http://idrw.org/two-planes-iaf-bring-lca-tejas-home/
IAF did not form mirage squadron with 20 fighters all at once, In fact when first Mirage-2000 arrived after full payment it had only the gun as its only armament, All missile integration were done far later.
Same with Su-30 , IAF bought , flew , trained for a decade & returned the first 40 su-30 fighters to russia , and then got their promised SU-30 MKI version in exchange.
When Jaguar arrived in IAF the primary purpose for it was bought i.e ground attack was not working , because of the faulty Nav-Attack system, Then indian R&D was commissioned to remedy it with a new nav attack system 3 years later.
note , in all the above mentioned purchase IAF parted with big money before a single fighter ever touched down, Still they all landed in indian soil with host of issues.
Mig-21 which was bought in hundreds did not even have a gun & radar when it landed in india.
USAF is inducting a hundred F-35s with out even an IOC and with far lower flying specs than originally asked for.
By contrast tejas mk1 that IAF is buying can land & take off from Leh(no fighter in the world can do that without special modification) has guns, missiles, and a lot of other bells & whistles from day one, without IAF even parting with a penny from day one itself.
COmpare that to the skeleton buys that were made by IAF spending big money through out its history, which were all later spruced up.
There is no way in the world even french airforce would have formed their first rafale squadron with 20 fighters at one go.
Even lay man can easily understand that squadrons formed on new production fighters cant be done with all at one go.
Most important point concealed in the article is ---"FUNDING FOR PRODUCTION OF TWO TECH DEMOS (TDs) WERE RELEASED ONLY ON 1993. so from 1993 to 2013 IOC is a normal development time frame for any 4.5th gen fighter , even in western countries that have already designed , produced & exported 1000s of fighters all over the world.
SAAB is canvassing for gripen E around the world without even an IOC, Without even knowing that you are asking HAL to have mercy !!
For your information, HAL produces more Su-30 MKis every year than the rafales produced by Dassault .
Without freezing of production specs no fighter maker can go for full scale production. IAF wanted more & more spec improvement on the mk1 itself which led to delays in freezing of production specs, which led to delay of commencement of full fledged serial production.
In fact when HAL asked for money to build the new state of the art production facility , from which tejas is slowly ramping up, MOD asked HAL to put up 1000 cr from its own internal accruals, get the rest 50% from IAf & Navy as late as 2014!!!
With IAF still not giving a concrete commitment on tejas mk1 A(all in maohar parrikar's words only, we dont know whether IAF has communicated in writing to HAL, with concrete orders & advance!!) how can a production org like HAL can firm up 2000 cr brand new production line just for 20 tejas mk1 order from IAF!!!(and face the music from CAG!!)
Till 2014 there was no tejas mk1 A talk, and only concrete order for HAL is just 20 tejas mk1s!!! Only after manohar parrikar was appointed by Modi, tejas mk1 A SOp was iorned out, It took Manohar Parrikar 13 meetings & two years to bring IAF, HAL around the table to fix this,
IAF , which cries "fighter shorage",did not pay any hefty advance to HAL either, but they were ready to pay the same to SAAB (if they were selected in MMRCA) with just two gripen E prototypes with no IOC, FOC!!!
