Signing of defence acquisitions is not linear; not all are equal accomplishments.
Buying in-house is ridiculously simple. Check how many contracts the US does
on a nearly daily basis. If that is difficult, you're doomed so no credit given there.
Buying when you have little or no choice is also not a performance marker. For
example, buying E-2s for our navy is a no-brainer as alternatives don't exist ...
and buying a few Hercs in a rush because Airbus can't deliver in time is too.
And extensions on existing deals ( say MKI ) are no great achievements either.
And some deals are political.
Only the big foreign deals count to the DM's credit.
You will be surprised to know how bad the UPA was in buying in-house, let alone from outside.
Except for one sector, most of India's purchases were not in-house. Two more Phalcons in a new deal. Apache and Chinook, C-295, they are all from outside. Apache and Chinook came from tenders and were signed under the BJP while C-17, P-8I and C-130 were FMS deals under the UPA. The credit goes to Parrikar for not having canceled the helicopter tenders, like it was the case with all other helicopter tenders.
Similarly, the multi-billion dollar deals between Reliance and the Russian arms industry for ships and missiles are also Parrikar's.
The extension to MKI was done by the UPA, the last one in 2012. Otoh, the S-400 and the new contract for FGFA with new configuration, new timetable and reduced price are Parrikar's.
So, except for the non-import sector, all other deals are Parrikar's. In that sense, though Modi initiated it, the Rafale deal is also Parrikar's since he was the one who added the new configuration, offsets and MII. He was the one who added industrial production under offsets. Modi had negotiated only for the existing F3+ configuration as flyaway, with no offsets, no industrial production, no MII etc.
As for bullet proof jackets, all the national and international companies that participated flunked trials. So Parrikar made the decision to order 50,000 dated jackets from 2 companies in just a month as an emergency purchase. Right now, only DRDO is developing a new jacket that would match IA's requirement. Similarly, the rifle tender was also withdrawn because all the international companies flunked trials. DRDO claims to have developed a rifle that matches the requirements.
You can't blame Parrikar if the companies themselves flunk trials.
You are being taken for a ride by the anti-French lobby in the Indian media and you are happy to be on that ride because you 'believe' the Rafale is getting a stepmotherly treatment by Parrikar, which is far from the truth. Anybody who has 'seriously' followed the Rafale deal knows that it actually thrives because of Parrikar and not Modi.
MMRCA was canceled because the UPA had introduced very damaging clauses to the deal. Those clauses are now under investigation. And Parrikar didn't like Modi's Rafale deal because it added nothing to the Indian industry and was done without taking into consideration his new DPP-2016.
IAF wanted to expand the old 36 F3+ deal to 80 and Parrikar put them in their place. After that Parrikar introduced 90 more jets to the IAF under his new DPP, gave the industry about $2.5-3B in investments and new technologies. Even the latest proposal for 54 more jets to the IN was Parrikar's. IN had not even proposed that to Parrikar, this was Parrikar's initiative. Now, the 36 jets deal has become 54 jets, 36 for the IAF and 18 for the IN, the media haven't yet told you this, have they?
Parrikar is waiting for the navy to finish and submit their tech report in order to either buy the Rafales from France or MII, all depending on the numbers that the navy needs. Feel different about Parrikar now?
As of today, all defence and non-defence deals are on hold because India has had two major droughts and they are waiting for a good monsoon season. No deal has been signed since April, the start of the fiscal year.
And in reference to this pseudo-potential Raffy deal,
the proof was made at the end of the MMRCA saga
when the GoI discovered that HAL would require so
much more time that in the end labor costs would be
high enough to constitute a sticking point ...
which some now conveniently forget.
Tay.
The HAL problem was very different. HAL didn't want to invest in automation for Rafale, they wanted to use manpower. Being a PSU, they hire more manpower than necessary. They also wanted to use non-French CNC equipment which would have lead to extra costs and delay in certification.
The cost in acquiring automation would have offset the cost of manpower. But what HAL didn't consider is that automation would have been faster and more efficient than manpower. So HAL planned to introduce three shifts which jacked up costs. All of this could have been fixed during CNC stage at the secretary level.
The MMRCA was canceled because of UPA's bureaucratic procedures where they wanted to restart the L1 procedure after the CNC stage was done. Parrikar found that unacceptable.
Did you know that the 36 aircraft GTG deal and the MMRCA deal were supposed to go hand-in-hand? While Parrikar was trying to deal with MMRCA, Modi had capitulated under IAF pressure for immediate induction of 2 squadrons. This led to friction, but contrary to media reports, Parrikar rose above it and made the Rafale his own by canceling MMRCA, changing the terms of the GTG deal and adding MII to it, basically making the entire deal better.
