1. First flight is scheduled for December's second week — a date the supply chain is spending real money on.
2. At 17.5 tonnes with canards and an F414, the Mk2 is a class above its name: the Mirage-2000 and Jaguar replacement, not a light fighter.
3. Forty-plus vendors are contracted for rate production before the prototype flies — the Mk1A lesson, inverted into a ₹4,000-crore bet.
4. Weapons load nearly doubles the Mk1A's. 5. The engine's technology-transfer tranche starts Bengaluru production next year — the first Indian fighter with a substantially made-in-India powerplant.
6. Squadron math is unforgiving: 31 against a sanctioned 42, Jaguars on the retirement clock. 7. Induction planning assumes 2030.
8. The Mk1A's two-squadrons-in-eleven-months delivery run, as our Atmanirbhar ledger records, is why anyone believes the calendar.
9. Programme history says December dates announced in July deserve scepticism. Factory floors say this one is different. Judge alongside us on the defence desk.
