India, July 5 -- Prolonged negotiations continue to delay a key India-US fighter engine programme.

Sixteen years after selecting General Electric's F414 engine to power its future fleet, India is still negotiating how to manufacture it.

When India and the United States announced a landmark agreement in June 2023 to jointly produce the fighter jet engine in India, it was projected as a definitive breakthrough in bilateral defence cooperation. But the chronology of the programme tells a much longer story, one that stretches back sixteen years and spans four US presidencies.

India's association with the F414 did not begin with the Modi-Biden announcement. It began on 1 October 2010, when the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) selected ...