American reliability will be on the line if Washington continues to lag the supply of jet engines critical for India's indigenous warplane Tejas and could even result in the termination of the contract, an IAF veteran has said.
"The delay in the supply of American F404 engines will impact the IAF in the immediate short-term because six squadrons of Tejas Mk1, and Tejas Mk1A are supposed to be inducted into service soon," Air Marshal (Retd) M. Matheswaran told Sputnik India on Friday.
The military expert noted that India's sky guarding force was already short on the number of squadrons. At present, the IAF is operating with about 32 squadrons as against the 42 requirement.
He suggested that while a little bit of a retard here and there will not make a huge impact, however, F414 engines that would power the Tejas fighter jet's next-generation Mk2 variant have to be supplied to India and if the Americans don't, the contract will be in jeopardy.
"One of the most important things for the US to be conscious of is that there has always been a sense of mistrust and lack of reliability concerning any military equipment coming to India from America," Matheswaran emphasized.
Though Washington has signed big-ticket defence contracts with New Delhi in the last 15 years, Americans better be more reliable, since long delays will not be conducive to the growth of the bilateral business in the field, the former military officer reckoned.
Meanwhile, media reports suggest that the latency has prompted Tejas manufacturer Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) to think about alternatives for the aircraft so that it is not dependent on a single engine manufacturer in the future.
When the Tejas project was in the planning stage, Russia was more than eager to join hands with India in the development of the Kaveri engine, however, it was eventually delinked from the Tejas project in 2008 after failing to meet the IAF's technical requirements, Matheswaran revealed.
Yet, he believes that a partnership with Russia in this domain will certainly benefit India.
"In case of uncertainty India must get back to the Kaveri engine and complete its development, joining up with the Russians for a more aggressive collaboration, and fit that engine into the Tejas," Matheswaran, currently the founder President of the The Peninsula Foundation, Chennai-based think tank, underlined.
However, it would take time as such a venture would need a minimum of a decade to develop the engine that would power the nation's fighter jets, he stated. Therefore, India requires to find a readymade solution, as waiting for an engine "for another decade would result in killing the business," he summed up.