the reason we don't have such a large force of air-lifters as compared to the US is that up till now we had a defensive mindset and didn't need to reach out of our borders and our armed forces had to be serviced inside our borders....the US needs a large force for servicing their global bases which are spread all over the world...but the times are changing and hopefully we will build up our transport fleet piece by piece not only in numbers but also in quality
And that is why I mentioned not only US, but other countries as well. Look at how many transport aircrafts countries like France have, although the size of their military, as well as country is much smaller than India's. In proportion to the size of its military, size of its country and number of places that have to be air-maintained, India's transport fleet is small by modern standards.