Aero India 2023: Argentina, Egypt keen on buying Tejas

BENGALURU: Argentina and Egypt have evinced interest in HAL's Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas even as the defence PSU's bid to sell them to Royal Malaysian Air force (RMFA) is set to suffer a setback with Malaysia likely to pick South Korean supersonic fighter KAI FA-50.

Sounding confident of Tejas' export potential, HAL CMD CB Ananthakrishnan said that they had some very good leads for the aircraft from various countries.
"Argentina and Egypt have definitely shown interest. Argentina also has seen two teams visit us and they are quite convinced about the product and happy about the product details. Their air force team has come and also flown the aircraft. So, we are pursuing Argentina and want to start some sort of a relationship building. A contract is likely to get signed," he said.
Ananthakrishnan said while Argentina was in discussion for around 15 LCAs, Egypt had been given a proposal for around 20 aircraft. "We are yet to hear from them, but further discussions will take place," he added.
HAL, which had submitted a proposal to the Malaysian ministry of defence for supply of 18 Fighter Lead-in Trainer (FLIT) LCAs against a global tender issued by RMAF in October 2021, was among eight countries to respond to RMFA's tender. Tejas was later among the two, the other being KIA FA-50, to be shortlisted by Malaysia.
"...We were very hopeful of getting the contract from Malaysia, given that we were among the two shortlisted companies out of eight that participated. But there has been a slight setback in the sense that it looks like the other company is getting the order. Although we have not got anything in black-and-white (writing), what we are hearing now is that Malaysia may select the Korean plane," he said.
He added that notwithstanding the recent developments, HAL continues to make efforts. Further, sweetening the deal, HAL, as part of the offsets, also offered to set up an MRO (maintenance, repair and overhaul) complex, offer aviation management courses and local manufacturing of aero structures with Malaysian entities aimed at enabling human capital development and strengthen capabilities of Malaysian entities for other programmes too.
Being one of the largest producers of Russian-origin Su-30 aircraft, HAL has even said it could extend support to RMAF for Su-30 MKM fleet, which is facing low serviceability issues due to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine crisis.
Healthy order book
On HAL's financial condition, he said: "We are in a very comfortable and happy frame of mind. In the last three years, the push for Atmanirbhar Bharat and changing geopolitical situation have seen good tidings for the defence ecosystems of the country in general and HAL in particular." As on date, he said, HAL had an order book worth Rs 84,000 crore, while orders worth another Rs 50,000 crore were in the pipeline.