India’s LCA vs. Korea’s FA-50: A Case Study in Aerospace Success and Failure

Article Summary: India’s Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) and South Korea’s FA-50 represent two distinct paths in national fighter jet development. India’s LCA, initiated in 1984, faced significant delays due to excessive reliance on state-owned enterprises, limited private-sector involvement, and government bureaucracy, entering service decades late with limited production and no exports.

Key Point You Should Know: Conversely, South Korea’s FA-50, developed from the late 1990s with robust government support and strong U.S. partnerships, entered service quickly and successfully secured multiple international sales.

-This disparity underscores how streamlined government-industry collaboration, clear strategic vision, and leveraging international partnerships significantly impact a nation’s aerospace industry’s growth and global competitiveness.

Why South Korea’s FA-50 Fighter Succeeded While India’s LCA Struggled

In the 1980s, two nations were interested in building their own fighter aircraft. Most of these nations discussed establishing license production of a US-made aircraft in their home country.

A license program was always seen as the first step toward someday having its own indigenously developed combat aircraft production program.

Examples are South Korea, which began assembling its F-16s purchased under a foreign sales contract from the US in 1989, and Turkey, which had signed a similar licence-production agreement two years before.

Almost the only countries developing a production for their own locally designed and built fighters at the time were the Republic of China (ROC) Taiwan, and India.

The ROC was literally a special case, designing its own Chiang Ching-kuo F-CK-1 fighter with considerable assistance from the US.

In the 1980s, India was the only nation trying to create its aircraft using indigenous industrial capacity, relying on its long-standing state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL), comprised of several divisions and other associated state-run partner companies.

The Light Combat Aircraft

Initially conceived by the Indian industry in 1984, the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) was developed to replace the sizeable fleet of aging Russian MiG-21s in service with the Indian Air Force (IAF). However, it is from the date above until 2001, before the aircraft’s first flight.

Upon the aircraft taking to the air only in 2003, the LCA was given the moniker “Tejas,” which to the American ear sounds Spanish but means “radiance” in the ancient Indian tongue of Sanskrit. Despite this early 2000s flight, it will take until 2023 to establish multiple production lines and reach a production rate of 24 aircraft per year.

The aircraft has since been through a re-design and other refinement. What is now designated as the LCA MKII will only be in service with the Indian Air Force (IAF) this year.

The force is planning to procure a total of 324 aircraft at this point, and despite what HAL describes as “interest” from other nations in the region, it has no export orders.

“HAL can talk about prospects for selling this aircraft to foreign buyers,” said an Indian aerospace analyst with close ties to the IAF. “But with little to no history of India being able to support exported weapons with after-market servicing, it is hard to see a country taking that risk.

Another World: KAI’s FA-50

Further to the east, Korean Aerospace Industries (KAI) in South Korea started developing what is today the FA-50 much later in the late 1990s—fifteen years after the LCA did in India.

Development moved swiftly with the maiden flight of the initial version, the T-50 supersonic trainer model, occurring in 2002.

It entered service with the South Korean Air Force (ROKAF) only three years later, in 2005.

In comparison with the zero foreign sales of the Indian LCA, either the KAI trainer model T-50 version or the full-on combat-capable FA-50 derivative has been exported to six nations so far: Indonesia, Iraq, Philippines, Thailand, Poland, and Malaysia.

The Polish sale is particularly significant as it is a NATO nation. The sale to Poland is the first for the aircraft to a member of a Western military alliance. It is also the first aircraft version fitted with the RTX PhantomStrike Active Electronically Scanning Array (AESA) radar.

Representing the current apex of this technology, the array is equipped with transmit/receive modules (TRMs) based on Gallium Nitride (GaN).

So why is there such a disparity in the development timelines of the two aircraft despite very similar program objectives and considerable resources in both nations? It is primarily a function of the South Korean (ROK) government being foursquare behind the TA-50/FA-50 development. The ROK military leadership ensured that it had all the possible technological and industrial benefits of the partnerships that had already existed with the US for decades.

Conversely, India had been in a cooperative relationship with the USSR and then later independent Russia. In contrast with South Korea, there was little that Indian industry could derive from the years of procuring Russian military aircraft that could be applied to the LCA, and the Indian government, at times, did more to retard rather than enhance the aircraft’s development.

An Indian assessment of the program reads that the LCA had contributed to the nation’s aerospace industrial development, its slow pace and limited production numbers are symptoms of “the lack of private-sector involvement” in the aerospace complex, “excessive reliance on public-sector undertakings and bureaucratic red tape.”

About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson 

Reuben F. Johnson is a survivor of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and is now an Expert on Foreign Military Affairs with the Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego in Warsaw.  He has been a consultant to the Pentagon, several NATO governments and the Australian government in the fields of defense technology and weapon systems design.  Over the past 30 years he has resided in and reported from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Brazil, the People’s Republic of China and Australia.