Indian Air Force to begin combat jet trials in June

New Delhi, Sep 25 (IANS) The Indian Air Force (IAF) will begin trials of the six competing multi-role combat aircraft (MRCA) in June 2008 ahead of its proposed purchase of 126 fighters for around $10.2 billion to meet a longstanding requirement .

The three-month field trials will follow four months of technical evaluation by the IAF after rivals Boeing (F/A-18E/F), Dassault (Rafale), Eurofighter (Typhoon) Lockheed Martin (F-16), Russian Aircraft Corporations (MiG-35) and Saab (JAS 39 Gripen) submit their proposals by February 2008.


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All six are expected to respond to the MRCA tender dispatched by the ministry of defence (MoD) last month via the respective embassies.

Industry sources said each competitor would submit one aircraft with a ‘limited array’ of weapons for evaluation in varied environments in which the MRCA will eventually be deployed.

These will include tropicalised conditions in southern India, desert conditions in Rajasthan and the mountainous Kashmir region.

All contenders are likely to have an additional aircraft in reserve and will bear the entire cost of testing, including transportation and fuel, in keeping with India’s rules of “no cost, no commitment” with regard to all military equipment trials.

Once the trials conclude in September 2008, IAF teams will be dispatched to the respective MRCA manufacturing countries to appraise the remaining weapon systems, a task expected to last till the year end or till early 2009.

Thereafter, the IAF would shortlist the MRCA in order of merit based on overall performance, open the commercial bids and begin negotiations on the lowest tender.

While the MoD believes the MRCA contract can be inked by 2012-14, the IAF, familiar with the ministry’s cautious bureaucratic and hidebound procedures, foresee it taking much longer.

It does not anticipate the fighters joining squadron service before 2020-21.

Under the terms of purchase, the first 18 MRCA are to be acquired in a flyaway condition with the remaining 108 being built locally under licence, in keeping with the mandatory transfer of technology (ToT) clause.

It is, however, likely that the number of MRCA could increase to around 200, Minister of State for Defence minister M.M. Pallam Raju said shortly before the tender for the fighters was released Aug 28.

The IAF is anxious to induct additional combat aircraft to bolster fast depreciating numbers in order to retain parity with neighbouring nuclear rival Pakistan that has embarked on an ambitious drive for fighter acquisition from the US and China.

“Unless immediate steps are taken to arrest the reduction in IAF force levels, the nation will for the first time in its history lose the conventional military edge over Pakistan,” former IAF chief Air Chief Marshal S.P. Tyagi had declared in a classified three-page letter to then defence minister Pranab Mukherjee last year.

The selected MRCA vendor will also be required to undertake an offset of 50 percent – up from the mandatory 33 percent – of the contact value and assist indigenous firms in launching the licensed production of engines, radar, avionics and related equipment within 48 months of inking the contract.

Local depot-level maintenance facilities for MRCA are also needed to be initiated in the same time frame.

IAF sources said the offset and the ToT are likely to take the longest to negotiate, as India had still not firmed up these procedures.

IAF insiders and analysts expect discussions on these complex issues to take up to a decade to finalise – and half that period thereafter – before production can begin some time towards the end of the next decade.

Alongside, India’s military-industrial complex does not have the capacity to absorb such an inordinately large volume of sophisticated technology and would need to calibrate it judiciously over an extended time frame.

The life-time maintenance support for MRCA, likely to be in service for over 40 years, is also expected to further delay matters as the IAF had little or no experience of this aspect too, one analyst declared.

Meanwhile, rivals Boeing and Lockheed Martin have launched the most aggressive sales pitch of all contenders for their respective MRCA, predicating its sale to the rising swell of India-US strategic and military ties.

Targeting not only the IAF, the media and ‘influential power brokers’, the US defence conglomerates are sanguine about their prospects despite the continuing political opposition in India to the bilateral civilian nuclear deal, including the chances of it falling through.

Many US defence companies had predicated their success in India to the nuclear deal, perceiving it to be an important marker in the burgeoning alliance between New Delhi and Washington.

“India-US defence and strategic relations, including the sale of military equipment, are robust enough to continue even if the nuclear deal does not fructify,” a senior American analyst and academician associated with the US naval war college said recently in New Delhi.

The prospect of the nuclear deal failing to mature will create a minor blip but the two sides are too far down the strategic partnership route to pull back, he added.

Russia, the other principal MRCA contender, is not only banking on India’s reliable and continuing patronage for its military requirements but adopting arm-twisting pressure tactics to dissuade India from sourcing defence hardware from Washington.

It is locked in acrimonious talks with Indian officials to re-negotiate the deal for 138 Sukhoi SU-30MKI multi-role fighters by raising the price of each aircraft by $3-4 million piece, a demand that could be resolved provided India agreed to buy the MiG-35, official sources told IANS.

Convinced that political consideration would eventually decide the MRCA contract, the less influential European consortium with their Typhoon and the French fielding the Rafale are adopting a low profile in New Delhi’s corridors of power.

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