s chairman, Ravi Kota, said in September the firm was waiting on GE’s commercial proposal in October, and that the size of the job could push that by a month or two. HAL’s own target for the first India-assembled F414 is mid-2029, two years after Mk2 is supposed to fly.

THE TWO JETS AND THE SAME AMERICAN ENGINE

HAL said in a June 2025 note that negotiations with GE are on track and that it was not talking to another maker for Mk2. Fifteen months later the commercial paper still is not signed. The F404-IN20 line that feeds Tejas Mk1A already showed what a late American engine does to an Indian jet. Singh said HAL has 27 Mk1A airframes ready and has received 11 engines from GE, with 16 of those airframes fitted and flown. GE has promised four engines a month, which would add 12 through the rest of 2026. He still hopes for one Mk1A squadron by the end of the year, with radar performance issues left to close. HAL has promised 24 LCAs a year after that, and Singh said he hopes the 83-jet first order and the 97-jet follow-on, 180 aircraft in all, are in by 2033. The first Mk1A delivery was due in March 2024.

Private Bidders, Not HAL, Will Build AMCA Prototypes

Singh said the ministry opened AMCA to private industry because it wanted a second fighter line, “rather than putting all our eggs in one basket.” HAL bid with two smaller firms and did not make the cut. In February 2026, only three of seven consortia cleared the technical and financial bar. ADA issued the request for proposals in May. The deadline for bids is 30 October 2026, with openings on 31 October.

WHO IS STILL IN THE AMCA PROTOTYPE RACE

• Tata Advanced Systems: The only bidder standing on its own, without a public-sector partner in the consortium.
• L&T, BEL and Dynamatic: A private lead with Bharat Electronics and Dynamatic Technologies in the group.
• Bharat Forge, BEML and Data Patterns: A Kalyani-led group with a public-sector manufacturer and an electronics firm.

The state is funding the prototype phase at about Rs 15,000 crore. The Cabinet cleared full-scale work in April 2024. The winner must form a new company within three months and build five flying prototypes plus one structural test article with ADA at Puttaparthi in Andhra Pradesh. The RFP says the first jet must taxi and fly within 30 months of contract award, all five prototypes by 64 months, and 1,800 test sorties by 84 months.

Thirty months from 31 October 2026 lands at the end of April 2029. Singh’s September 2028 flight is seven months earlier than that clock. Metal, tooling and subsystems have to move before the contract is inked, or the date does not hold. A takeoff date read out before the builder is chosen is a planning target. It is not a locked industrial schedule.

Jaguar, Mirage and MiG-29 Leave First

The IAF is at 29 fighter squadrons against a sanctioned 42, a gap of 13, after the last MiG-21 units left in 2025. Singh said that when he arrived in the ministry the air force had three worries: the shrinking fighter fleet, airborne early warning, and tankers. “It won’t happen overnight, but once contracts are signed, delivery expectations are locked in,” he said.

Mk2 is the jet written against the next retirements. The F414 licence deal is one of those unsigned contracts.

THE FLEETS MK2 IS MEANT TO REPLACE

Those three types add up to 12 squadrons. The IAF’s Mk2 ask is about 120 to 130 aircraft, enough for about six squadrons. Series production has been described around 2029, with meaningful deliveries in the early 2030s. Air Marshal Nagesh Kapoor, the recently retired Vice Chief, said the Mk2 would be operationally unsuitable by the time it arrived in large numbers in the mid-2030s. Singh, on the same weekend, was still dating a first prototype to 2027.

Mk1A is the near-term filler. The IAF already has 40 LCA Mk1 jets. If 180 Mk1As and 120 Mk2s follow, the Tejas family reaches 340 aircraft, about half a 42-squadron force. That arithmetic only works if engines arrive on the month Singh was given.

Eighteen Years After Tejas First Left the Runway

The original LCA plan called for a first flight in April 1990 and service in 1995. Technology demonstrator TD-1 flew on 4 January 2001, with Wing Commander Rajiv Kothiyal at the controls. IOC-II came in December 2013. No. 45 Squadron took the jet in 2016. Final operational clearance came in February 2019, 18 years after first flight.

HOW LONG TEJAS TOOK AFTER FIRST FLIGHT

1. 4 January 2001: TD-1 completes the first flight from Bengaluru.
2. December 2013: IOC-II clears regular IAF pilots to fly the type.
3. 2016: No. 45 Squadron, the Flying Daggers, stands up on Tejas.
4. February 2019: Final operational clearance is granted.

Mk2’s own first-flight marks have already walked. An older ministry line pointed at December 2014. Later public marks sat on 2022, then 2023, then 2026. Singh has now parked the prototype in the second and third quarters of 2027. AMCA’s own public marks have moved in a narrower band, with first flight long described as 2028 and induction around 2034 to 2035.

The engine story is older than this summit. In June 2023, during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state visit to Washington, the two governments hailed an MoU between GE and HAL for the manufacture of F-414 engines in India for LCA Mk2, calling it a deeper US jet-engine transfer than any before it. On 8 September 2023 they welcomed completion of the Congressional Notification process on 29 August and the start of talks on a commercial agreement. Those talks are still the talks. June 2023 to September 2026 is three years and three months without a signed production contract.

What a 2028 Prototype Buys the IAF

A first flight is a test point. It is not a squadron. Mk2 still has to clear ground runs, envelope expansion, weapons and a production standard. AMCA still has to pick a builder, freeze stealth coatings, fly 1,800 sorties and wait on a hotter Indian engine for Mk2 of that type, a 110 kN-class plant that is a separate co-development track with Safran still in front of the government.

Singh also said French bids are in for 114 Rafale jets under the medium-role fighter buy, with a mandate to make them in India, as a second fighter line beside Tejas. He said the Mk1A line will continue on a spiral path, with Indian radars and weapons. That buy is a hedge against the same gap the 2027 and 2028 prototypes are supposed to close later.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, speaking at the same summit, said India is working on sixth-generation fighters and is building for the next two decades of war. The fifth-generation jet in the room still has no private contractor and no signed F414 production deal. Singh the secretary said the three air-force gaps are on the way to being filled once contracts are signed. The F414 contract is not signed. The AMCA partner contract is not signed. Those are the two signatures the new dates still wait on.