Battle for the Skies: Who Will Replace the AN-32?
Battle for the Skies: Who Will Replace the AN-32? Photograph: (ANI | Representative Image)
India has floated a ₹1 lakh crore tender for 60 multi-role transport aircraft to replace its ageing AN-32 fleet. The programme will prioritise domestic production, with 48 aircraft to be built in India, strengthening the IAF’s airlift capabilities and boosting defence manufacturing.
The Government of India has opened one of the biggest defence purchases in the country's history. A tender worth about one lakh crore rupees has been floated for sixty multi-role transport aircraft. These planes will modernise the transport fleet of the Indian Air Force. What makes this tender special is that it is open not only to Hindustan Aeronautics Limited but also to private Indian companies. This shows a intention to build such aircraft at home and to strengthen our tactical and strategic airlift power for the next several decades.
To understand why this is needed, we must look at the Antonov AN-32. For nearly forty years this Russian-origin plane has been the backbone of medium transport work in the Air Force. Around 125 of them joined service from 1984 onwards, and each can carry six to seven tonnes of load. They have done almost every job asked of them: carrying soldiers, dropping cargo by parachute, shifting the injured, helping during floods and earthquakes, running daily supply runs and supporting special missions. In the cold heights of Ladakh they fed forward posts. Over Siachen they have made life-saving airdrops. In the North-East, where proper roads were rare through the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, these aircraft kept far-off drop zones and small landing grounds alive. Their service has been outstanding. But age spares nobody. The instruments inside are now old-fashioned, the lifting ability has fallen, and keeping them serviceable has become a daily struggle.
India did try to give these planes a longer life. In 2009 an agreement was signed with Ukraine, the original maker, to upgrade 105 AN-32s. Some aircraft did receive the promised improvements. But after the Russia-Ukraine conflict began in 2014 over Crimea, the work could not be completed. So today the fleet is only partly modernised and continues to grow older. The Air Force has now decided that patchwork will not help. A full replacement is the only answer.
In other categories, new aircraft are already arriving. Fifty-six Airbus C-295s are replacing the old Avro HS-748 planes. Sixteen came ready-made from abroad, while the remaining forty are being built at a new factory in Vadodara. The first fully Indian-made C-295 has completed its test flights and joined service. Indian content in it began near 35 per cent, has already touched 40 to 45 per cent, and is expected to reach 70 per cent. The Air Force also flies twelve C-130J Super Hercules bought in 2011, which lift about nineteen tonnes. For heavier loads there is the C-17 Globemaster, carrying seventy to eighty tonnes, and the older IL-76 of the mid-1980s, carrying around forty tonnes.
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The present plan began in 2022, when the Air Force sought eighty multi-role transport aircraft and issued a Request for Information. Later the requirement was fixed at a payload band of eighteen to thirty tonnes. Three aircraft are now in the race: the Lockheed Martin C-130, the Embraer C-390 Millennium and the Airbus A400M. Indian firms have already picked their partners. Tata has joined hands with Lockheed Martin and wants to build the C-130 here. Mahindra has tied up with Embraer for the C-390. Airbus, which already works with Tata Advanced Systems on the C-295, has said it is ready to make the A400M in India.
As Air Marshal Sanjeev Kapoor has rightly pointed out, the chosen aircraft must perform dependably in every Indian condition — short high-altitude strips, hot coastal belts, damp tropical air, bare airfields and half-prepared runways — while staying affordable and easy to support for forty long years.
Each contender has its own strength. The C-130 is already known to Indian crews and has proved itself in real missions, including evacuations from Afghanistan and Yemen, so it would be easiest to absorb. The C-390 comes at a competitive price and carries about twenty-six tonnes. The A400M is the strongest of the three, lifting thirty to thirty-five tonnes and easing the load on the tired IL-76 fleet, but it is also the costliest.
The conditions of the tender clearly reflect Make in India and Atmanirbhar Bharat. Only twelve aircraft will come in fly-away condition. The remaining forty-eight must be built on Indian soil. Complete maintenance, repair and overhaul facilities will also be set up here. Indigenous content is fixed at sixty per cent, with Indian companies placed in the supply chain from day one. Even licensing and export rights are to be settled at the start, so that India can one day sell such aircraft to other nations.
Besides paradrops, casualty evacuation, assault landing and troop movement, the new aircraft must also serve the Army by carrying light armoured vehicles like the BMP-2 Sarath and artillery guns straight to forward posts. This programme is not merely about buying planes. It is about building a self-reliant fleet for the next forty years.
