A contract for preliminary design of the Indo-Russian Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA) was signed between Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), Rosoboronexport and Sukhoi in New Delhi on Tuesday. The project involves design and development of a Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft that will have advanced features such as stealth, supercruise, ultra-maneuvrability, highly integrated avionics suite, enhanced situational awareness, internal carriage of weapons and Network Centric Warfare capabilities.
The aircraft to be jointly developed is termed Perspective Multi-role Fighter (PMF). PMF draws upon the basic structural and system design of the Russian FGFA Technology Demonstrator with modifications to meet IAF specifications, which are much more stringent. The broad scope of bilateral cooperation during the joint project covers the design & development of the PMF, its productionization and joint marketing to the third countries. Programme options include the design & development of a twin-seater variant and the integration of an advanced engine with higher thrust at a later stage.
Today’s contract is only the first in a series of such contracts which will cover different stages of this complex programme. The total cost including options and the value of production aircraft will make this the biggest Defence programme ever in the history of India involving production of over 200-250 aircraft.
The Contract was signed by A Isaykin, general director, Rosoboronexport and M Pogosyan, general director RAC MiG & Sukhoi from the Russian side and Ashok Nayak, chairman, HAL and NC Agarwal, director (D&D), HAL from the Indian side at Delhi.
