After the long gestation period, India's new generation of airborne radar planes are finally making their way from paper to production. The Centre for Air Borne Systems (CAS) at the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) inked two separate deals on July 22, with both of them taking the AEW&C Mk-II programme closer to its execution stage as the organisation has worked over the past two decades to create the country's indigenous airborne surveillance capability. One is to be awarded to the erstwhile Air India maintenance wing, now part of the Tatas, named AI Engineering Services Limited, which will strip the six A321 aircraft down to their airframes and get them ready to be rebuilt for the military. The second, more significant one goes to Adani Defence Systems and Technologies Limited, which is named as the development-cum-production partner for the mission systems that will make these passenger jets flying command posts. They signed the contracts in Delhi in front of Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh, which were approved by the Cabinet Committee on Security a year ago with a budget of approximately Rs 19,000 crore, or about two billion dollars.

There is an incredible history behind the six aircraft that form the basis of this deal. They were commercial A321s operated by Air India till 2021-22 and then transferred to the Air Headquarters Communication Squadron for just such a transformation. AIESL will then strip them out and convert their interiors and cabins into the programme's "green configuration" radar platforms. After that, Adani's team takes over to fit-in a mission suite in which it used a derivative of DRDO's indigenously developed Uttam active electronically scanned array radar, secure communicational links and command-and-control software developed by CABS. The base platforms will continue to be supplied by the original equipment manufacturer Airbus Defence and Space and, following the installation of the systems, the aircraft will undergo a combined flight-test programme with the Indian Air Force and then be handed over for certification by the Centre for Military Airworthiness and by its sister organisation, Directorate General of Aeronautical Quality Assurance, which is part of the Directorate General of Defence Standards. A gestation period of 2032-33 is pencilled in for induction, telling you how long this category of aircraft requires, even with political will and money.

The private-sector angle makes this deal a little more than a passing press note from the defence ministry. The mission-system integration work on this large airborne platform is on an entirely new contract for Adani Defence, which has been developing the aerospace business for several years now and had already acquired some work on India's VSHORAD missile programme. That's a real achievement, not just a slogan, for a government which has been peddling the idea of Aatmanirbhar Bharat in defence manufacturing for a decade. It also marks the progress of the Development-cum-Production Partner concept of India's ministry of Defence: If it is accepted that over any two-billion-dollar programme, a small, new private company can own a mission-critical portion, with all its repercussions on the order book and the stock markets, then it is a significant shift in New Delhi's thinking on the subject.

The need for the programme is more apparent when reflected in the numbers of the region. India operates about five or six airborne early warning planes: three old Phalcon systems on Ilyushin Il-76s purchased from Israel many years ago and a couple of smaller Netra Mk-1s developed by Brazil's Embraer on their ERJ-145 jet.Today, India has around five to six airborne early warning planes, comprising three old Phalcon systems on Ilyushin Il-76 airframes, acquired decades ago, and a handful of smaller Netra Mk-1s, developed by Embraer of Brazil and based on the ERJ-145 jet, capable of only 240-degree radar coverage. Meanwhile, Pakistan has been rumoring for an acquisition of the more capable Chinese KJ-500, and is believed to be using 10-13 platforms of Swedish Saab 2000 Erieye aircraft and Chinese ZDK-03s, while incurring losses of two or three Erieye aircraft during last year's Operation Sindoor clashes. Both neighbours are dwarfed by China, with the estimate of as many as 50 aircraft in the KJ-500, KJ-200 and KJ-2000 families, with a new KJ-3000 still being tested. In that context, a fleet of six new Mk-II aircraft with near all-round coverage of more than 300 degrees and detection range of beyond 500 kilometres, is not a luxury upgrade, it is New Delhi trying to fill an uncomfortably wide gap in its capability that officials and independent analysts alike have pointed to, for a country with over 15,000 kilometres of land border and more than 7,000 kilometres of coastline to keep an eye on.

There's a sound argument to doubt that as well. The programme has been in discussion in various forms since mid-2000s, the induction of the aircraft has been postponed from years ago and the 2032-33 date for induction will leave India's frontline surveillance gap for a good decade after this week's signing. DRDO is attempting to fill that gap with an updated version of Netra (Mk-1A) with gallium-nitride radar, but that's a temporary fix rather than a cure. Whether the mission-systems team of Adani, which is new to this size of programme, is able to meet the delivery schedule in this contract will be the larger test. In Indian defence procurement, it's not the lack of money and intent that hinders, it's the lack of execution.