NEW DELHI: With the IAF grappling with an acute shortage of fighter aircraft as well as force-multipliers, the govt has constituted a high-level committee under defence secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh to chalk out a roadmap to plug the major operational gaps in the force. The committee will examine the IAF's overall capability development through several indigenous design and development as well as direct acquisition projects. "Among the three Services, IAF has the most critical capability voids.
The committee will submit its report by the end of Jan," a source said. DRDO chief Samir V Kamat, secretary (defence production) Sanjeev Kumar and IAF deputy chief Air Marshal Tejinder Singh, among others, are the members of the committee. The need to fast-track projects has been reinforced by the way the Chinese air force has deployed additional fighters, bombers, reconnaissance aircraft and drones at all its air-bases facing India, like Hotan, Kashgar, Gargunsa, Shigatse, Bangda, Nyingchi and Hoping, after upgrading them with new runways, hardened shelters, fuel and ammunition sto-rage facilities.
With the IAF currently making do with just 30 fighter squadrons when 42.5 are authorised to tackle the threat from China and Pakistan, one of the major challenges before the committee will be to break the logjam over the long-pending project to manufacture 114 new 4.5-generation fighters, at an initial estimate of Rs 1.
25 lakh crore, with foreign collaboration. "Some jets will be directly ac.