The Indian Defence Ministry has approved the procurement of 114 Rafale fighter jets from France, a significant step towards bolstering the Indian Air Force's combat capabilities. The decision comes ahead of French President Emmanuel Macron's visit to India.
At least a dozen Pakistani military aircraft including F-16 jets were destroyed or damaged in Indian strikes during Operation Sindoor, Chief of Air Staff Air Chief Marshal A P Singh said on Friday while describing Islamabad's claim of India's losses as "fanciful stories".
Clearing the air over why India has preferred Europe to the United States in the process of acquiring medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA), top government sources said on Wednesday that it was to obtain the finest armaments for Indian armed forces.
"We are calculating very hard. There is a lot of work going on. I expect (in) another four weeks, we should be able to wrap it up", Browne told media persons amid intense flurry among the two remaining contenders Eurofighter and Dassault's Rafale.
Major defence purchases should be a means of helping a nation achieve its strategic objectives. It's not readily evident what strategic objectives of India are being served by choosing Rafale over Typhoon, says Harsh V Pant.
French investigative journal Mediapart has made fresh claims that alleged bogus invoices were used that enabled French aircraft maker Dassault Aviation to pay at least 7.5 million euros in secret commissions to a middleman to help it secure the Rafale deal with India.
Making it clear that one car cannot travel on two roads at the same time, India said all future deals for Rafale fighters would also be through government to government route, indicating that the USD 20 billion MMRCA tender has virtually been scrapped.
Why did Modi bypass the Cabinet before he committed India to the Rafale deal?
The first batch of four Rafale aircraft will arrive in India by May 2020.
Inaugurating the Defence Expo in Thiruvidanthai in Tamil Nadu, Modi said the Defence Procurement Procedure was revised with many specific provisions for stimulating growth of the domestic defence industry.
Plummeting European currencies, battered by the euro zone financial crisis, are providing European aerospace corporations an opportunity to undercut their American rivals, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, in the contest to sell India 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) for a price that has been estimated at $11 billion, or about Rs 44,000 crore.
The Congress urged Modi to come forward and order a JPC probe into the Rafale deal.
In a candid admission, the Indian Air Force on Thursday said that given its depleting strength, it does not have the adequate numbers to "fully execute" an air campaign in case of a two-front war involving Pakistan and China simultaneously.
Capable of flying at Mach 2.5 (two-and-a-half times the speed of sound), the F-15EX is the world's fastest fighter aircraft. It carries 13.5 tonnes of weapons load, more than the Rafale or the Sukhoi-30MKI.
'It was Parrikar's sharp insights into finance and international systems that stood out when India --at his suggestion -- decided to procure the Rafale combat jets from France.'
'It is not clear how the NDA government -- including Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, backed by senior IAF officials -- claimed that the 36 Rafale contract with Dassault in 2016 cost the IAF 20% less than Dassault's 126 Rafale offer,' notes Ajai Shukla in the first of a three-part series.
The MoD panel had submitted its report in March 2015, weeks before Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that India would procure 36 jets.
With the IAF having rejected variants of 4 of the contending aircraft -- the Super Hornet, F-16, Gripen C/D and MiG-35 -- in flight trials carried out between 2009-2011 in the MMRCA tender, are the current contenders improved enough to pass flight trials conducted to the same standards?
A fresh political war of words erupted on Tuesday over the Rafale issue as the Bharatiya Janata Party accused the Congress leadership of corruption citing claims of a French media report on 'commissions' being paid during the United Progressive Alliance rule and said the Indian National Congress should be renamed 'I Need Commission' party.
'The greatest loss from replacing the 126 Rafale proposal with the 2016 contract for 36 Rafales might not be the extra money paid, but the opportunity that India's aerospace industry lost of obtaining access to critical aviation technologies and manufacturing skills.'
Production in India would be open for companies other than HAL
'What the price will reveal, since the India specific capabilities haven't changed since 2013, is how much the Modi government padded up the cost,' points out Mohan Guruswamy.
'It is hard to justify $225 million a plane for an increasingly obsolete mission.' The purchase of the 36 Rafales has changed little for the IAF.
The selection of Dassault's Rafale as India's new MMRCA fighter was only the latest step in the Air Force's long and painstaking process to pick itself a winner, writes Ajai Shukla.
For years, India's proposed purchase of 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft has been valued at Rs 42,000 crore. Now that valuation is set to rise dramatically
MiG 21s, which have been involved in frequent crashes, will start getting phased out from 2014, setting the stage for giving the Indian Air Force a 'new look' with the induction of modern next generation aircraft. "MiG 21s which constitute around 40 per cent of the IAF fleet will start getting phased out from 2014. With the induction of modern next generation aircraft such as the FGFA and MMRCA, the IAF will be a new look force," Defence Minister AK Antony said.
One factor which could have gone against the MiG-35 in the Indian deal is that the IAF's 62-odd MiG-29s coming up for upgradation to the UPG standard, will have features close to the MiG-35 or even better.
Is the price of one fighter Rs 681 crore? Rs 686 crore? Rs 703 crore? Rs 1,063 crore? Rs 1,225 crore?
European military consortium EADS Defence and Security on Tuesday said it will open a research and development centre in Bangalore within two years that will provide employment to 200 Indian engineers.
In the light of India's increasingly 'darkening' threat environment and the convergence of strategic interests between China and Pakistan, the IAF's declining combat capabilities are a cause for concern, says Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd).
India may go beyond the purchase of 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft.
Six companies from five countries are competing to sell India military hardware, and the winners will indicate the directions of India's strategic vision.
Top HAL sources say the AMCA, which is being developed as the IAF's next-generation stealth fighter, is slated to be assembled at HAL Nashik.
The fleet landed at Al Dhafra airbase on Monday in the United Arab Emirates after flying for over seven hours from the Merignac airbase. It was the only stopover by the jets while flying from France to India.
The trials for the MMRCA deal are on in Bengaluru at the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited airport. The Boeing F/A-18IN Super Hornet is the first aircraft among the six global contenders to be put on flight evaluation and performance trials.
In its report tabled in Parliament, the national auditor said the Dassault Aviation and the MBDA proposed in September 2015 to discharge 30 per cent of their offset obligations by offering high technology to the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), but the two firms are yet to do it.
The most important changes in DPP-2008 relate to the new offset policy, which will immediately impact offset proposals for India's Rs 47,000-crore purchase of 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA).
The document titled 'Details of the steps in the decision making process leading to the award of 36 Rafale fighter aircraft order' stated that the process as laid down in the Defence Procurement Procedure-2013 has been followed in procurement of the Rafale aircraft.
'Anyone who should be worried about or critical about this new capability of the Indian Air Force, it should be those who want to threaten our territorial integrity'
'We were against politicisation of the defence acquisition process. It was a question of capability of the air force'
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