The Indian government has taken the first step in its latest effort to buy and build new fighter jets in country. The government today published an expected global request for information (RFI), alerting aircraft manufacturers that include all of the six firms that competed for the erstwhile Medium Multirole Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) contest. The MMRCA, a contest for 126 fighter jets, collapsed without result, was scrapped and replaced with a 2016 contract for 36 Rafale jets. The new contest that tentatively begins today will see the Rafale tentatively compete once again against the five aircraft it faced off with in the MMRCA contest.
With the cancellation in February of India’s proposed single-engine fighter contest, this new prospective competition could pit single and twin engine jets once again at each other. The government stipulates that 85% of the 110 aircraft need to be built in India with a strategic partner, with a total of 75% of the aircraft to be single-seat jets.
To be sure, this RFI document is an all-too-familiar first baby step towards what promises to be a complicated process that remains bereft of clarity on the path forward. If you’re looking for the state of play amidst the mess of questions choking India’s endless effort to buy or build new fighter jets in the country, we said what we had to here. Probably reflecting the Indian government’s need to keep things open, the RFI is expectedly a broadstroked document with a few specifics. Sample this on the jet’s intended roles:
An interesting page in the RFI is this one that hasn’t figured in earlier documents released by the Indian Air Force, depicting desired performance parameters on a typical mission profile:
Expect the original pack of six that competed for the MMRCA to field their wares — albeit with variant tweaks — in this new prospective contest, that doesn’t yet have an official title. Boeing F/A-18 Block III Super Hornet, Lockheed-Martin F-16 Block 70, Saab Gripen E, Dassault Aviation Rafale F3R, United Aircraft Corp. MiG-35 and Eurofighter Typhoon. While the strategic partnership model makes it incumbent on competitors to lock relationships with Indian firms — and all of them have — it remains unclear if India’s state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. will be eligible for consideration as an Indian production partner.
This is a ridiculous exercise. The only point would be to buy time for the Tejas production line to get up to speed and start churning out fighters
Can you pls provide the full RFI documents.
The World must be laughing at this Indian drama. Not soon after the MMRCA was abruptly shut with the purchase of 36 Rafales, the so-called SEF hat was thrown in the air. When it became clear that the Tejas has come of age and should be the SEF itself, the government junked the SEF proposal, and declared a new contest.
If the Government were really serious about “Make in India,” employment generation, and making India a defence exporter, it should’ve rallied the Indian private industry to develop parts of the Tejas Mk 1 and Mk1A. As various IAF’s Officers themselves have stated, in it’s current form itself, it is equal and even superior in some respects to the MiG-27s and Mirage-2000s. It should be equal or superior to even the MiG-29 too, given that the latter is a contemporary of the Mirage-2000.
If targeted production numbers fall short, why can’t the Adanis, Ambanis and Tatas take up to manufacturing the Tejas ? Surely, the MoD can treat this as a pressing Defence requirement and provide them with sops just as it has done to other “sunshine” sectors like IT and telecom.
This will hasten the development of the Tejas Mk.2 whose projected features will make it equal to the Gripen E — a competitor in the latest sweepstakes. This will render the entire MMRCA drama Act-2, also unnecessary, just as the SEF drama was rendered unnecessary.
Ms. Nirmala Sitharaman must be informed that assembling / manufacturing a foreign fighter plane on Indian soil is akin to “Copy-paste in India” rather than “Make in India”. It’s no different than making American iPhones at a sweatshop in China, or Toyota cars at a plant in Chennai. Only the Tejas qualifies as a “Made in India” product, and will always be so.
Similarly, no wise foreign Government will ever allow the transfer of it’s deepest technological secrets to India (or to Indian middlemen like Adani or Mahindra). If the Indian bureaucracy thinks it is possible, then they’re living in a fool’s paradise.
I’m extremely disappointed in the decision of the IAF and the Defence Ministry to pursue this tender, instead of marshalling all resources to get the Tejas Mk2 in the air.
Absolutely why can’t these people think simple