Dear
@SATISH ........ You are part right when taking into account the role of fighters in a battle scenario. But here you are leaving aside one of the foremost and longtime requirement of both IAF and India as a whole.
Its true that a twin engine fighter is more then capable then a single engine one while taking the fight to enemy turf. But for this if we start showing knee jerk reaction to each and every development in China, then it would be a blunder on our part (same what Pak does). Lets look back a bit. HAL Marut had been our first Jet. Although it had been designed by a German engineer with half of German scientist in team, but none the less it was something which flew. But what took us so long after that development to build another successful fighter?
Its this knee jerk condition of us which has prevented us from taking one small step at a time and then learn to pace ahead. We should better know our capacity and start buildup on it and try to improve and innovate. LCA had just been a baby step in production of a fighter and there too we had taken consultancy and tech help from others. Now instead of returning back to drawing board and carving out a whole new design, I think the right approach would be to capitalise on the knowledge what we had gained from LCA, MK1 and then try to improve on the basic design. Take one step at a time. Go for Mk2 anyhow and do a evaluation test of it. Irrespective of the fact that whether it would be accepted in IAF or not, it should be buildup as TD. Then go for MK3 and so on.
AMCA is a totally new concept and design. As of today you can't say that the first prototype would be a success story like LCA. Its better to incorporate bits and bytes of what you learn from LCA into it to make it a success. Otherwise it would not take long for our polit buro and Defence experts and analyst to dump MCA in bin and look into some foreign vendor.
Let me give you one practical example of what happens in India with this article below.....
EXCLUSIVE: With only two planes and issues unresolved, IAF to bring LCA Tejas home
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/...ved-iaf-to-bring-lca-tejas-home/1/699866.html