C295 for India—Third time’s the charm?

No less storied than the hundreds of fighters produced by Indians hands-on Indian soil since the 1940s, are the humble transports. The Indian Air Force’s Aircraft Manufacturing Depot (AMD) at Kanpur began producing the Avro 748 turboprop as a replacement for the WWII-era Dakota in 1961. In 1964, AMD was transferred to a newly reorganised PSU formed by the merger of Aeronautics India and Hindustan Aircraft, forming Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). HAL would continue production, eventually building nearly 90 of the type for the IAF as well as Indian Airlines.

By the 1980s, the Indian government was shopping around for a short-haul airliner to enable regional connectivity, and the IAF was looking to replace its Devons and Otters in the passenger/utility role. The Dornier 228 was selected for this combined requirement, and the programme expanded to include the Coast Guard and Navy. The first German-built Do 228 was delivered in 1984, and the first HAL-built example was handed over to government-owned Vayudoot in 1986. The contract, like the Avro before it, ensured that the Dornier 228 would be a near-completely indigenous aircraft. Crucially, however, unlike the Avro agreement, HAL had nearly unrestricted marketing and export rights for the Do 228. Unfortunately, no arm of the government ever took advantage of this flexibility, and even though HAL produced over 150 of the type in different variants, only a small handful were ever operated outside India.

The Dornier 228 was selected for this combined requirement, and the programme expanded to include the Coast Guard and Navy.

Finally, in September 2021, the Indian government signed a contract with Airbus for 56 C295MW (MW for the winglet-equipped military transport variant) transport aircraft, under the so-called ‘Avro replacement programme’. The first of these formally entered service with the IAF on 25 September, and after Airbus delivers the next 15 from Spain, 40 more will be produced in partnership with Tata at a facility in Vadodara, Gujarat.

That it has taken over 60 years to begin replacing an aircraft design dating back to the 1950s is now entirely par for the course and does not merit further examination or excoriation. However, the C295 procurement offers other opportunities to learn from the Avro and Dornier programmes.

First, the Dornier programme did address one major shortcoming of the Avro, and this should be repeated with the C295—adapting it for more roles. While the Avro was essentially an airliner, some attempts were made to modify it for military transport, with an enlarged door to allow the loading of cargo, including vehicles, as well as para-dropping troops and materiel. However, the design of the aircraft was inherently unsuitable for these tasks, and it is typically used for passenger transport and light cargo to this day. A single aircraft was modified for airborne radar development, but a fatal crash in 1999 ended the project. The Dornier, on the other hand, benefited from starting life as a civilian aircraft that was always intended to be modified for military customers. India was an enthusiastic adopter of the maritime variant, with various specialised configurations being used extensively by the Indian Navy and Coast Guard.

The C295 offers similar flexibility off the shelf, with enhanced payload, range, and endurance—though admittedly these do come at a premium compared to the venerable Do 228. However, with a C295 assembly line and substantial detail manufacturing planned in the country, it would make sense to leverage this capacity and standardise this platform for as many roles as possible. Replacing at least a portion of the Navy and Coast Guard’s Dornier fleet would be a start, but it is also important for the Services to begin considering other special missions that have hitherto been under-served or relied on a menagerie of different aircraft types. The obvious low-hanging fruit beyond the maritime domain include overland surveillance (communications and electronic intelligence), dedicated search and rescue, and electronic warfare.

India was an enthusiastic adopter of the maritime variant, with various specialised configurations being used extensively by the Indian Navy and Coast Guard.

With some of these modifications (principally maritime but also applicable to surveillance and jamming) already certified by the OEM, the focus should be on ruthless cost optimisation across variants by prioritising either commercial grade or military grade off-the-shelf (COTS/MOTS) mission hardware to start with. This will allow for the services’ paltry modernisation funds to afford these C295 variants. Phased indigenisation of imported mission equipment, if needed, would allow for greater sovereign control and exportability down the line. All this development, integration, testing, and production by Indians in India will also begin creating parallel capabilities and capacities in the private sector. With these hitherto concentrated only within the public sector, an expanded set of roles for the C295 in India will also stress test the private sector (or at least Tata) as a viable second option to the PSUs.

This finally brings us to where the rubber meets the road (or runway, in this case). The biggest letdown of Indian aerospace in the past 70-odd years has been its inability to move beyond its captive customer. Defence PSUs produce almost exclusively for the Defence Ministry, which owns them—not just an unholy exercise in self-gratification, but also a self-defeating enterprise that relies solely on stunted capital spending from a defence budget overburdened by revenue expenses. Defence exports, though markedly improved in recent years, are still far short of the government’s own targets. The Dornier case is instructive, where competitor aircraft have sold globally in the hundreds, if not thousands, while HAL-built Do 228s have struggled to find a market outside a tiny handful of exports to regional militaries.

With these hitherto concentrated only within the public sector, an expanded set of roles for the C295 in India will also stress test the private sector (or at least Tata) as a viable second option to the PSUs.

The C295 already has the advantage of widespread acceptance around the world and the credibility of a global aerospace OEM, Airbus, behind it. A wider range of variants with the backing of the Indian Armed Forces will only enhance the platform’s appeal. Strong domestic adoption of the aircraft will underpin its export potential, but the Ministry of External Affairs and its missions around the world will also need to take up marketing and promotion activities much more robustly than they ever have to date. The multi-national nature of the programme will mean working with geopolitical partners to ensure the Indian assembly lines are humming at capacity for decades. If the C295 is to succeed, for the OEM, for the Indian production partner, and for India’s aerospace ambitions, the government must throw more weight behind it, both at home and abroad.

Angad Singh is an independent defence analyst with over a decade of experience writing on national security.