India’s aerospace capabilities, if harnessed properly, would be a key driver of economic growth. Time indeed to energise the Indian aerospace industry à la the automotive sector and the space development programme.

A candid summation that the Indian aerospace industry is “way behind”, by the Vice Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal P.K. Barbora is not at all surprising. Countries such as Brazil (Embraer); Israel (Israel Aerospace Industries); China and South Korea are up there with the big aerospace players, but not India. Time indeed to energise the Indian aerospace industry à la the automotive sector and the space development programme.

The refrain thus at the fifth International Conference on “Energising Indian Aerospace Industry”, jointly organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), the Indian Air Force (IAF) and the Centre for Air Power Studies (CAPS) was to “leverage India’s emerging economic power”.

Accordingly, the Minister for Defence, A.K. Antony announced reworking the defence production policy and also the defence procurement procedure.

“For the Indian aerospace industry to move from the fringes to the mainstream, the private sector had to be encouraged as the Defence Research and Development Organisation and the public sector undertakings had inherent limitations,” opined the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal P.V. Naik.

Trends in transformation of aerospace power

Air Chief Marshal Sir Glenn Torpy, former Chief of the Air Staff, Royal Air Force, United Kingdom, said that unpredictability of future conflicts would render the battle-space congested; cluttered; connected; constrained and contested, and all coming under the scrutiny of an intrusive media.

Air Vice Marshal M. Matheswaran, Assistant Chief of Air Staff Operations (Space), said, “India needs to have a leap-frogging strategy with regard to aerospace technology. Dominance in aviation; space; communications and computers would bring about new hegemonies in the form of Russia, China and India, away from the traditional USA; the UK; France, Germany and Japan.”

MRO opportunities galore

The former Chairman and Managing Director of the erstwhile Indian Airlines, Air Marshal (Retd) S.S. Ramdas said that outsourcing in civil aviation had become an “inescapable mantra” and it was time for military aviation to start thinking about it. “Almost 45 per cent of military maintenance in the US has been outsourced, while the RAF has a mixed policy, whereas in India we are tied down to HAL. With sophisticated aircraft to be inducted in the near future, the three services had to wean themselves away from HAL and look at the private sector,” he said.