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India’s Ministry of Defence controlled Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL) and Russia’s Rosoboronexport and Sukhoi signed a contract todday for the preliminary design of the Indo-Russian Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA).
The FGFA aircraft to be jointly developed is termed Perspective Multi-role Fighter (PMF). The PMF draws upon the basic structural and system design of the Russian FGFA Technology Demonstrator PAK-FA with modifications to meet the more stringent specifications of the Indian Air Force.
The fighter will have advanced features such as stealth, supercruise, ultra-manoeuvrability, highly integrated avionics suite, enhanced situational awareness, internal carriage of weapons and Network Centric Warfare capabilities.
The broad scope of bilateral cooperation during the joint project covers the design and development of the PMF, its production-ising, and joint marketing to third countries. Options include the design and development of a twin-seater variant and the integration of an advanced engine with higher thrust at a later stage.
With an expected outlay running in to the hundreds of billions, the total cost including options and the value of production aircraft will make FGFA/PMF, the biggest defence programme in the history of India.
