I almost think that India just needs to look for saboteurs in their LCA program at this point. There is absolutely no external reasons Tejas hasn’t scaled production. These debates about solutions span back to the 90’s. Tejas has limped along since the prototypes started flying. Before the prototypes the program moved quickly. Even the Kaveri engine problems didn’t really stall the program until prototypes started appearing. Is it really the Indian industrial machine broken or is their military being undermined? Just too many coincidences for this much human ineptitude.
I’d love to see F-16 fly for India. But unless it’s the big wing version (I.e. F-2A) and a General Electric engine, I’m not so sure it’s worthwhile. They would almost be better off buying Mirage 2000 plans and build them. The F100-powered F-16 would mean yet another foreign logistical line of supply, whereas they already work with GE and the F404IN. The regular wing is pretty much no improvement over LCA. The big wing at least has four heavy duty hard points free when flying with droptank. Sure they could use CFT, but you didn’t improve the real issue, high wingloading.
In no way am I saying they need F-2A. That is not actually a true F-16, rather it’s Japan’s own iteration of F-16 with a heavily modified forward body compared to the standard F-16. Japan created it’s own flight control system for F-2A which dramatically raised costs. But Japan also wanted total software control, to customize loads, too. India basically would need to do something similar to use Astra, Kh-31, and any non-US or indigenous weapons.
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