In recent days, there has been buzz in the Indian news media of New Delhi potentially joining France’s next-generation fighter program, the Future Combat Air System (FCAS). Considering that India is France’s top importer of big-ticket defence solutions – flagshipped by the Dassault Rafale, of which Paris submitted a proposal to sell another 114 to the Indian Air Force (IAF) – this development should have been expected.
Indeed, even as far back as 2018, this author forecasted that (after India withdrew from the Russian Su-57, then known as PAK-FA) India could seek the Rafale M for the Indian Navy (IN) requirement, the 114-unit Multi-Role Fighter Aircraft (MRFA) program, and the FCAS:
Remarkably, the FCAS is well-positioned to takeover the FGFA. First, the FCAS intends to substantially improve upon the capabilities of the Typhoon and Rafale, thus justifying the expense of the program over existing solutions. Second, Dassault can leverage India’s potential scale to entice German approval, thus ensuring that a decline in orders in Europe do not make the FCAS unviable from a procurement standpoint. Third, Dassault can offer India the FCAS as a carrot to secure the current bid for 110 new multi-role fighters with the Rafale. Fourth, Dassault can even extend the FCAS to the Indian Navy – again, incentivizing India to procure additional Rafales while also guaranteeing scale for the naval FCAS variant. Fifth, leverage New Delhi’s fiscal strength to guard the program from potential fiscal lapses in Europe. Sixth, access to India’s scale and industry could make the FCAS more competitive in terms of cost, thus opening access to third-party markets in the Middle East and East Asia.
The full article is available to Quwa Plus and Pro customers. By March 2026, India’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) disclosed that the IAF is evaluating two consortium pathways: France’s FCAS and the UK-led Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP). Quwa’s more recent analysis spelled out why India emerged as the ideal target partner for both programs.
This analysis will discuss where both the IAF and its neighbour, the Pakistan Air Force (PAF), will likely head with their respective next-generation fighter aircraft (NGFA) programs. But the short of it is that when reviewing the corpus of statements, domestic industry trends, and the desired capabilities, both air arms essentially want an accessible NGFA platform. Basically, both air arms want a large aircraft that would form the nucleus of a wider system-of-systems architecture involving small and large drones, special mission aircraft, and other assets.
However, how each country gets to their respective NGFA platform will be different, and those differences really speak to the inherent qualities and limitations of each power.
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