Why not try leaving your religion and political affiliations out of your "analysis" ?
Or do you claim to know more about the IAF needs and recommendations than the Defence Minister of India ?
If I had made a political statement, I would had refered to another party or politician, which I haven't. In fact, I was talking about the differences between the politicians of the same party itself and of what IAF officials publicaly stated. You seems to be new to the forum and new to the tender too, otherwise you would know, that current Air Chief Raha publically refuted the DM's statements on MKI being an alternative. He even made it very clear, that the IAF wants an MMRCA, not a heavy or light class fighter and went so far to say that
it doesn't necessarily need to be the Rafale!
Former Air Chief Major, stated after the visit of the PM, that 36 off the shelf is good, but that it would be (quote) "
a ridiculous step" of the government, if they only procure 36, since the requirement of the IAF since the early 2000s was
126 fighters!
And last but not least, the DM itself confirmed in an interview, that the PM took the decision, without including the IAF in the process:
Q. Was the Indian Air Force on board when the government took the decision to buy 36 Rafale fighters under the government-to-government (G2G) route from France?
A. I consulted the air force to the extent it was required. They have no role in decision-making as ultimately it's the Prime Minister's call.
post #1118 - defence.pk/threads/dassault-rafale-tender-news-discussions-thread-2.351407/page-75
So...
...the DM tried to create the MKI as an alternative and put pressure on Dassault
...the IAF Chief refuted him and made it clear that IAF needs an MMRCA, not necessarily the Rafale
...the PM took a decision against both, by trying to get a G2G that reduces the pressure on Dassault and provides IAF with less fighters than they require and Parrikar did nothing but played along to what the PM wanted!
That's the reality or the mess of the tender today and nothing politicial. The level of insanity of the PM's decision gets even more evident, if you keep in mind, that not only Parrikar, but also part time DM Jaitley worked 6 months to get the Rafale deal through. He cleared the pending offset and ToT requirements in the deal and officially announced it, so the PM destroyed 1 year of
NDA MoD's work, for a bad compromise.
Are you suggesting that Rafale should have been discarded or that the full number of 126 should have been procured regardless of the financial position?
Also when you suggest that the government is spinning things, do you have any reasoning in your mind as to why they are doing that? Something other than finances?
Costs is not the issue, otherwise we wouldn't pay a higher unit costs, get less returns to our industry and therefor also less taxes from them. Not to mention that this is possibly the best time to make that deal (loans in Europe at low levels, French government eager to help, Indian economy keeps recovering, which provides us with more tax returns, if you go for 36 first, you only have to pay for them this year, while the payments for the larger deal would be delayed, when even more money is available).
And if you have followed the decisision the new MoD made in the last year, it is evident that they scrap and re-issue tenders to provide privat industry favours (LUH tender, SSK tender) and even now, the offsets for the 36 Rafale are likely to be diverted to privat players (Reliance and Samtel) mainly, while the initial tender would had benefited HAL and BEL to a large extent too.
As I said in other posts, I expect the offsets of the IRST to be diverted, because that's a technical requirement of IAF and it's not in production in France anymore. Besides that Reliance might get the assembly line of Rafales produced in France, with some basic production parts. That covers the Make in India slogan and at the same time the cost of the deal is lower, because it's just for a fraction of the total requirement and because we bypass Dassault (which still is the key problem for the larger tender) and negotiate with the French government for fighters they ordered.
This deal for 36 is only good if they fix the larger order too, if not and they just use it to show, that they at least bought some Rafales, even if it doesn't help anybody.
LCA order of 10-12 sqd is a sure thing,
Doubtful, because that's just a dream figure that does not include the production time, or even the development time for LCA MK2. The current order of 6 x LCA squads won't be delieverd before 2025, so do you honestly think IAF will order 4 to 6 more squads after that, or will they prefer FGFAs or AMCA to meet the threats of that time?
If we had developed LCA in time, we would see several squads in service already and then 10 to 12 squads would make perfectly sense. But not with at least a decade delay and the MK2 only available on paper so far.
Think about this, IAF was a single engine majority airforce.It served them well to defend itself.But lately it started to acquire more medium/heavy aircrafts to face a two front offensive/defensive war.
Which shows that they don't changed the requirement just for fun, but for operational reasons! Remember, IAF initially prefered the Mirage 2000, when the MRCA was meant to provide a gap filler that is fast to induct. But threats have increased and a decade has gone by, which is why IAF needs more capable fighter. So it's not about the number of engines, but the needed capabilities to provide IAF an edge for the next 30 years and there simply was no valid single engine option in the tender, nor is LCA anyway close to provide such capability.