HAL Nashik unit cranks up to 24 Tejas light combat aircraft a year

Discover how HAL races to deliver 180 Mk 1As in under a decade, ramping up production to meet rising demand

Hindustan Aeronautics (HAL), the lead integrator of the indigenous Tejas light combat aircraft (LCA), is grappling with an unusual predicament: a problem of plenty.

Plenty of orders, that is.

After taking more than two decades to build and induct the first 40 Tejas Mark 1 fighters, HAL must now produce and induct the next 180 Tejas Mark 1As — the new, more capable variant of the Tejas Mark 1 — in less than a decade.

This will require HAL to accelerate its current production rates, dramatically scaling up the rate at which it will churn out the new Tejas Mark