The HF-24 Marut, India, and the Indigenization of Western High Technology

For ten years (1957 - 1967), the Indian government worked to create a high-performance fighter jet of domestic design and manufacture. In the early decades after winning independence from the British Empire in 1957, India tried to make its economy self-reliant by setting up industries to produce domestic substitutes for goods that would otherwise have to be imported. The HF-24 Marut indigenous jet fighter project was one of the government’s more ambitious import-substitution programs. Designed by a joint German-Indian team, it was manufactured at the government-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. plant in Bangalore. As a fighter aircraft, the HF-24 was moderately successful. In 1971, HF-24s scored a few kills against Pakistani fighters in the war over Bangladesh. Yet as a weapon in India’s war of economic independence, the HF-24 was not successful at all. The project suffered repeated delays, and the plane that was finally produced was underpowered for want of a suitable engine. As the Indian government was waiting for the large quantities of HF-24s that never materialized, they imported Russian-made fighters. This paper views the HF-24 Marut as a case study of the limits of technology transfer for sophisticated, capital-intensive technologies