AMCA - India's Fifth-Gen Fighter

The Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) is India's bid to build its own fifth-generation stealth fighter - a twin-engine, roughly 25-tonne jet led by the DRDO's Aeronautical Development Agency. The Cabinet cleared the roughly Rs 15,803 crore prototype programme in March 2024, and in May 2025 the government approved an execution model that, for the first time, lets private firms compete with public-sector players to build a mega fighter. The near-term Mk1 will fly on the US GE F414 engine; a more powerful indigenous engine, to be co-developed with France's Safran, is planned for the Mk2.