India Opens $12B Tenders for 60 Transport Aircraft and 150 Advanced Jet Trainers

India's Ministry of Defence has opened two aircraft competitions within days of each other, together worth an estimated $12 billion: a request for proposals issued on 12 August 2026 for 60 medium transport aircraft, and a request for information for 150 advanced jet trainers. Both are structured to be built in India.

The transport requirement, valued at roughly $10.5 billion, covers aircraft in the 18 to 30 tonne payload class. It is open only to Indian companies, which must form joint ventures with a foreign manufacturer; the first 12 aircraft would be delivered fully assembled and the remainder produced domestically at around 60 percent local content. A contract is expected within 12 to 16 months and deliveries within 60 months of signature. Mahindra Defence is expected to bid Embraer's C-390 Millennium and Tata Advanced Systems the Lockheed Martin C-130J Super Hercules, while Hindustan Aeronautics has been examining a revival of the Russian Il-214 project.

The aircraft they would replace is the An-32. The Indian Air Force still operates 103 of the Soviet-designed twin-turboprops, by far its most numerous transport type, ahead of 20 Il-76s, 12 C-130Js and 11 C-17 Globemaster IIIs. The type entered Indian service in the mid-1980s.

The trainer competition, worth about $1.8 billion, targets the Stage-III phase of fighter pilot training. The 150 aircraft would replace the Hawk Mk 132, of which India operates 102 in the air force and 17 more in the Indian Navy, and which entered service in February 2008. The requirement specifies fly-by-wire flight controls, a glass cockpit with configurable hands-on-throttle-and-stick controls, integration of India's NavIC satellite navigation system, zero-zero ejection seats and automatic recovery from uncontrolled flight.

Responses to the request for information are due by 5 October, with a request for proposals not expected before December 2027 and first deliveries unlikely before the middle of the next decade. Hindustan Aeronautics is offering its HLFT-42 design; foreign candidates include Leonardo's M-346 Master, Korea Aerospace Industries' T-50 Golden Eagle and the Boeing-Saab T-7 Red Hawk. As with the transports, foreign bidders must show how manufacturing and technology work would move to India.

The training pipeline matters because of what sits at the end of it. India fields 2,217 military aircraft across its three services, including Su-30MKI, Rafale and domestically built Tejas fighters, and ranks fourth among the strongest militaries in the world. Delays in replacing intermediate trainers have previously been blamed for accident rates during the transition to supersonic types. Neither program will deliver aircraft this decade.