The Tejas Light Combat Aircraft Flew for the First Time on 4 January 2001 and Now Has 180 Mk1A Fighters on Order from HAL for the Indian Air Force

On 25 September 2025 the Ministry of Defence signed a contract with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) for 97 Tejas Mk1A fighters, at a cost of over ₹62,370 crore excluding taxes. With the 83 aircraft ordered in 2021, the Indian Air Force (IAF) now has 180 Mk1A jets on order from the company. The first Tejas prototype flew on 4 January 2001.

The Tejas is a single-engine, tailless fighter with a compound delta wing, designed by the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA), an autonomous society of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), with HAL as principal partner and production agency. ADA’s own brochure calls it the smallest and lightest multi-role supersonic fighter of its class. This article follows it from the first prototype to the current order book, using Press Information Bureau (PIB) releases, HAL’s own filings and the engine maker’s statements.

A programme with no base to build on

The Ministry of Defence’s 2016 background note says the Tejas team started with “no infrastructure base and negligible technological base” for building a modern combat aircraft. Full Scale Engineering Development, the stage that turns a design into flying aircraft, was sanctioned in April 1993. The first Technology Demonstrator, TD1, made its maiden flight on 4 January 2001.

The first phase closed on 31 March 2004 with its technology goals met. Four aircraft (TD1, TD2, PV1 and PV2) had been built within the money sanctioned for two, according to the same note. The aircraft was named Tejas in 2003, the PIB records. In November 2001 the government had already approved a second phase to build operational prototypes and the infrastructure to produce eight aircraft a year.

Clearances, orders and the first squadron

The IAF placed its first order in 2006, for 20 aircraft in Initial Operational Clearance (IOC) configuration, and a second in December 2010 for 20 in Final Operational Clearance (FOC) configuration. The 2018 Rajya Sabha reply that records both gives their values as ₹2,701.70 crore (revised to ₹2,812.91 crore) and ₹5,989.39 crore.

IOC came on 20 December 2013. The first series-production aircraft had its maiden flight on 30 September 2014 and reached the IAF on 17 January 2015.

No 45 Squadron, the Flying Daggers, started flying the Tejas on 1 July 2016. The PIB release for the day calls the Tejas the first advanced fly-by-wire fighter designed, developed and manufactured in India. FOC followed on 20 February 2019, adding beyond-visual-range missiles, air-to-air refuelling and more air-to-ground weapons. Fifteen months later, on 27 May 2020, No 18 Squadron, the Flying Bullets, received Tejas Mk1 FOC aircraft at Air Force Station Sulur, near Coimbatore.

The aircraft has also been shown abroad. PIB lists flying displays at LIMA 2019 in Malaysia, the 2021 Dubai Air Show and the 2022 Singapore Air Show, and says Exercise Desert Flag in the United Arab Emirates in March 2023 was the Tejas’ first exercise on foreign soil. On 25 November 2023 the Prime Minister flew a sortie in a twin-seat Tejas at Bengaluru, which PIB described as a first for an Indian Prime Minister.

What the Mk1A adds, and what was ordered

The Mk1A is the upgraded version. The Cabinet Committee on Security approved the first batch on 13 January 2021: 73 Mk1A fighters and 10 Mk1 trainers for ₹45,696 crore, plus ₹1,202 crore for design and infrastructure. The contract, handed to HAL at Aero India on 3 February 2021, is valued at close to ₹48,000 crore, which PIB called the largest defence contract for indigenous manufacture to that date.

PIB lists four capabilities for the variant: an Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar, which steers its beam electronically, beyond-visual-range missiles, an electronic warfare suite and air-to-air refuelling. It was the first combat aircraft bought under the “Buy (Indian-IDDM)” category, meaning designed, developed and manufactured in India. The 2021 release put indigenous content at 50 percent, rising to 60 percent by the end of the programme, with about 250 of the 344 fitted systems made in India and about 500 Indian companies, MSMEs included, working with HAL.

The September 2025 contract covers 68 single-seat fighters and 29 twin-seaters. Its indigenous content is over 64 percent, with 67 more items than the 2021 contract. PIB names the indigenously developed UTTAM AESA radar, the Swayam Raksha Kavach self-protection system and control surface actuators among them. About 105 Indian companies make components directly, and PIB expects close to 11,750 direct and indirect jobs a year for six years.

The 2021 contract was for 83 aircraft and the 2025 one is for 97. Add the 40 Mk1 aircraft ordered in 2006 and 2010 and the figure is 220 Tejas on order across four contracts. That total is tuput’s arithmetic from the PIB numbers, not an official count.

Where the aircraft is built

HAL assembles the Tejas on two lines in Bengaluru and, since 17 October 2025, a third at Nashik. The Defence Minister opened the Nashik line that day and flagged off the first Mk1A built there. PIB’s year-end review says HAL set it up in two years, with more than 30 structure assembly jigs, and that it can build eight aircraft a year, taking HAL’s total capacity to 24 a year.

Private firms now make whole structures. On 30 May 2025 VEM Technologies in Hyderabad handed over the first centre fuselage, which PIB described as the first major Tejas sub-assembly built by a private Indian company. HAL has also placed orders for major modules with Larsen and Toubro, Alpha Tocol Engineering Services, Tata Advanced Systems and Lakshmi Machine Works. HAL has partnered with more than 6,300 Indian vendors, 2,448 of them MSMEs, PIB said in May 2025.

For the wider story of how India went from buying its fighters to building them, see India’s shift from defence importer to maker.

The engine and the delivery schedule

The Tejas flies on the American GE F404-GE-IN20 engine. GE Aerospace announced on 19 August 2021 that HAL had ordered 99 of them for $716 million and that GE would deliver all 99 by 2029. GE’s own account says it had delivered 65 F404-IN20 engines for the earlier aircraft by 2016, restarted a production line that had been dormant for five years, and delivered the first of the 99 on 25 March 2025.

On 7 November 2025 HAL signed a further agreement with General Electric for 113 F404-GE-IN20 engines and a support package for the 97-aircraft order, with deliveries from 2027 to 2032, according to PIB’s year-end review.

The aircraft schedule has moved more than once. The 2021 release said all 83 aircraft would arrive within eight years, three in the third year and 16 a year after that. A June 2023 PIB release expected deliveries to begin in February 2024. On HAL’s earnings call of 15 May 2026, its chairman and managing director said six engines had arrived from GE and the aircraft fitted with them were flying. He described the remaining testing as refinements and said HAL hoped to begin deliveries by August or September 2026. HAL expected about 20 more engines from GE during the year and aimed to deliver about 20 aircraft, and said the new Uttam radar was not part of the 83-aircraft programme but is planned for the 97. This article could not confirm a handover to the IAF after that call.

For the 97-aircraft order, The Week reported on 14 September 2026 that a defence ministry document gives September 2027 to September 2033 as the delivery window.

The PIB year-end review for 2025 also records that a Tejas crashed during an aerial display at the Dubai Air Show in November 2025, and that Wing Commander Namansh Syal died of his injuries.

Export enquiries

A written reply to the Lok Sabha on 5 August 2022 sets out the record. HAL answered a request for information from the Royal Malaysian Air Force in February 2019 and, in October 2021, a request for proposals for 18 fighter lead-in trainer aircraft, offering the twin-seat Tejas. The reply named Argentina, Australia, Egypt, the United States, Indonesia and the Philippines as other countries that had shown interest.

The sources opened for this article record no signed Tejas export contract. For the sector’s overall export figures, see India’s defence exports, and for the wider relationship that includes the engine supply, what India and the United States each gain from their defence and technology ties.

The Mk2

The Mk2 is the planned next version, with a different engine, the GE F414. PIB’s release on the Prime Minister’s November 2023 visit to HAL says the F414 will be built in India with an 80 percent transfer of technology, under a memorandum of understanding signed with GE. A PIB reply in the Rajya Sabha in December 2019 had said that induction and production could start only after successful development and test flights.

On the 15 May 2026 call HAL’s chairman said structures for the Mk2 were being assembled and that the aircraft should roll out in the last quarter of the financial year, by March 2027, with some design points still to be settled with ADA. He expected an IAF order about two years later, once the aircraft has flown.