Saab Gripen MII proposal details
Latest offer details
- Saab has offerred to bring entire aerospace ecosystem to India for a period of 100 years
- Its offering to set up Industrial Network with Indian pvt sector
- It also wants to setup Aeronautic training academy
- Saab has described the following steps
- When the contract is signed , same day a dedicated Gripen line for India will be setup in Sweden
- Indian Industry participation and Skill training will happen in Sweden in this line.
- Once the infrastructure in India is up and running then the whole line and skilled manpower will be shifted
- Estimated timeline for the whole process - Minimum 4.5 Years - Maximum 7 years
- Saab will then start with Kit based assembly in Indian line
- By providing knowledge and building capability from the bottom of the supply chain, the kits would be slowly replaced by local production from raw materials.
- Saab wants the offer to be G2G
- Saab is selling its USP as
- Traditional MLU is 15-20 years
- Gripen has split avionics architecture that separates flight control system and tactical systems
- this implies improvements can be undertaken in tactical avionics without interfering with flight characteristics
- Thus Gripen can be upgraded every 2-3 years
- DM MP commented after seeing all this
- India wont wait for 5-7 years for Indian production line
- Any fighter made in Indian production line must start rolling by 4th year
- in case of exceptional delay and issues agreed by MOD then max by 5th year
- Any more delay and it will be financial penalty
- Other than Skill there is no technology upgradation in industrial R&D or transfer of cutting edge tech to India
- The ecosystem and skilled manpower is already getting created by LCA and ADA has already cleared the plan to convert Indian ecosystem by making HAL and other agencies to be lead integrator.
- Pvt sector will be sub assemblers and assemblers.
- The short duration upgrade every 2-3 years cost was asked by DM MP and Saab could not offer any proper figure or any estimate.
- DM politely informed that present form of proposal needs much more as competing Single Jet engine offer is presently superior.
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It looks a good proposal, but it perhaps has come about 15 years too late.
I may be naive here to comment, but it looks SAAB is trying to use India as a manufacturing base for developing new generation low cost light fighters for export markets of Latin America and Africa.
We have read a lot about SAAB pitching its products but point is how does India see its air warfare threats of future. Does a fourth generation product with limited future development scope fit into military doctrine of India? I'm not sure of answers given projects like AMCA, LCA mark 2, FGFA, Rafale etc are on immediate horizon. Secondly i'm sure in all this chaos, someone in administration must be sensible enough to think of consolidation and reducing the number of platforms.
I recall
@MilSpec post, where he explained that how planners in pakistan have been really wise to choose JF 17 as a single platform and then devise strategies around it. I'm not fully aware of JF17 capabilities, but surely it is a good move to use a single platform as your workhorse and then have a fleet of special utility platforms in limited numbers. It cuts down on cost and clutter in thinking.
Third, whoever wishes to sell India a technology or product must take into account how the platform can be of use to Navy (in shore based and Deck based roles).
Somehow when i ask myself these questions, only Rafale seems to be the logical choice. But future holds is an unknown, but surely someone must now start to clear all the confusion that is surrounding the establishment and define what 3 or 4 (at max) platforms are going to be part India's fighter fleet for next 25 years or so.
@Abingdonboy What do you say?