For the first video of the Tejas performing aerobatics at the Bahrain Air Show, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=oQ_ZnWbQk74, or slightly better at https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=oQ_ZnWbQk74 .

One can (1) see right away why the PAF chose to withdraw the Sino-Paki JF-17 Thunder from the show, (2) understand why potential customers would be very interested in a relatively light multi-role plane that will not cost buyer-states their GDP, and (3) wonder at IAF’s and MOD civilian bureaucrats’ distaste for this indigenous combat aircraft and if it is not the usual inducements — the pleasures of Paris/etc, secret offshore accounts, offers of “scholarships” for suddenly “brilliant” progeny in prestigious universities and/or placements in well paying jobs in MNCs/FSIs in the West packaged with residential permits, that are at work.

If Defmin Parrikar still does not appreciate the strategic value of the Tejas (and its variants) as the mainstay combat aircraft of the IAF for as long as warfare by manned weapons platforms lasts, which is not too long into the future, as the seedbed for a genuinely Indian aerospace industry, and as an enormously prized product whose export potential is vast, then he might as well retire to Goa where he will at least do no harm to the national security interests.