Singh has raised the issue earlier as well. In January, while delivering a lecture, he had said that “technology delayed is technology denied”.”Production agencies have to invest in their advanced manufacturing processes so that the speed can increase. Upskilling their manpower and whatever they do, the scale of the production has to go up. Tejas, we started inducting in 2016,” he said, adding that the history of Tejas should be seen 1984 onwards when the aircraft was conceived.”First (Tejas) aircraft flew in 2001 — 17 years. Then, the induction started another 15 years later — 2016. Today, we are in 2024, I do not have the first 40 aircraft also. This is the production capability. We need to do something. I am very convinced that we need to get some private players in. We need to have competition. We need to have multiple sources available so that people are wary of losing their orders. Otherwise, things will not change,” he said in an address at the 21st Subroto Mukerjee Seminar.”R&D loses its relevance if it is not able to meet the timeline. Time is a very important thing. We need to give greater leeway to the researchers. There will be failures, let’s not be scared of failures. I think we are losing a lot of time because we are scared of failure…Defence is one sector where time is very important. If we don’t meet the timeline, technology is of no use,” he said.He had brought out that the force is yet to receive all 40 Tejas Mk1 jets ordered in 2010. The Indian Air Force currently operates only 36 Tejas Mk1 jets with deliveries of four pending.The next in line is 83 Tejas Mk1A jets, upgraded variants of the fighters currently in service, ordered in 2021. The delays in the deliveries of the Mk1A variants have been attributed largely to a hold-up in engine supplies from the US manufacturer General Electric, which was said to be facing its own supply-chain issues.Issues regarding the delay in supply of the engines have been raised by the Indian leadership with the US.
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