The government has incurred an expenditure of nearly Rs 1,500 crore in the preliminary design stage of the Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft project, but is yet to sign the contract for research and development with Russia.
In a written reply to Rajya Sabha, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said the preliminary design stage of the FGFA programme has been completed in June 2013 based on contract signed in December 2010 with the Russian side.
As per the Inter Governmental Agreement, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) is the designated implementation organisation from Indian side. In turn, HAL is supported by DRDO, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and other Indian agencies.
"The expenditure incurred so far on preliminary design stage of FGFA programme is Rs 1,483.15 crore," Parrikar said.
The next stage of development of FGFA will commence upon signing of the Research and Development contract.
As per the draft R&D contract, the delivery of FGFA to Indian Air Force has been envisaged to commence 94 months from the start of R&D contract.
"The contract has not been signed yet," Parrikar said.
According to defence sources, final R&D contract, which was to be signed by 2012, is still to be finalised. The contract would pave the way for prototype development and flight testing.
Though India is investing 50 per cent of the cost of the multi-billion dollar programme, its work share in the research and development and other aspects of the programme has come down to only around 13 per cent, something which Indian officials were not happy about.
They say this will impact India's indigenous capabilities to develop such an advanced fighter aircraft. However, sources say this roadblock has been removed.
The sources also said that there are issues related to other aspects of the plane too.
The FGFA project is based on the Russian Air Force's Sukhoi T-50 PAK-FA platform. The Indian version will be tweaked to add some more advanced features. The total programme is expected to cost India about USD 25-30 billion.
