AMCA's Real Challenge Isn't Stealth. It's Management

Key points· Video

• India's Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft, or AMCA, is usually discussed as a fifth-generation stealth fighter: low observable design, internal weapons bays, sensor fusion, advanced engines, and all the cool stuff that makes defence nerds sit up straighter.
• But this episode of In Our Defence asks a slightly different question: is AMCA really about building a plane or about building the factory, institutions, and accountability structure needed to make that plane real?
• The Ministry of Defence's AMCA tender lays out an ambitious plan to rope in a private-sector industrial partner in order to create a fifth-generation aerospace manufacturing ecosystem.
• But then comes the big gap: who is the real project manager?
• ADA owns the design.