• Crash at Dubai Airshow clouds export drive, say analysts.
• Light combat jet crucial for India’s military modernisation.
• Experts say too early to pinpoint cause of crash.

The crash of India’s Tejas fighter in front of global arms buyers at the Dubai Airshow is the latest blow to a key national trophy, leaving the jet reliant on Indian military orders to sustain its role as a showcase of home-built defence technology.

The cause of Friday’s crash was not immediately known but it capped a week of jockeying for influence at the event, attended by India’s arch-rival Pakistan six months after the neighbouring foes faced off in the world’s largest air battle in decades.

Such a public loss will inevitably overshadow India’s efforts to establish the jet abroad after a painstaking development over four decades, experts said, as India paid tribute to Wing Commander Namansh Syal, who died in the crash.

Crash at showcase event in Dubai

“The imagery is brutal,” said Douglas A Birkey, executive director of the US-based Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, referring to the history of crashes at air shows where nations and industries seek to tout major national achievements.

“A crash sends quite the opposite signal: a dramatic failure,” he said, adding, however, that while the Tejas would suffer negative publicity, it would most likely regain momentum.

Dubai is the world’s third-largest air show after Paris and Britain’s Farnborough, and accidents at such events have become increasingly rare.

In 1999, a Russian Sukhoi Su-30 crashed after touching the ground during a manoeuvre at the Paris Airshow, and a Soviet MiG-29 crashed at the same event a decade earlier. All crew members ejected safely, and India went on to place orders for both jets.

Fighter sales “are driven by high order political realities, which supersede a one-off incident,” said Birkey.

Powered by GE engines

The Tejas programme began in the 1980s as India sought to replace vintage Soviet-origin MiG-21s, the last of which retired as recently as September after numerous extensions due to slow Tejas deliveries by Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd.

The state-owned company has 180 of the advanced Mk-1A variant on order domestically, but has yet to begin deliveries due to engine supply chain issues at GE Aerospace.

A former HAL executive who left the company recently said the crash in Dubai “rules out exports for now”.

Target markets included Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and HAL also opened an office in Malaysia in 2023.

“The focus for the coming years would be on boosting production of the fighter for domestic use,” the former executive said, requesting anonymity.

But the Indian Air Force is worried about its shrinking fighter squadrons, which have fallen to 29 from an approved strength of 42, with early variants of the MiG-29, Anglo-French Jaguar and French Mirage 2000 set to retire in the coming years.

“The Tejas was supposed to be their replacement,” an IAF officer said. “But it is facing production issues”.

As an alternative, India is considering off-the-shelf purchases to fill immediate gaps, with options including more French Rafales, two Indian defence officials said, adding that India still plans to add to about 40 Tejas already in service.

India is also weighing competing offers from the U.S. and Russia for 5th-generation F-35 and Su-57 fighters — two advanced models also rarely sharing a stage in Dubai this week.

‘Base’ for future programmes

India has for years been among the world’s biggest arms importers, but has increasingly projected the Tejas as an example of self-reliance with Prime Minister Narendra Modi taking a sortie in the fighter in November 2023.

Like most fighter programmes, the Tejas has fought for attention at the intersection of technology and diplomacy.

Development was initially held up partly by sanctions following India’s 1998 nuclear tests as well as problems in developing local engines, said Walter Ladwig, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

But the jet’s long-term significance is “likely to lie less in sales abroad than in the industrial and technological base it creates for India’s future combat-aircraft programmes,” he said.

• US boycott over alleged persecution of white South Africans.
• South African president achieved consensus for declaration.
• Threat of climate change mentioned despite US opposition.

Group of 20 leaders adopted a declaration addressing the climate crisis and other global challenges on Saturday over US objections, prompting the White House to accuse South Africa of weaponising its leadership of the group this year.

The declaration, which was drafted without input from the United States, “can’t be renegotiated,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s spokesperson told reporters, reflecting strains between Pretoria and US President Donald Trump’s administration, which boycotted the event.

“We had the entire year of working towards this adoption and the past week has been quite intense,” spokesperson Vincent Magwenya said.

Hours later, the White House said Ramaphosa was “refusing to facilitate a smooth transition of the G20 presidency” after initially saying he would pass the gavel to ‘an empty chair.'”

“This, coupled with South Africa’s push to issue a G20 Leaders Declaration, despite consistent and robust US objections, underscores the fact that they have weaponised their G20 presidency to undermine the G20’s founding principles,” said White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly. Trump looks forward to “restoring legitimacy” to the group next year, when the US holds the rotating presidency.

Ramaphosa, host of this weekend’s gathering of Group of 20 leaders in Johannesburg, had earlier said there was “overwhelming consensus” for a summit declaration.

But at the last minute, Argentina, whose far-right President Javier Milei is a close ally of Trump, quit the negotiations right before the envoys were about to adopt the draft text, South African officials said.

“Argentina, although it cannot endorse the declaration … remains fully committed to the spirit of cooperation that has defined the G20 since its conception,” its foreign minister Pablo Quirno said at the summit. Ramaphosa noted this, but went ahead with it anyway.

In explanation, Quirno said Argentina was concerned about how the document referred to geopolitical issues.

“Specifically it addresses the longstanding Middle East conflict in a manner that fails to capture its full complexity,” he said. The document mentions the conflict once, saying members agree to work for a just, comprehensive, and lasting peace in … the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

Declaration mentions climate change

Envoys from the G20 – which brings together the world’s major economies – drew up a draft leaders’ declaration on Friday without US involvement, four sources familiar with the matter said.

“It is a longstanding G20 tradition to issue only consensus deliverables, and it is shameful that the South African government is now trying to depart from this standard practice,” a senior Trump administration official said on Friday.

The declaration used the kind of language long disliked by the US administration: stressing the seriousness of climate change and the need to better adapt to it, praising ambitious targets to boost renewable energy and noting the punishing levels of debt service suffered by poor countries.

The mention of climate change was a snub to Trump, who doubts the scientific consensus that global warming is caused by human activities. US officials had indicated they would oppose any reference to it in the declaration.

In opening remarks to the summit, Ramaphosa said: “We should not allow anything to diminish the value, the stature and the impact of the first African G20 presidency.”

His bold tone was a striking contrast to his subdued decorum during his visit to the White House in May, in which he endured Trump repeating a false claim that there was a genocide of white farmers in South Africa, brushing aside Ramaphosa’s efforts to correct his facts.

Trump said US officials would not attend the summit because of allegations, widely discredited, that the host country’s Black majority government persecutes its white minority.

Trump rejects South Africa’s G20 agenda

The summit came at a time of heightened tensions between world powers over Russia’s war in Ukraine and fraught climate negotiations at the COP30 in Brazil.

“While the G20 diversity sometimes presents challenges, it also underscores the importance of finding common ground,” Japan Cabinet Public Affairs Secretary Maki Kobayashi told Reuters.

Commenting on Argentina’s absence from the final envoy meeting to agree on the text, Magwenya said: “Argentina (had) been participating quite meaningfully … in all the deliberations,” then never showed up to endorse the declaration on Friday. He added: “We have what we call sufficient consensus.”

The US president had also rejected the host nation’s agenda of promoting solidarity and helping developing nations adapt to weather disasters, transition to clean energy and cut their excessive debt costs.

“This G20 is not about the US,” South African Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola told public broadcaster SABC. “We are all equal members of the G20. What it means is that we need to take a decision. Those of us who are here have decided this is where the world must go.”

But in a sign of the many geopolitical fissures underlying the agreed text, EU Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen warned in a speech about “the weaponisation of dependencies” which she said “only creates losers”.

This was an apparent veiled reference to China’s export curbs on rare earths vital for the world’s energy transition, as well as defence and digital technology.

China’s Premier Li Qiang called for unity amongst the G20 during a speech at the summit on Saturday, saying that differences in interests among parties and shortcomings in global cooperation are key obstacles to international unity.

“The G20 should face up to these problems, explore solutions and promote a return to the right track of unity and cooperation,” Li said in a statement from China’s Foreign Ministry.

The South African presidency on Saturday reiterated its rejection of a US offer to send the US charge d’affaires for the G20 handover.

“The president will not hand over to a junior embassy official the presidency of the G20. It’s a breach of protocol that is not going to be accommodated,” Magwenya said.

Lamola later said that South Africa would assign a diplomat of the same rank as a charge d’affaires to hand over the G20 presidency at the Foreign Affairs Department.

• Plan also requires Ukraine to reduce its army and stay out of NATO.
• Western leaders say plan needs changes to protect Ukraine security.
• Zelensky warns of historic choice; Putin threatens more land seizures.

Ukrainian and US envoys will meet in Switzerland on Sunday along with European security chiefs to discuss Washington’s plan for ending the war with Russia, officials said, after Kyiv pushed back on proposals seen as favourable to Moscow.

US President Donald Trump has given Ukraine until November 27 to approve the plan to end the nearly four-year conflict, but Kyiv is seeking changes to a draft that accepts some of Moscow’s hardline demands.

Trump’s 28-point plan would require the invaded country to cede territory, cut its army, and pledge never to join NATO. He told reporters on Saturday it was not his final offer and he hoped to stop the fighting “one way or the other”.

Ukraine’s European allies, who were not included in drafting the agreement, said the plan requires “additional work” as they scrambled at the G20 summit in South Africa to come up with a counteroffer to strengthen Kyiv’s positions.

A US official told AFP that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and diplomatic envoy Steve Witkoff were scheduled to arrive in Geneva on Sunday for the talks, and that US Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll had already arrived there after meeting with Zelensky in Kyiv.

“We will have an informal pre-meeting tonight for dinner” with Ukrainian delegates, the US official said on Saturday.

Zelensky’s decree said the negotiations would include “representatives of the Russian Federation”, but there was no immediate confirmation from Russia whether it would join the talks.

Russian ‘representatives’ expected

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said “consultations will take place with partners regarding the steps needed to end the war,” after issuing a decree naming Ukraine’s delegation for the talks, led by his top aide Andriy Yermak.

“Our representatives know how to defend Ukraine’s national interests and what is necessary to prevent Russia from launching a third invasion”, having annexed Crimea in 2014 and mounted a full-scale offensive in 2022, he said.

Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the senior officials would meet in Geneva “to take things further forward”, stressing the importance of solid “security guarantees” for Ukraine under any settlement.

“The focus very much now is on Geneva tomorrow and whether we can make progress tomorrow morning,” he told the media on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Johannesburg.

Starmer said his national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, would be in Geneva on Sunday. Italian diplomatic sources said their country was sending the prime minister’s national security advisor, Fabrizio Saggio.

Security officials from the EU, France and Germany will also attend, French President Emmanuel Macron told a news conference at the G20.

West says plan needs more ‘work’

Western leaders at the G20 summit said Saturday that the US plan was “a basis which will require additional work”.

“We are clear on the principle that borders must not be changed by force. We are also concerned by the proposed limitations on Ukraine’s armed forces, which would leave Ukraine vulnerable to future attack,” the leaders of key European countries, as well as Canada and Japan, said in a joint statement.

Macron said the plan contained points that had to be more broadly discussed as they concerned European allies, such as Ukraine’s NATO ties and Russian frozen assets held in the EU.

“We all want peace, and we are agreed. We want the peace to be strong and lasting,” he said, insisting a settlement must “take into account the security of all Europeans”.

The European delegates in Geneva would aim “to put substance into the discussions and to reconcile all viewpoints”, he said.

Zelensky said Friday in an address to the nation that Ukraine faces one of the most challenging moments in its history, adding that he would propose “alternatives” to Trump’s proposal.

“The pressure on Ukraine is one of the hardest. Ukraine may face a very difficult choice: either the loss of dignity or the risk of losing a key partner,” Zelensky said, referring to a possible break with Washington.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said the blueprint could “lay the foundation” for a final peace settlement, but threatened more land seizures if Ukraine walked away from negotiations.