Mate, few things u have missed in this calculation
1. A new type of plane in MII means investment of few billion dollars to make it.. I read somewhere in this forum that boieng asked for minimum order of 200 planes to make it economical viable to MII.. Or else cost of each plane will increase.
2. Cost of base infrastructure creation... Dassult asking for 1.4 billion dollar for one base for rafale and already two bases are created in present order. In your view point of second MRCA of 126 fighters, we need creation of infrastructure on minimum 03 bases...that means an investment of 4.2 billion dollars.
3. Cost of training/spares and logistics. 1-1.5 billion for 36 planes in rafale pricing. So what is it for new variety of 126 planes.. Training will be more. Spares may cost same even if we order more rafale.
The overall costs will be lower in comparison. Cost of infrastructure creation for Rafale is 1.4B for a base. It could be 1B for SH. Regardless, base infrastructure has to be built.
If you have 16 bases and you want to activate 8 bases each for Rafale and second MMRCA, then cost of infrastructure for each base will be 1.4*16B if you choose only Rafale. It could be much lesser if it was Gripen NG.
IAF is splitting the order because they can't afford a Rafale only force. Nothing more.
4. Also you were saying gripen NG is better and u also contradict that IAF won't buy single engine after 2027 while countering my argument for LCA so u think that gripen will make a production line in MII just for 126 planes and after 2027 close its line as IAF not interested.. Do you think it is financially viable.
Yes, at 20 a year from 2021 onwards. It will take 6 years.
5. You are saying no private firm can make second prod line for LCA in 5-10 years, yet dassault/Boeing/Saab..in collaboration of pvt sector are saying they can start producing in 3yrs max. You wanna say no pvt firm can make LCA second production. Line operational in 3-4 yrs in India if given a order of 126 planes?
Partnership with Dassault/Saab etc is very different from building a production line from scratch. Such companies don't exist in India today. As a matter of fact, companies like TASL and Dynamatic are very happy with just being recognized as Tier 1 suppliers. Those are subcontractors.
6. Again you are saying IAF only wanna buy FGFA and AMCA after 2030... And still you advocating that new prod line along with rafale line, what will happen to these production lines? And is it not that this investment will get waste..
The Indian company that will produce say Gripen can move to producing AMCA. Or the foreign company can produce civilian aircraft on the same line.
Dassault plans to manufacture their civilian jets on the same line for the Indian market after Rafale production is done. In case IAF likes FCAS, Dassault can produce that also.
To conclude, if IAF operates 12 sqn (2 old and 10 new) of rafale.. Then it needs 4 bases max. And if IAF operates 7 rafale (total 9) and 6 second MRCA.. It needs to create one more bases for rafale and three for second MRCA.. So it comes to approx 4 billion dollar extra expenditure.
If IAF orders 200 Rafales, the bases will increase to a lot more than just 4. I think Su-30 operates from more than a dozen bases in total. All bases will eventually hold a few Rafales, peppered all across the country. For example, the Bareilly squadrons are deputed to Kalaikunda for excursions to the A&N Islands. Similarly there are bases in A&N and even South India that have equipment that can handle MKIs at a short notice.
Aircraft with sufficient numbers are constantly rotated to different bases. And important aircraft like MKI and Rafale in the future will have minimum amount of infrastructure on all the important bases.
Rafale flyaway cost is 83 M dollar and F18 SH is 65-70 M dollar and gripen NG will cost samabout 60-65M.
With MII and 200+ order for rafale cost will be 10-15% cheaper as its development cost is distributed over larger order and cheaper labour .. And also the cost of production is spread over bigger order.. It comes to 75M dollar...
After a certain number of units, costs won't get cheaper. It will simply become uniform and stable.
If we get say rafale production line for 108 sqn and 108 from gripen/F18 the cost of establishing production line will increase the cost of these planes. And cost of rafale will also increase as the economies of scale is reduced.
Rafale production won't be so less. Gripen production will handle exports also.
And mate AMCA will start inducting after 2030-32.. And operating FGFA/AMCA in big numbers will be prohibitive in long run.. So IAF will go for max 10 sqn of FGFA and 10 sqn of AMCA and keep 30 sqn of 4.75++ Gen jets like rafale and supersukoi... Til 2045-50 or so..
AMCA and FGFA will outnumber all our current jets.
If you consider the 2040s. We won't have Su-30 and LCA, both will be in the process of phasing out like Mig-21s today. We will have about 5 or 6 squadrons of Rafale and Gripen each, probably finishing fleetwide MLUs. The rest will be FGFA and AMCA in different variants, Mk1, Mk2 etc.
In your rafale export order possible can go vey big... Like Saudi 72 and fifth trance of FrAF.. But if dassault make rafale in India..every other is not even required..bcoz IN/IAF alone can ask for about 250+ rafale..and add about 80-100 for FrAF.. These two will become priority and rest all will wait except Egypt and Qatar..dassult can increase merignac production line to 22-33 / yrs.. And after fulfilling orders for qatar+ India(54) + FrAaF(45)... After 2023 or so they can start exporting Saudi order if its placed..but the point is Rafale cost will come dwon will such big orders... And it will better for both india and France.
The French Rafale line will continue functioning into the 2030s. ADLA/MN will only buy Rafales from France. At best you can say the Indian line can be expanded to cater to Indian forces as well as exports in the long run while the French line will go back to producing 11 Rafales a year for ADLA/MN.
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Think of it this way. IAF wants 300 Rafales. But they can't have 300 Rafales in 10 years because they can't afford it. So they have to split it into 150 Rafales and 150 Gripens in order to reduce the procurement bill. That's what's happening. If it turns out that inducting extra Gripens is more expensive than making more Rafales, then it is obvious what MoD will do. This is MoD's decision, not IAF's.
The dark horse is LSA.
You are forgetting that exports will play a major part. This will bring India a lot of foreign exchange and make us a net exporter of defence equipment for the next 15 years.
