^^^ Oh thank you. I think the author is confused between the 114 and the 112.
More on the 148 production at India from a
link in the above article. If this materializes, I don't know what would happen to the NCAD program. Personally, I prefer Tata opening up a 148/158/178 line. I will bet that the planes will role out before MTA and NCAD.
Back to the light weight category, I would prefer the IL-112, An-140 or SAAB 2000 lines being set up in India under Tata. I am doing some back of the envelop calculations here.
We will need An-32 replacements from early 2027. They would need around 2 years to sign the contract. The first 16 planes would start arriving 3 years from then. The first planes from the Indian assembly lines cannot be expected before 2 more years. They would need around 3-4 years to deliver the remaining of the 40 planes. This brings us to 2023-2024. At this point they would like to be building 15-20 planes per annum. So, they would need orders for about 60-80 more planes to bridge the gap between 2023-2027. After that, they would be building the planes to replace the 105-125 odd An-32s. This would bring the total orders to 200-250 planes (
which they are looking for).
So the question arises. Can't the IAF and MoD find buyers for 60-80 more planes? Probably, choose a plane which also has a civilian counterpart and force AI to buy these planes. Or is it that difficult for MoD to allow IAF to buy 60-80 planes just for the sake of building this assembly line in India! It is a matter of 1 billion dollars. And For India, imagine seeding a Bombardier/Embraer/ATR in India.
P.S. Imagine SAAB 2000 lines are moved to India and PAF wants spares for their Erieyes.