The Indian Air Force will receive its first C295 military transport aircraft in September, the first of 16 that will be built by Airbus. The deal for 56 aircraft was signed by India in October 2021

The planemaker Airbus will deliver India’s first tactical military transport aircraft C295 to Indian Air Force (IAF) in September, said a report by Hindustan Times on Wednesday

IAF crews will carry out acceptance trials of India’s first C295 transport aircraft at the Airbus Defence and Space’s Seville facility in southern Spain in early September before taking delivery of the plane, said the report citing Airbus officials aware of the matter.

The first 16 C295 aircraft will be delivered to the IAF by Airbus in flyaway condition from Spain.

Remaining forty planes are to be built in India, and work on domestic production is in full swing, the report said citing officials.

The delivery of first C295 to India will set in motion a crucial ‘Make in India’ project worth  ₹21,935 crore to equip the IAF with 56 such aircraft.

Compared to the decade of inertia that the project had to navigate before being approved, the next few weeks will see a rapid burst of major milestones in India's acquisition of the C295 new generation military transport aircraft.

The Indian Air Force will receive its first Airbus-built C295 military transport aircraft in September, the first of 16 that will be built by the European conglomerate in southern Spain while rapidly scaling up its partnership with TATA Group to build another 40 at a sprawling upcoming factory in Vadodara starting in 2026.

The deal for 56 aircraft, signed by India in October 2021, is the first-ever aircraft manufacturing enterprise in the country led by the private sector. So far, military aircraft manufacturing has been a total monopoly of state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL).

The Air Force depends hugely on transport aircraft for the movement of personnel, weapons, fuel, and hardware across vast distances in the country and beyond. While the C295 will fulfil the lighter end of air transport duties, the IAF also operates American C-130J Super Hercules planes in the medium category and the giant C-17 Globemaster III for very heavy loads.

Alongside preparations for delivery of the first C295 aircraft, an inaugural batch of Indian Air Force pilots has completed flight training and will shortly make way for a second batch. The Indian pilots are all qualified on the IAF's existing British vintage HS748 Avros – which the C295 airplanes will directly replace – and workhorse Ukrainian Antonov An-32s – which the C295 could potentially replace going forward.

But building the first sixteen C295s in Spain is the easy part for Airbus, given that the aircraft are rolling out from an established decades-old factory. It’s the second bit – making 40 aircraft in India at the Tata facility for delivery between 2026-31 – that has the Airbus team at battle stations. Executing the program on time, efficiently, and on budget makes it one of the most high-pressure projects ever embarked upon by Airbus.

"It is unprecedented for Airbus," says Jorge Tamarit, head of the C295 program in India. "This is the first time the company is deploying a full production system to another country.

What's happening in India is, therefore, of enormously greater complexity and significance. While Tata began 'metal-cutting' last November for the first of 40 C295s it is tasked to build, things shift into top gear next week in Hyderabad when a group of parts, technically described as the main constituent assembly (MCA), begins being unboxed from Tata's warehouses and put together to create major components of the airframe, including its tail and fuselage.

TATA's Hyderabad facility will fabricate and churn out major sections of the aircraft, after which they will be transported to Vadodara where each C295 will get its final shape starting late 2024, be fitted with engines and electronics, and delivered to the IAF at a maximum rate of a dozen aircraft per year. While the percentage of Indian material in the aircraft will scale up progressively with each delivery, it is aircraft No.32 that will be closest to being a fully Indian C295.

While the C295 fleet will necessarily operate from a number of air bases, the aircraft will initially be situated in Vadodara. In March, IAF officials and Airbus representatives conducted a Bhoomi Pujan ceremony at the Agra air base for the C295 crew training centre that will be ready in late 2024.

The IAF C295s being built in Spain also have a handful of crucial Indian systems, including radar and missile warning systems supplied by the state-owned Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL) and a counter-measure dispensing system supplied by Bharat Dynamics Ltd (BDL). With these systems fully integrated, the first aircraft flew on May 8, with the second aircraft in final assembly. Airbus will deliver seven aircraft in 2024 and the final eight of its share of 16 in 2025. A year later, the first Made-in-India C295 will be ready, making for what is intended to be an uninterrupted stream of supply till 2023.

To be sure, the Vadodara facility is almost certain to build more than 40 C295 aircraft. Both the Indian Navy and Indian Coast Guard are interested in at least nine and six C295 aircraft, respectively, configured for the maritime surveillance role. The Border Security Force could be on board for a handful of the type, apart from a passenger version of the C295 potentially feeding into a hungry short-haul civil aviation space.

"We're focused on the delivery of 56 aircraft. But there is definitely a future beyond the 56. 56 is a lot, and not a lot at the same time," says Jean-Brice Dumont, executive vice president of Airbus's military air systems division.

Apart from filling a long-standing requirement of the IAF and giving India its first private sector military airframer, the C295 project is crucial in another way – it is the first Make-in-India program that also has a 30% offset obligation. Which means, other than the stipulated license manufacture of the aircraft in India, Airbus must also use nearly a third of the Rs 21,935 crore deal value investing in or sourcing from India. What might seem like a win-win for Indian industry is being seen cautiously, however, given India's shaky handling of offsets thus far in the defence space.

With 15,000 immediate skilled jobs and 10,000 indirect jobs over the next decade, the C295 program is a major boost for India's aerospace ecosystem, but the optimal absorption and channelling of offset billions will be crucial to the big picture success of the program.