Newsletter
From Argument to Draft Policy
DAP 2026 & India's Aerospace Reckoning
Rear Admiral Sudhir Pillai, IN (Retd)
RADM Sudhir Pillai has been the Indian Navy's Flag Officer Naval Aviation, the Chief of Staff at the HQ Andaman & Nicobar Command and the Chief Instructor (Navy) DSSC Wellington. He is an independent analyst on strategy, policy and governance.
Newsletter
AMCA and the IP Risks India Cannot Ignore
Engines, software, and foreign-controlled EDA tools—the hidden IP battles that will decide whether AMCA delivers strategic autonomy or another licensed dependency.
Newsletter
AMCA: Why L1 Approaches Can Fail Combat Aircraft Development
What Global Programmes Teach Us About Learning, Risk, and False Economy
Newsletter
The AMCA Programme: How India Tweaked the Developmental Model
Why HAL Appears to Have Been Excluded from the Prototype Development Phase
Newsletter
AMCA, HAL, and the Hard Work of Building an Indian Aerospace Ecosystem
In an earlier column for The Print, I argued that India’s Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) programme would succeed or fail not on engineering competence alone, but on whether India could finally build a viable aerospace ecosystem rather than relying on a single institutional champion. The argument was not