On September 25, 2025, in what was the biggest indigenous defence contract, India has ever placed – the Ministry of Defence (MoD) scripted history by commissioning Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) to supply 97 indigenously designed, developed & manufactured Tejas Mk-1A fighter aircraft—68 single-seaters and 29 twin-seaters—to the Indian Air Force (IAF). The Tejas Mk-1A is single-engine, multi-role fighter aircraft designed for air-to-air, air-to-ground, and reconnaissance missions. The Mk1A variant of the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) is an advanced version of the original Tejas aircraft, after numerous upgrades, including improved weapons integration, avionics, and electronic warfare capabilities.
As part of the current deal designed to replace the MiG-21s —numerically the largest fighter jet fleet in IAF history— the deliveries of the Mk-1A aircraft will begin in 2027–28 and conclude over six years. Significantly after MiG-21’s retirement, the IAF’s active fighter strength has slipped to 29 operational squadrons against an authorised 42—the lowest since the 1965 war.
Significantly, the Rs 62,370-crore contract for Tejas Mk-1A jets is the “mother of all indigenous defence deals” – much bigger that the Rs 48,000-crore contract for 83 Tejas Mk-1A jets in 2021 and Rs 45,000 crore Project-17A frigates (shipbuilding package) in 2015.
The “biggest HAL contract” for the advanced variant of the home-grown Tejas fighter jet under the Buy (India–IDDM) category will benefit more than 105 domestic vendors and generate around 11,750 direct and indirect jobs per year for the duration of the program.
Focus on Self-Reliance: The 67 indigenous items and their benefits
A critical element of this contract is its unwavering focus on boosting the indigenous content to over 64%—a significant increase compared to the initial 83 LCA Mk1A contract signed in 2021. This monumental contract not only strengthens the IAF’s combat capabilities but also significantly boosts the “Aatmanirbhar Bharat” (self-reliant India) initiative by incorporating 67 additional indigenous components into the Tejas Mk1A platform to reduce dependency on foreign suppliers and nurture India’s domestic defence ecosystem.
While the detailed official item-by-item list of all 67 components remains classified, here is a list of some of the indigenous systems as well as description of their role and benefits:
Avionics (Approx. 25 items)
1. Uttam AESA Radar:
The UTTAM AESA Radar, developed by DRDO, is perhaps the most high-profile indigenous component. AESA technology provides superior target detection, tracking, and jamming resistance compared to older, mechanically scanned radars. Its multi-functionality allows for simultaneous air-to-air, air-to-ground, and sea-surface-search modes. Its biggest benefit is that it may eliminate the dependence on foreign suppliers and thus lay the foundation for India’s operational readiness and strategic independence. Being indigenous, its operating software can be constantly upgraded and tailored by Indian engineers to counter evolving threats and integrate seamlessly with other Indian-developed weapons and platforms.
2. Mission Display Systems:
Multi-function cockpit displays for situational awareness. These multi-function cockpit displays provide critical real-time situational and tactical awareness. They integrate various sensor and mission data on intuitive displays, enabling the pilot to quickly grasp battlefield and flight conditions, facilitating better and faster decision-making.
3. Flight Data Recorder:
Records flight parameters for analysis. This system records detailed flight parameters continuously, which is crucial for analysing flight performance, safety investigations, and post-mission debriefings. It helps improve aircraft reliability and pilot training through data-driven insights.
4. Head-Up Display (HUD)
Project flight and targeting info on pilot’s windshield. The HUD projects essential flight and targeting information directly onto the pilot’s windshield. This reduces the need to look down at instruments, allowing the pilot to maintain focus on the external environment while accessing critical data, thereby enhancing pilot responsiveness and safety.
5. Air Data Computer
Calculates flight parameters such as speed, altitude. It processes measurements like speed, altitude, and air pressure with precision to provide accurate flight parameters. This aids in stable navigation, better flight performance, and safer aircraft handling in diverse conditions.
6. Digital Map Generator
Provides navigation and tactical maps. It displays navigation and tactical maps digitally within the cockpit, aiding navigation, mission planning, and threat assessment. This dynamic map capability enhances situational awareness and operational effectiveness.
7. Communication Radio Modules
Secure radio communication interfaces. These modules enable secure and reliable voice and data communications, essential for coordinated missions and command interaction. Advanced encryption and frequency-hopping ensure operational security in contested environments.
8. Cockpit HOTAS Controls:
Hands-on throttle and stick controls reduce pilot workload by allowing instant access to critical controls without removing hands from the controls. This translates to faster reaction times and improved manoeuvring during complex combat scenarios.
9. Digital IFF Transponder:
It identifies friendly aircraft to prevent fratricide and aids tactical decision-making by distinguishing between friend and foe, thus enhancing combat coordination and reducing misidentification risks.
10. Standby Flight Instruments:
These backup instruments provide essential flight data if primary avionic systems fail, ensuring pilot safety by maintaining basic flight control capabilities during emergencies.
11. Mission Computer:
It acts as the brain for processing tactical data and managing subsystems, enabling seamless integration, sensor fusion, and optimized combat performance. This enhances the fighter’s ability to execute complex missions efficiently.
12. Data Bus Interface Units:
These units facilitate digital connectivity among avionics systems, enabling fast, reliable information exchange and system interoperability for better aircraft performance.
13. Instrument Panel Controls:
Including switches and indicators, these provide ergonomic and intuitive pilot interfaces to manage aircraft systems, promoting operational efficiency.
14. Navigation Sensors:
GPS and inertial navigation systems provide precise, reliable aircraft positioning and navigation capabilities, critical for mission success and flight safety, even in GPS-denied environments.
15. Electronic Flight Instrument System (EFIS):
This digital display system consolidates flight data on clear, easy-to-read screens, enhancing pilot awareness and reducing cognitive load.
16. Cockpit Keyboard/Selector Panels:
These interface devices allow pilots to interact effectively with avionics systems, ensuring quick command inputs and system adjustments.
17. Onboard Oxygen Generation System (OBOGS):
Supplies continuous oxygen to the pilot, increasing mission endurance and operational safety by eliminating dependence on traditional oxygen tanks and reducing weight.
18. Virtual Reality Cockpit Simulators:
Offer realistic training environments for pilots to practice missions, system operations, and emergency procedures, improving preparedness and reducing training risk and costs.
19. Health Monitoring Interface:
Continuously monitors aircraft system health and performance, facilitating predictive maintenance that reduces downtime and enhances mission readiness.
20. Data Logger Modules:
Record subsystem operational data for diagnostics, aiding maintenance and forensic investigations to improve aircraft reliability.
21. Electronic Control Unit:
Manages power distribution and signal integration across avionics, ensuring consistent and reliable system operation.
22. Audio Control Panel:
Allows pilots to manage communication audio channels efficiently, enhancing situational awareness and reducing auditory distractions.
23. Display Processor Units:
Drive the cockpit display screens with high-resolution graphics to ensure mission-critical data is presented clearly and promptly.
24. Emergency Locator Transmitter:
Automatically transmits distress signals if the aircraft crashes or is in distress, enabling rapid search and rescue.
25. Cockpit Lighting Systems:
Provide adjustable and optimized lighting within the cockpit for visibility and comfort during all phases of operation, including night missions.
Electronic Warfare (EW) & Self-Protection (Approx. 12 items)
26. Swayam Raksha Kavach EW Suite:
This indigenous EW suite provides comprehensive electronic countermeasures protection by integrating advanced radar warning receivers and self-protection jammers. It enhances survivability by detecting, identifying, and jamming enemy radar and missile threats, ensuring the aircraft can operate effectively in contested electromagnetic environments.
27. DRDO Unified EW System:
This system offers integrated electronic attack and defence capabilities. It consolidates threat detection, signal processing, and countermeasure deployment, allowing the pilot to respond swiftly to hostile radar and missile systems, improving mission success and pilot safety.
28. Radar Warning Receiver (RWR):
The RWR detects and alerts the pilot to hostile radar emissions from enemy aircraft or surface-based systems. It enables early threat awareness, allowing evasive maneuvers or electronic countermeasures to be employed promptly.
29. Self-Protection Jammer Pods:
These pods actively jam enemy radar lock-ons and missile guidance systems. By disrupting targeting radars, they reduce the risk of being engaged and increase the pilot’s chances of survival in high-threat environments.
30. Angad EW Package:
This wideband interference system provides multi-spectrum electronic warfare capabilities, allowing the Tejas Mk1A to counter diverse radar threats using sophisticated signal jamming and deception techniques.
31. EW Sensor Arrays:
These detect electronic threats across a broad spectrum, offering comprehensive threat detection to keep the pilot informed and the aircraft protected against evolving enemy radars and sensors.
32. Digital EW Management Unit:
This unit centralizes control of all EW subsystems, optimizing the allocation of electronic attack and defence resources to maximize survivability and mission effectiveness.
33. Launcher Decoy Systems:
These deploy flares and chaff to mislead incoming infrared and radar-guided missiles, providing a physical layer of protection against enemy engagements.
34. EW Signal Processor:
It analyzes incoming threat signals to accurately identify and prioritize electronic threats. This processing capability is essential for deploying timely and effective countermeasures.
35. Receiver/Transmitter Modules:
These modules serve as the communication backbone for the EW system radios, enabling real-time data exchange and coordination within the aircraft’s EW suite.
36. EW Data Link Interface:
This link connects the EW system with broader mission systems, allowing coordinated responses to threats and integration with the aircraft’s tactical sensors and weapons.
37. EW Status Display:
Provides the pilot with real-time information on the health and status of the EW systems, ensuring operational readiness and enabling quick troubleshooting during missions.
Flight Controls (Approx. 8 items)
38. Digital Fly-by-Wire Flight Control Computer:
This high-performance computer processes flight control logic digitally, improving manoeuvrability and stability. Its software-based control allows precise handling and envelope protection features, preventing loss of control in extreme flight conditions.
39. Control Surface Actuators:
These actuators physically move the ailerons, rudder, and elevators, enabling the aircraft to perform necessary pitch, roll, and yaw manoeuvres. Their responsiveness ensures smooth, accurate control of the aircraft during diverse flight regimes.
40. Autopilot Computer:
Automates flight path control, reducing pilot workload during routine and complex missions. It maintains course, altitude, and speed, allowing pilots to focus on tactical decisions and situational awareness.
41. Flight Control Sensors:
Monitor the positions of control surfaces continuously, providing feedback to the flight control computer. This ensures flight commands are accurately executed and helps detect any control anomalies.
42. Stability Augmentation System:
Enhances flight stability by automatically making small control adjustments, especially in turbulent or demanding conditions. It supports safer and more controlled flight, improving pilot confidence.
43. Backup Flight Control Unit:
Provides critical redundancy by serving as a fallback control computer in case of main system failure. This redundancy is vital for ensuring continued control during emergencies, enhancing overall safety.
44. Flight Control Interface Modules:
Serve as communication links between sensors and actuators, ensuring real-time data transfer and synchronized system operations necessary for precise flight control.
45. Hydraulic Actuator Controllers:
Manage hydraulic system pressures that power control surface movements. They ensure smooth and reliable actuation under varying flight loads and speeds, critical for response and durability.
Propulsion & Systems (Approx. 8 items)
46. Hydraulic Power Supply Units:
These units provide the necessary hydraulic pressure to operate flight control surfaces, landing gear, and brakes efficiently. High-performance hydraulic systems ensure rapid, precise actuation for superior manoeuvrability and control.
47. Electrical Power Distribution Modules:
Manage the distribution and regulation of electrical power across various avionics and aircraft systems, ensuring consistent, reliable power delivery that enhances system stability and operational readiness.
48. Emergency Electrical Systems:
Provide backup power in case of primary system failure, maintaining critical avionics and flight controls functionality to enhance safety and survivability during emergencies.
49. Fuel Control and Sensors:
Precisely monitor and regulate fuel flow to the engine, optimizing fuel efficiency, endurance, and overall aircraft performance while ensuring safe propulsion system operation under varied flight conditions.
50. Onboard Oxygen Generation System Controller:
Oversees the continuous supply and regulation of oxygen to the pilot via OBOGS, increasing mission duration and pilot safety without the need for cumbersome oxygen tanks.
51. Cooling System Modules:
Manage the heat dissipation for avionics and engine components, preventing overheating, ensuring optimal performance, and enhancing system longevity especially during high-thrust and combat conditions.
52. Engine Interface Control Units:
Facilitate real-time communication and control between the aircraft’s propulsion system and avionics, allowing efficient engine management and integration with flight control systems for enhanced performance.
53. Environmental Control Systems:
Maintain comfortable cockpit conditions by regulating temperature, cabin pressure, and ventilation, reducing pilot fatigue and enabling operation at high altitudes and varied climates.
Weapons/Mission Integration (Approx. 7 items)
54. Weapons Management Computer:
This critical system centrally controls the targeting, weapon selection, and firing sequences. It ensures precise and timely deployment of offensive and defensive weapons, optimizing mission success under complex combat conditions.
55. Missile Pylon Interface Units:
These units securely connect various missile types and other ordinance to the aircraft’s pylons. They facilitate power, data, and release mechanism integration, enabling the use of a wide array of weaponry.
56. Dual-Store Adapters:
Allow multiple weapons to be mounted on a single pylon, increasing the fighter’s weapons payload capacity and flexibility without requiring additional hardpoints.
57. Targeting Pod Interface:
Integrates laser and infrared targeting pods with avionics systems, enhancing precision strike capabilities and allowing for accurate target identification and engagement in all weather conditions.
58. Reconnaissance Data Link:
Transmits sensor and targeting data in real time to ground stations or other assets, improving intelligence sharing, situational awareness, and coordinated operations.
59. Missile Launch Controllers:
Manage the safe and reliable ignition and release of missiles. Their precise control ensures that weapons are deployed at the right moment with adherence to safety protocols.
60. Integrated Fire Control Radar Interface:
Synchronizes radar tracking data with weapon systems, enabling efficient target acquisition, tracking, and engagement with high accuracy, critical for modern air combat effectiveness.
Structural/Airframe & Support (Approx. 7 items)
61. Airframe Subassemblies:
Structural panels and bulkheads form the aircraft’s backbone, providing rigidity, strength, and aerodynamic shape. The extensive use of composite materials ensures a lighter yet stronger airframe, enhancing manoeuvrability, reducing fatigue cracks, and improving fuel efficiency.
62. Canopy Severance System:
This emergency canopy jettison system allows quick canopy removal during ejection scenarios, enabling rapid pilot escape and enhancing survivability in emergencies.
63. Wiring Harnesses and Connectors:
These ensure reliable electrical connections and signal routing across avionics and systems. High-quality wiring improves maintenance ease, reduces failure risks, and supports the aircraft’s complex electronic architecture.
64. Structural Health Monitoring Sensors:
Monitor airframe stress and fatigue in real time, enabling predictive maintenance and preventing structural failures, thus increasing safety and operational availability.
65. Cooling Ducts and Panels:
Manage heat dissipation from avionics and engine components, preventing overheating and ensuring optimal system performance even under high operational loads.
66. Environmental Sensor Packages:
Measure critical parameters such as temperature and pressure to support accurate flight control, engine management, and environmental control systems, ensuring safe and efficient operations.
67. Landing Gear Interface and Controls:
Facilitate smooth, reliable landing gear deployment and retraction, supporting safe takeoffs and landings, and integrating closely with flight control systems for pilot feedback.
Conclusion: How do these 67 indigenous items make Tejas a better aircraft to fly
The 67 indigenous items integrated into the Tejas Mk1A fighter significantly enhance the Indian Air Force’s (IAF) operational capability, survivability, and self-reliance. They ensure the aircraft is tailor-made for Indian defence needs, offering superior situational awareness through advanced radars and mission displays, and enhanced combat effectiveness via improved weapons integration and electronic warfare suites like the Swayam Raksha Kavach. Indigenous flight control and propulsion systems provide agility, stability, and reliable performance under diverse flying conditions.
These locally developed components reduce dependence on foreign suppliers, ensuring faster maintenance, upgrades, and availability during critical times without export restrictions. The lightweight composite airframe and onboard systems improve fuel efficiency, manoeuvrability, and endurance—key in combat scenarios. Furthermore, integrated health monitoring and redundant safety systems boost pilot safety and aircraft longevity.
Collectively, these indigenously sourced systems create a cutting-edge multi-role fighter perfectly suited to meet current and future IAF operational challenges, securing air dominance and national security
As Defence Minister Rajnath Singh rightly said during the signing ceremony, this deal is “a testament to India’s resolve to become a global hub for defence manufacturing.” With the Tejas Mk1A, India is not just flying higher—it’s flying on its own wings.
