It'd have been better if the minutes of the meeting were made available, detailing who was for and against the aircraft and for what reasons,surely ADA and DRDO must have been for the aircraft but what was navy's position, was it for or against or in between like tentative support without any future, and if it was against the aircraft what were the problems navy thought were unrectifiable in future iterations meriting import.
"The problem is with the anti-ship roles. Will NLCA Mk2 be able to take off with two heavy antiship missiles, full internal fuel, centerline fuel tank and two WVR"
If these are navy's reasons for dunking NLCA it'd be such a pity and one would be tempted to accuse navy of lacking foresight or even worse not learning from the past mistakes of IAF (Marut) .Given the problems imported aircraft would face on an Indian carrier
https://www.stratpost.com/failure-to-launch/ , one is baffled by navy's aversion towards putting it's head down and developing/rectifying NLCA.
NAMCA would meet the same fate ,by the time first iteration of naval variant gets developed it'd be riddled with it's own shortcomings owing to the lack of carrier fighter experience in Indian engineers ,which could have been nullified had the navy chosen NLCA, by that time F-35 naval variant will have become more mature platform costing less than NAMCA, giving Navy dreams about STOVL aircraft landing on its carrier,people would go gaga over the safety of STOVL against the dangers of arrested recovery , navy would questioned the place of costly and underperforming NAMCA clearing the way for F-35 ,screwdriver TOT will be offered by LM to seal the deal and we would again be led down the primrose path of import addiction.