With India set to make commitments worth $10-billion over the next five years towards military modernisation in the aerospace sector alone, the sixth Aero India expo that began today kicked off with the dominant sentiment of what will shortly represent the country’s largest single defence purchase — 126 multirole fighters worth $7 billion.

The show venue here was steadily ripped to shreds by the after-burning roar of the very fighters that compete for the contract. The American F-16 Fighting Falcon and F/A-18 Super Hornet, the Swedish JAS-39 Gripen and the Russian MiG-35 all displayed their skills this morning in front of those who control the country’s security establishment — the ministers, the chiefs and everyone in between. Two other contending fighters — the EU Eurofighter Typhoon and France’s Dassault Rafale — didn’t make an appearance.

And armed now with a no-nonsense procurement policy that stipulates direct offsets (its rigidity is still a problem with contractors), co-production and a liberalised export licensing formula predicated on FDI, New Delhi has voluntarily elevated its objective from being a mere acquirer of weapon systems, to one that builds and sells them too.

Defence Minister A K Antony, who declared the five-day show open, said, “We do not want to continue as buyer and seller and want to establish new relationship with other countries. We want to be involved in transfer of technology, design and development of weapon systems and this air show will help us to achieve our objective.”

Apart from 126 fighters, India is actively in the aerospace market for 80 medium-lift helicopters for the IAF; 197 light high-altitude multirole helicopters for the army; 12 maritime multimission helicopters for the navy; 40 attack helicopters; 45 heavy-lift helicopters; 12 special forces transporters; an unspecified number of strategic lift transport aircraft and UAVs; anti-ship missiles; 12 carrier trainer aircraft; and air defence missiles.

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