In some of the hardest-hitting public comments made on the indigenous Tejas jet-fighter project, Air Marshal Nagesh Kapoor, who retired as the Indian Air Force’s Vice Chief less than two months ago, has said the made-in-India fighter Tejas Mk-2 may not be operationally relevant in a frontline role when it starts entering service in significant numbers in the mid 2030s.
A secondary order for 97 more Tejas Mk-1A jets was announced on 25 September 2025, in a Rs 62,370-crore deal. HAL, meanwhile, has been developing a genuinely more advanced successor, the Tejas Mk-2, and originally promised to roll out its prototype in 2022 – a promise it has failed to deliver on, with the timeline having slipped repeatedly since through 2023, 2024, 2025 and into 2026. As of HAL’s most recent update, at the Farnborough Airshow in July 2026, the Mk-2’s first flight is now expected sometime between March and July 2027.
It’s not just the Tejas programme that the IAF is concerned about. India’s first home-grown stealth fighter, the AMCA (Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft), which could take a decade in development and trials, may also miss initial technology benchmarks in its first variants when they are available for induction.
