IAF Has Only Itself To Blame For Its 20-Year-Long Tanker Crisis

Over the past decade, discussions about the Indian Air Force have been dominated by delays in fighter induction. Largely unnoticed, however, another capability just as essential to air power has remained unresolved, even after the service made its preference clear on more than one occasion. This shortfall involves a far less glamorous asset than fighters, but one that is no less critical: mid-air refuelling tankers.

Nearly twenty years after the IAF first acknowledged that its tanker fleet was inadequate, India still has not inducted a single new aerial refueller. The Ministry of Defence's clearance in January 2026 for a fifth attempt may finally end this drought, but it also forces a hard look at how things went so wrong for so long.

Why Tankers Matter More Than They Appear To

Mid-air refuelling aircraft are not combat platforms in the traditional sense. They do not drop bombs or fire missiles. Yet without them, modern air forces are hobbled. Aerial refuellers dramatically extend the range, endurance and flexibility of fighters, transports and airborne early warning aircraft. They turn tactical aircraft into strategic assets and allow air power to be sustained over vast distances.

For the IAF, this capability is especially vital. India's operational geography stretches from the high-altitude airfields near the Line of Actual Control to the deep waters of the Indian Ocean Region, from the Malacca Strait to the Gulf of Aden.

High-value assets such as Rafale fighters, Su-30MKIs, Phalcon AWACS and Netra AEW&C platforms all depend on mid-air refuelling to remain on station for extended periods. Without tankers, these aircraft are tethered to their bases, limiting operational options precisely when flexibility matters most.

Despite this, India's tanker fleet has remained frozen in time. The IAF inducted its first and only batch of aerial refuellers between 2003 and 2004, acquiring six IL-78 MKI aircraft from Uzbekistan. At the time, the acquisition was remarkably swift. The first aircraft arrived in March 2003, and by 2004 all six were in service.

That initial success, however, would prove to be the high point of India's tanker story.

From Fast Induction to Two Decades of Drift

By 2006, the IAF had already concluded that six tankers were grossly insufficient for a force of its size. That year, it issued its first Request for Proposal for six additional aerial refuellers, beginning what would become a twenty-year saga of cancellations and restarts.

The contenders in the initial competition were the Russian IL-78 and Airbus's A330 Multi Role Tanker Transport. The A330 MRTT, a twin-engine derivative of a civilian wide-body aircraft, offered the ability to use both hose-and-drogue and flying boom refuelling systems.

In 2009, the IAF shortlisted the A330 MRTT as its preferred choice, and negotiations began for a deal expected to be worth over a billion dollars.

By January 2010, the entire tender was cancelled. The Finance Ministry raised objections over cost, and the deal collapsed. What followed set a pattern that would repeat itself with depressing regularity.

Later in 2010, the IAF floated a revised tender. Once again, the A330 MRTT and the IL-78 emerged as the primary contenders. And once again, in January 2013, the IAF selected the Airbus aircraft, citing lower life-cycle costs despite a higher upfront price.

This second selection fared no better than the first. Protracted negotiations, escalating costs and persistent doubts within the government led to the deal being scrapped in July 2016. By then, the price tag had risen to around $1.5 billion, and the Ministry of Defence publicly acknowledged that the platform was considered too expensive and economically unviable to operate.

In 2018, the IAF launched a third formal attempt, expanding the field to include Boeing's KC-46 Pegasus alongside the A330 MRTT and the IL-78. This process, too, went nowhere.

Meanwhile, the operational consequences of inaction were becoming increasingly stark. A Comptroller and Auditor General report in 2017 revealed that the IL-78 fleet's serviceability hovered at just 49 per cent between 2010 and 2016, crippled by poor availability of spares in the post-Soviet supply chain.

By 2025, desperation had set in. The IAF resorted to leasing Boeing KC-135 Stratotankers from a US-based firm as a stop-gap measure, primarily for training. These aircraft, flown by retired US personnel, underscored how acute the capability gap had become. In wartime, as senior journalists bluntly noted, leased tankers would simply fly home.

A Pragmatic End to a Self-Inflicted Crisis

The Ministry of Defence's decision in early 2026 to clear the acquisition of six pre-owned Boeing 767 aircraft for conversion into aerial refuellers marks a quiet but profound shift in how India is finally choosing to close one of its most embarrassing capability gaps.

After two decades of chasing pristine, top-end solutions and ending up with nothing, the Indian Air Force has been forced into an acceptance that should have come much earlier: what matters most is not elegance or novelty, but availability and reliability.

The choice of converted Boeing 767s represents a clear break from the IAF's long-standing fixation on the Airbus A330 MRTT as the ideal solution. The A330 is undeniably a superb platform, offering high fuel offload, long range, and multi-role flexibility.

However, the platform was also capital-intensive to procure and expensive to operate, or at least that was the assessment of the Ministry of Finance. Each time the A330 emerged as the preferred option, the deal collapsed under the weight of pricing objections, life-cycle cost disputes, and inter-ministerial friction.

Instead of recalibrating its expectations after the first failure, the IAF doubled down on the same demand, hoping that persistence alone would change outcomes. It did not.

What stands out in retrospect is the absence of innovation in the IAF's approach to solving what was never a high-technology problem. Rather than rethinking its demand profile or exploring alternative acquisition models, the service repeatedly circled back to the same platform, effectively hoping that the system would one day deliver a different result. That lack of adaptability prolonged the crisis far more than procedural delays alone.

India's defence procurement system is undeniably flawed, a fact acknowledged across governments and services. But in cases where cutting-edge or sensitive technology is not at stake, and where workable solutions exist in the global market, the burden of imagination also lies with the services.

The tanker requirement demanded operational creativity and procurement realism, not an endless chase for the aircraft that looked most impressive in brochures. In failing to distinguish between what was ideal and what was sufficient, the IAF allowed process to override purpose.

The 767 conversion route is pragmatic precisely because it strips the problem down to its essentials. The IAF does not need a technological showpiece; it needs a flying fuel station that works, can be sustained, and can be inducted quickly.

Used commercial airframes, sourced from the global market and converted by Israel Aerospace Industries, offer exactly that. The refuelling system itself is modular, well-understood, and already in service elsewhere.

This approach avoids the sticker shock of new-build tankers whilst delivering a Western-standard platform with far better availability than the troubled IL-78 fleet.

There is also an important industrial dimension to the deal. With Hindustan Aeronautics Limited involved in the conversion programme and IAI committing to local manufacture of refuelling modules, the project aligns better with India's current procurement philosophy than earlier tanker bids ever did.

Crucially, the government has shown a greater willingness to accept a sole-bidder scenario when it is driven by capability rather than competition optics, a legacy of reforms introduced during Manohar Parrikar's tenure as defence minister. That shift alone may prove decisive in preventing yet another collapse.

What makes this resolution particularly bitter is the realisation that such a compromise could have been adopted ten or even fifteen years ago.

Had the IAF accepted a simpler, phased or conversion-based solution after the first A330 MRTT cancellation, India would not have spent two decades operating with a skeletal tanker fleet and resorting to leased aircraft for training. Instead, institutional rigidity and a preference for the 'best' solution over the 'good enough' one turned a manageable procurement challenge into a chronic operational weakness.