The name of the game right now is mixing between European, Korean and Indian tech, russia cant supply aesa radars because of sanctions and the current war. I personally hate to see a massive nation like India ( no disrespect) lag behind other countries in military tech. They have soooo much potential. Really hope they can bring the umtaas aesa radar into reality, and if they perfect the Tejas, they can easily produce mk1b and even c models as they go through time. I will admit the amca project is ambitious and will take serious time until prototypes can be manufactured and tested.
No offence taken, you are correct in your assessment that we lag behind in military tech, it was due to multiple reasons
1. Socialism that left India with very few private industries (and even those were very heavily controlled). Which we only fixed after the 1991 economic liberalisation
2. Corruption (both ministers and army generals got a lot of bribe money from buying foreign items)
3. Lack of communication between the military and local industries
4. Lack of any and all private industries in the defence sector
5. Lazy attitude of government owned defence sector units like DRDO, HAL etc.
6. Army's lack of support for indigenous items, they always wanted an already matured and tested platform instead of an evolving one. (This was one of the reasons as to why Tejas was inducted so late into the Indian airforce).
Only After the current government's push for indigenization were most these problems were solved.
I don't think AMCA is over ambitious as almost (except engine) all the necessary items needed for a 5th gen aircraft are either fully functional, or waiting to be integrated or in advanced stages of testing or at worst are in the early stages of testing (not designing)
For Example
1. Radar - hardware side of things are totally done and software side of things are being polished.
2. Airframe - we already has a lot of experience with making aircrafts with composite materials (during the Tejas program)
3. Armaments - nearly All the armaments that will go on amca (like Astra mk1, SAAW, etc) are either in production or advanced stages of testing
4. RAM Coating - Advanced Stages of Testing, (DRDO was already working on this during its Ghatak ucav program) (this RAM coating is very secretive and thus very little news gets out on this item)
5. EW Suite - We have already completed work on DARE Unified Electronic Warfare Suite (UEWS) suite which is waiting integration on su30 mki during its super Sukhoi upgrade.
6. Sensors - IRST sensors for Tejas mk2 and su30mki are waiting to be integrated, an EOTS system for AMCA is in early prototyping phase
7. Engine - a GE F414 will be used as an interim solution where as in the meantime talks and going on for a engine deal (with full IPR Rights) between India and France.
8. Sensor Fusion - I have no Idea what progress is happening in this field.
9. Digital Fly By Wire system of the aircraft was always a strong point of Tejas and I don't have any doubt we will carry on this legacy onto AMCA as well.
Anyways as you can see almost all the required components of the AMCA are nearly ready I don't think it's over ambitious