India Floats Rs 1 Lakh Crore Tender for 60 Transport Aircraft to Replace AN-32s

Few aircraft have carried the Indian Air Force’s daily workload like the AN-32. The twin-engine transport has hauled troops and cargo to forward airstrips for decades, and its replacement has been talked about for nearly as long. On 12 August, talk turned into a contest. The Ministry of Defence issued a Request for Proposal for 60 new multirole transport aircraft, with an option clause for more — a tender valued at around Rs 1 lakh crore, reported at roughly ten billion dollars, and one of the largest aircraft procurements India has ever floated.

The scale sets this tender apart. The structure is what makes it consequential. The RFP has gone not to foreign manufacturers but to Indian companies — the Tata Group, Mahindra, Adani Defence and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited among them. Each bidder must tie up with a foreign original equipment manufacturer and commit to establishing a final assembly line in India, along with maintenance, repair and overhaul facilities. The ministry, in other words, is not simply buying aircraft. It is buying an industrial base, and making the world’s transport-aircraft builders compete over who gets to anchor it.

The requirement itself is for an aircraft in the 18-to-30-tonne weight category, sized primarily to succeed the ageing AN-32 fleet and possibly the IL-76 heavy transports as well. Around 20 percent of the aircraft are to be delivered in fly-away condition, according to reporting on the tender, with the remainder manufactured in India. That split is designed to get fresh airframes to squadrons quickly while the Indian production line comes up to speed — a lesson absorbed from programmes where deliveries waited on factories that were still being built.

Three contenders have already taken shape. The Tata Group has reportedly aligned with Lockheed Martin around the C-130J tactical airlifter. Mahindra Defence has paired with Embraer and its C-390 jet transport. And HAL has turned back to Russia, reviving the long-dormant Multi-role Transport Aircraft project the two countries had once pursued together. The choice before the ministry is therefore not merely between airframes but between industrial futures: an American production partnership, a Brazilian one, or a return to the Soviet-era lineage that the AN-32 and IL-76 themselves represent.

Why does this matter now? Because medium airlift is the connective tissue of Indian military power. It is what moves men, rations and ammunition to remote garrisons and high-altitude posts, and what responds first when disaster relief is needed. A fleet that has served for decades cannot be stretched indefinitely, and a replacement programme of this size takes years to translate into aircraft on the ramp. The clock the ministry started on 12 August should have been ticking already; the ambition of the tender is an attempt to make up for that in one stroke.

The option clause deepens the stakes. A run that begins at 60 aircraft and can grow beyond it gives the winning consortium a production line with a long horizon — and gives the foreign partner a reason to transfer real manufacturing depth rather than token assembly work. For the Indian private sector, a win would mean owning one of the most substantial military aircraft programmes in the country. For HAL, it would mean defending its position as the incumbent builder of military aircraft against private challengers hunting the same prize.

None of this is decided yet. Bids must come in, evaluations must run their course, and Indian defence procurement has a history of long roads between tender and contract. But the starting gun has fired, and the field is unusually clear: three of India’s biggest industrial names, each with a global aircraft maker behind it, racing to replace the workhorse that has defined Indian military airlift for a generation.