India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi flew a sortie on the Tejas, a locally-made Light Combat Aircraft, in a show of support for the nation’s defense technology.
Modi, whose government has pushed hard to reduce defense imports, was on a visit to the Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. facility in Bengaluru on Saturday. He posted photographs on X (formerly Twitter), showing him dressed in a G-suit with aviator glasses.
The pictures drew attention on social media at a time when the state of Rajasthan began voting in a five-state election viewed as a litmus test of Modi’s popularity ahead of next year’s national election.
The prime minister wrote of a “renewed sense of pride and optimism about our national potential.”
HAL and General Electric Co. agreed to jointly produce engines for the Tejas during Modi’s first formal state visit to the US in June. The public sector unit’s LCA division has orders for 123 aircraft, after India in 2020 canceled plans to purchase fighter jets from overseas.
India’s defense ministry has targeted $26 billion in aerospace and defense production by 2025, including a fifth from exports. That’s double the overall defense production in the fiscal year that ended in March.
