Opinion: Opinion | Autonomous Wingmen Could Be The Answer To Indian Air Force's Squeeze

The obvious near-term candidate for integration is the Su-30MKI 'Flanker' fleet (Representational image) At his last Air Force Day press conference on October 3, Air Chief Marshal AP Singh was typically forthright. He said that the IAF needs about two new squadrons of fighters a year just to arrest the decline in its combat mass. The service presently operates some 30 fighter squadrons of varying vintages, against a government-sanctioned strength of 42. The IAF today is smaller than at any point since 1962 - the last time India lost a war. The comparison is instructive, though hardly comforting. In 1962, the IAF had roughly 440 aircraft. The PAF had about 200, and the PLAAF about 2,300, of which perhaps 300-400 could realistically be brought to bear on India given the infrastructure and logistics on the Tibetan plateau, and the three air arms flew broadly contemporary machines. That meant a 2:1 numerical advantage over Pakistan and local parity with China. Against a force twice its size in the east, the IAF could still count on a favourable correlation at the point of contact.Neither margin exists today. The PAF fields around 440 fighters to the IAF's roughly 550. The PLAAF is well above 2,200 aircraft, including a growing fleet of stealthy J-20s, and some 200 long-range bombers. The Western Theatre Command hosts only about 300 combat aircraft, but that is cold comfort. Beijing would need to commit only a quarter of its air force to numerically overwhelm the IAF, and it could do so while still holding most of its strength in reserve. ACM AP Singh also flagged Pakistan's pursuit of Chinese stealth fighters, which erodes the qualitative edge the IAF has counted on against the PAF.The 180 Tejas Mk1A on order and 114 Rafale under negotiation will paper over some of these numerical cracks, if they arrive in a useful timeframe. What neither will do is close the technology gap to the Chinese J-20, or the upcoming J-36 and J-50 'sixth-generation' combat aircraft.The Case for Unmanned India has used loitering munitions and one-way attack drones in some form since the 1990s, and their use has expanded sharply in recent years, most notably in last May's Operation Sindoor. They are valuable, but they are essentially munitions. They will help on the strike side of the equation, but do nothing about the decline in combat mass or the gap in capability, especially against China.The Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) addresses both. Flown alongside a crewed 4th-generation fighter, it extends sensor and weapons reach, and it can act as a forward line that closes the distance to an enemy fifth-generation aircraft on terms the manned jet couldn't manage alone. It makes a Su-30MKI or Rafale more competitive against stealth, and it adds airframes in a way no near-term manned programme can.The catch, as always, is time. A CCA programme only works as a hedge if it delivers within years. If India spends a decade reinventing the wheel, the PLAAF and PAF will have moved on again.Doing the mathsAssuming a 60 per cent serviceability rate across roughly 550 manned aircraft gives about 330 available on a typical fighting day. Pair each with a CCA and your total requirement is around 330 airframes, plus reserves. At a unit cost of $25 million for high-end autonomous CCAs capable of reconnaissance, strike, and air combat, that is an $8.3 billion acquisition, or about Rs 80,000 crore. Compress it into a five-year run, since a longer one forfeits the time advantage, and the bill is $1.6 billion a year. That is about a quarter of the IAF's annual capital budget, which is about $6.6 billion. The numbers, of course, provide an incomplete picture. Sensors and weapons will add cost, and even a penny-pinching MOD will have to fund at least some 600 air-to-air missiles and a similar number of stand-off weapons for these aircraft. And can India build them at the rate required? Fielding 330 airframes in five years means 66 a year. HAL is slated to build the far less sophisticated HTT-40 basic trainer at 20 units a year. No Indian aerospace programme has ever run at the rate this implies, and it would likely require multiple production lines and private-sector participation from the outset.Start with the FlankerThe obvious near-term candidate for integration is the Su-30MKI 'Flanker' fleet. Every Flanker is two-seat and crewed with a weapon systems officer, who can manage a pair of CCAs without adding cockpit workload. A Flanker-only approach shrinks the requirement to around 175 CCAs, costing some $4.4 billion (about Rs 42,000 crore over five years, around an eighth of annual capex). The build rate falls to 35 units a year, which is more manageable but still unprecedented.There is a tactical trade-off to this more modest approach. If only the Flanker flies with CCAs, an adversary can assume CCAs are in play whenever it meets a Flanker and not whenever it meets anything else. Force-wide proliferation across types is the ideal. A Flanker-first start, with other types added in later tranches, is the realistic way to get there.The landscapeThe lead in the industrial landscape is with the USA. Shield AI's X-BAT, Anduril's Fury or General Atomics Vengeance, set the benchmark for uncrewed combat aircraft. But India is not exactly starting from zero. HAL's CATS Warrior is the ongoing public sector domestic effort. Meanwhile, NewSpace Research and Technologies (NRT) is developing the Abhimanyu CCA for the Navy, and could certainly be adapted for the Air Force. None of these are finished products, but they give the IAF a menu of capabilities - and a domestic base - to pick from.A price near $25 million also compels a mixed 'hi-lo' fleet. High-end CCAs for the most demanding missions, supplemented with cheaper attritable types to account for fiscal realities.A virtuous fiscal cycle?There is another advantage to adopting CCAs. Unmanned wingmen are cheaper to train with, because simulation can stand in for far more of the flying than it can for a manned fighter. Peacetime hours that would otherwise burn airframe life and pilot currency can be shifted into synthetic environments with better fidelity. Operating costs over the aircraft's life are certain to be lower than for a manned jet.Savings in revenue spending open up fiscal space in the IAF's budget, either for other revenue programmes that might otherwise get short shrift, or more capital allocation for the next round of acquisition, which gives the IAF more room to adapt as technology and the battlespace change. This is a virtuous cycle, but only if the first step is taken.Air Chief Marshal AP Singh is right when he says "technology delayed is technology denied." CCAs will not replace the manned jets the IAF needs, and at the required capability, they are not exactly cheap. But a commitment now can add reach and survivability at a cost the IAF can absorb, if India commits to building them at a pace it has never attempted. As with every policy suggestion for the IAF's numerical woes, the window to take action is constantly narrowing.(Angad Singh is an independent defence analyst and aviation photographer)Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author