The Problem Isn't the Fence. It's What's Beyond It. Every discussion of Indian Air Force (IAF) security tends to fixate on what's inside the wire — hardened aircraft shelters, blast pens, QRT response times, perimeter lighting. But the last decade of incidents tells a different story. Pathankot in 2016. The drone-dropped IEDs at Jammu Air Force Station in June 2021 — India's first confirmed drone attack on a military installation. And most significantly, the drone and missile barrage Pakistan...

India's Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) programme is, without exaggeration, the most consequential aerospace project the country has ever attempted. It is also a project standing on two legs that have never been tested together before: a private sector that has never built a fighter jet, and an engine industry that has never fielded one. Understanding whether AMCA succeeds on schedule means understanding both problems — and why they are, in fact, the same problem viewed from two angles....

For a country that builds nuclear submarines, flies its own satellites to Mars, and is developing a fifth-generation stealth fighter, there is one piece of hardware that has consistently eluded India: a fighter-class jet engine. It is, by common consensus among defence planners, the single toughest technology gap left in India's quest for military self-reliance — tougher than missiles, tougher than radars, arguably tougher than the atom bomb. The story of that gap has a name: Kaveri. A...