This could finally be it. India’s chronically delayed effort to contract for new medium fighter jets could finally be at an end. While France’s monumental four-year endeavour to get India to sign up for Rafale jets has fluttered endlessly, India’s defence minister has for the first time provided a specific timeframe for contract signatute: next month! In interviews he gave out today, including this one to the Press Trust of India, Minister Manohar Parrikar has been quoted as saying, “There is no reason why it should not be concluded in June. Not much is left. It is in the last phase.” In the muddle that is India’s campaign for new jets, little scraps of explicit guidance mean a lot. Parrikar, whose party, the BJP, recently faux pa’d by claiming that a cheaper Rafale deal was a government achievement, has also indicated that he will “see to it” that the deal is done in June.
And that’s precisely where negotiations have been slowed: on final price negotiations. Earlier this month, it was reported that France had put on the table its final ‘take it or leave it’ deal: a €7.25 billion price tag for the 36 flyaway Rafale fighters, with a separately negotiated weapons contract. It’s important that Minister Parrikar has chosen his government’s two-year anniversary — a time when Ministers are usually deployed to provide specific guidance and trumpet achievements — to provide the first explicit time frame for a contract on what has been one of India’s most elusive modernisation efforts (India’s nearly two decade campaign to induct jet trainers still holds that record).
The Minister also chose today to unveil a ‘booklet on self-reliance’ in defence production.
Based on what I have learned over the years: “done in June” is a code word for “do not expect this to happen before the end of June”, basically it could be July or later, or never. How many time have we heard these superficial deadlines at every stage of the planned MMRCA acquisition. I’ll believe it when I see it.
The final offer from Dassault is € 7.25B & not US$ 7.25B. Their final offer translates to a deal value of US$ 8.1B. Kindly make that correction in your post. Tnx
P.S: Further the Social media login options are broken on your blog. Kindly fix that as well.
Corrected. Thanks for pointing out the typo.
Shiv, as you approx daily meets defence and aerospace related key peoples, I request u to ask them about the status and details of the Avatar RLV.
Wiki says, its completely unrelated to the ISRO's RLV and is a project of DRDO. So, I am really confused.
Recent news says that ISRO will soon test air-breathing rocket tech on top of a advanced sounding rocket (ATV), but as per my understanding and what i have heared from years that there will be a common semi-cryogenic stage (SC-160) which will power the 2 future LV's namely ULV and RLV, both is of ISRO and the Avatar RLV will be a air-breathing system.
OR, Is it the RLV of ISRO which will collect air and separate, liquify and store oxygen as the oxidizer for its semi-cryogenic engine ???? I am really confused… whats going on actually ???
OR, the RLV of ISRO will be called Avatar in its final configuration ??
Does DRDO really have a separate SSTO or TSTO project ???
Sorry for my poor English.
At the price quoted in your article it works out to nearly a quarter of a billion dollars for a single 4+ generation air craft. At the recently concluded Indra Danush air exercises with the RAF Typhoons, which is an aircraft of similar configuration and was a preferred aircraft with the Rafael (which ultimately lost out in the price bid) the IAF’s Su-30MKI defeated them 12-1. At this price IAF can get a further 36X3 = 108 Su-30MKIs. Why is the IAF so hung up on getting these white elephants when it adds so little to IAFs air muscle with limited tech tie up?
This is a classic case of a good product being affected by overpricing. I am all for French independence which their equipment provides to our forces, but the cost is now reaching insurmountable amounts.
It’s 24th June , nothing is moving forward, is this deal going to happen , or will it die ?
The cost is ridiculous. What a waste……Rs 1,500 crore per plane ( no armaments…..)……Just silly. People are hungry for business….just do a deal with the Americans or the Swedish and accelerate those……
Its almost two months past June 2016. No confirmation about the Rafale deal which was announced by the BJP govt with a lot of fanfare . It seems the deal is dead. Anyway two squadrons wouldn’t have given any edge but more problems in terms of new maintenance facilities, new type of spares , new training facilities and type trainers for pilots
What I understand w.r.t why IAF wants such an expensive aircraft is that SU30MKK is available with China WITH THE SAME ENGINES and hence they will have the radar signature and will be familiar with the pros and cons of the aircraft whereas the same will not be true for RAFALE