India has strategic ambitions to develop self-reliance in military aviation manufacture as it seeks to modernise its air defence with a $10bn contract for jet fighters, the head of India’s air force said on Tuesday.

Air Chief Marshal P.V. Naik, the chief of staff of the Indian air force, said India had the intellectual prowess and industrial expertise to grow its own aircraft manufacturing sector. But he acknowledged that it would be a “Herculean task” to wean the country’s military establishment off a heavy reliance on foreign expertise in some of its core competencies.