Dassault Rafale, tender | News & Discussions

[praveen007]

IN FOCUS: India’s MMRCA selection advances decade-long search for MiG-21 replacement | idrw.org
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IN FOCUS:- India’s MMRCA selection advances decade- long search for MiG-21 replacement
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SOURCE: FLIGHT GLOBAL
India’s 31 January selection of the Dassault Rafale
for its more than $10 billion medium multi-role
combat aircraft (MMRCA) requirement launches
the next stage in a tortuous competition that had
its origins a decade ago, when the Indian air force
favoured the French company’s Mirage 2000-5
fighter.
The Rafale (below) and Eurofighter Typhoon had
been in contention for the 126-aircraft deal since
April 2011, when a downselect decision eliminated
previous rivals the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super
Hornet; Lockheed Martin F-16 Block 60; RSK
MiG-35; and Saab Gripen NG.
If exclusive negotiations with Dassault prove
successful, the Indian air force will receive 18
Rafales delivered by the company in fly-away
condition, with the remaining 108 to be produced
in India by Hindustan Aeronautics (HAL). India
requires offsets valuing 50% of the total MMRCA
price tag as part of the acquisition.
India’s initial tender for the MMRCA capability
stipulated 660 requirements, and the first
proposals issued by the airframers ran to
5,000-6,000 pages each. Comprehensive field
tests of each aircraft were then undertaken,
including flying the aircraft – borrowed from
various air forces – to India at the manufacturers’
expense.
There they were subjected to batteries of tests
reflecting India’s varied geography. Flights were
conducted from Bengaluru in tropical conditions,
over the desert of Jaisalmer and at Leh in the
Himalayas, said to be the highest operational air
base in the world.
“We spent quite a lot on the tests with no
guarantee of a sale,” said an executive involved in
the race. “That said, the air force got a very good
impression of all the aircraft.”
The downselect decision was not without
controversy. One of the original stipulations of
the tender, for example, was an operational active
electronically scanned array (AESA) radar. At the
time of the tests, only the F-16 and Super Hornet
had operational AESA sets.
US industry sources hinted that bitter memories
of arms sanctions in the 1990s prompted New
Delhi to eliminate both American fighters.
Once acquired, the Indian air force’s new MMRCA
fleet will replace its aged RSK MiG-21 interceptors,
which have become the subject of national
scrutiny because of a high accident rate involving
the type. The incoming model will join a growing
combat inventory of Sukhoi and HAL-built
Su-30s, plus upgraded Dassault Mirage 2000s,
Sepecat/HAL Jaguars and Aeronautical
Development Agency Tejas light combat aircraft.
Other assets include MiG-23, -27 and -29 strike
aircraft.
Although New Delhi’s move to start negotiations
with Dassault stems from the Rafale beating the
Typhoon on price, the French type also
performed well during NATO- and US-led
operations over Libya during 2011, including
flights performed with M-model aircraft from the
deck of the aircraft carrier the Charles de Gaulle.

 

[rockstarIN]

Yet the MMRCA is being focused on Pakistan.
What incentive do you offer that Pakistan is still not the center of India's focus?
All India needs to take out Pakistan are the MKI's,Mig-29's and M2K's.. the PAF will fall in two weeks max.
Then why the focus of the MMRCA on the west?

As sancho said, its surprising from your side.

For years we left our north eastern border without guard even after 1962 episode thinking that Himalaya is the best border guard. But now things are changed.....China has updating infrastructure in Tibetan Plateau. J-10s are there. We should keep up the pace with others.

 

[sudhir007]

Paris to the hilt | idrw.org

The French kiss is running deep for India’s defence establishment this season.Tuesday’s decision to select the Dassault Aviation-made Rafale fighter jet over the Eurofighter Typhoon as the aircraft that will power the Indian Air Force for the next 40 years is easily the biggest prize that France has won on any military order.

Some 800 French companies operate in India but only a select few in the defence sector. Areva in the nuclear power sector and Airbus (European conglomerate) in civil aviation have expanded their businesses, too.

But in the lucrative defence business, France is still behind Russia and Israel as a supplier to India. The award of the Rafale contract, possibly in April, will expand its lead hugely over the US, the UK and Western European countries. The Indian military has been steadily diversifying its arsenal this past decade even though nearly 70 per cent of the hardware is of Russian/Soviet origin.

It would be sweeter still for France because India has selected the Rafale after it was rejected by a clutch of countries that were or are looking to refurbish their air forces. Among them are Switzerland, the UAE, Brazil and South Korea. Also, even all of these countries put together were not looking to buy as many as 126 — and possibly another 63 more — of the aircraft.

France’s year for India’s defence began with the announcement in the first week of January that MBDA was being awarded a contract for 490 Mica infrared and radar-controlled air-to-air missiles. The package will cost the defence budget $1.2 billion (about Rs 6,600 crore).

The award of the weapons package follows the order to upgrade the Indian Air Force’s 51 Mirage 2000H fighter jets. France was given the contract in July last after years of negotiations that almost frustrated it. The Mica missiles from MBDA will equip these refurbished fighter jets.

MBDA is also in the race to sell Asraam missiles to arm the Indian Air Force’s 100 Jaguar fighter-bomber aircraft. MBDA heavy-duty weapons used in Libya and Afghanistan, like bunker busting and deep penetration ground attack missiles, will arm the Rafale, too.

The Mirage modernisation order to French companies Dassault and Thales will cost about $2.4 billion (about Rs 11,000 crore). The total upgrade order, with the weapons package, will top Rs 17,500 crore.

French companies are preparing to race for an order for a second line of submarines for the Indian Navy that could be in the region of Rs 62,000 crore. France’s DCNS got the contract in 2005 to build six Scorpene submarines. The delivery of the submarines, being built in Cherbourg in France and also at Mazagon Docks in Mumbai is delayed because work languished over pricing issues in 2008.

The first of the submarines is now expected only in 2015. The contract was signed initially for $3 billion after a meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Jacques Chirac in September 2005. The price was revised to $4.5 billion after the contract was re-negotiated amid allegations from German rival HDW of a scandal.

Cutting across the various defence contracts that France is executing is French company Thales. Thales is a partner for the Mirage upgrade, the submarine development and will partner Dassault for the Rafale. It supplies night-vision devices to the Indian Army for its tanks.

French engine-maker Snecma powers the Mirage 2000 fighter aircraft and two Snecma M88 engines will go into each Rafale.

French company Safran has won a contract for an unspecified amount from Hindustan Aeronautics to supply Turbomeca Ardiden 1H helicopters for the Dhruv-II advanced light helicopter. Each helicopter has two engines and the Dhruv is steadily becoming one of the main rotorcraft for the army, the air force and the navy as also for central police organisations. The Turbomeca engines are made by Safran.

 

[hembo]

Yet the MMRCA is being focused on Pakistan.
What incentive do you offer that Pakistan is still not the center of India's focus?
All India needs to take out Pakistan are the MKI's,Mig-29's and M2K's.. the PAF will fall in two weeks max.
Then why the focus of the MMRCA on the west?

We do not want to underestimate PAF...

On a serious note, MMRCA (even though few squadrons may be placed in the northern (&western?, don't think so) sector, will be more China-centric.

There you go, I spilled it for ya.

---------- Post added at 09:00 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:59 AM ----------

As sancho said, its surprising from your side.

For years we left our north eastern border without guard even after 1962 episode thinking that Himalaya is the best border guard. But now things are changed.....China has updating infrastructure in Tibetan Plateau. J-10s are there. We should keep up the pace with others.

Exactly!!!

 

[indianspetsnaz]

which Rafale variant will India get?

 

[Kazhugu]

Yet the MMRCA is being focused on Pakistan.
What incentive do you offer that Pakistan is still not the center of India's focus?
All India needs to take out Pakistan are the MKI's,Mig-29's and M2K's.. the PAF will fall in two weeks max.
Then why the focus of the MMRCA on the west?

man..how do you know they will be based in the west ?

if at all they are based in westerns frontier, one or two squadrons may be based out of sri nagar afb or udhampur afb in any response to chinese fighters ingressing through leh sector....

 

[golmaal]

Britain, a key arms supplier to India, cannot believe that it lost out to France.

February 5, 2012:
Last year, a group of Indian journalists were taken on a tour of BAE System's Warton Aerodrome on Britain's northwest coast, where Eurofighter Typhoons for British and Saudi contracts were being assembled.

We watched a Typhoon swoop above, tried on and played around with the jet's pilot helmet, a Darth Vaderesque object with an optical tracking system fitted inside, and generally had as much of an adventure park-like experience that one could have at an aerodrome assembling war planes.

Everyone, of course, avoided being drawn into a discussion of the four-nation Eurofighter consortium's prospects for winning the $10-billion bid for 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) but there was certainly an air of cautious optimism.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps. With the exception of Russia, no other country has had as lucrative a trade with India when it comes to arms as Britain has.

Between 1950 and 2010, India has imported $15.3 billion worth of arms from Britain, against $4 billion from France and $1.8 billion from Germany, according to data from the Swedish International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

It is a dominance that has continued into the current decade: In the decade till 2010, British arms exports to India totalled $859 million, more than the total for Germany ($414 million) and France ($432 million) combined.

Britain's consistent position as second-to-Russia when it came to Indian arms imports has bucked the direction of their bilateral trade relationship, which has seen Britain slip behind other European nations in relative terms. And globally the Indian arms market matters more than any: between 2006 and 2010, it was the largest arms importer in the world, accounting for an impressive 9 per cent of international arms transfer volumes, according to SIPRI data.

FRANCE'S STEADY PRESENCE

France has been a steady presence in that market since the 1950s, and Germany since the 1960s — but failed to take over from Britain.

While France has established itself across platforms — from the Mirage to submarines — Germany, the third largest exporter of arms in the world, has failed to establish a major presence beyond engine systems in the Indian market, often because of the costliness of its product, says Siemon Wezeman, senior researcher at SIPRI.

The Indian market has also consistently remained a European battleground, unlike other Asian markets (US arms exports to Japan totalled $57 billion between 1950 and 2010 against $1.4 billion from Britain and $442 million from Germany).

Excluding Russia, India's four largest sources of arms are European (Switzerland and the Netherlands are both ahead of Israel, with the US never taking off as a major supplier, partly because of its relationship with Pakistan and partly for limited willingness to transfer technology and stringent conditions such as weapons inspections).

AGGRESSIVE UK CAMPAIGN

Though the Eurofighter bid was led by Germany's Cassidian, there was aggressive campaigning by Britain — not least during the Prime Minister, Mr David Cameron's visit to India in 2010 shortly after the British general election, during which a £500-million contract between BAE Systems and Hindustan Electronics for Hawk training jets was signed.

During a visit to India last year, Britain's development minister, Mr Andrew Mitchell, linked the strategic aim of the nation's decision to maintain £1.2 billion of aid to India — while scrapping it for many other countries — to trade and even directly to the Eurofighter campaign. “The focus is also about seeking to sell Typhoon,” he said, according to Britain's The Independent newspaper at the time.

In Germany, the reaction to the news that Dassault Aviation had emerged as the lowest, and therefore preferred bidder for the MMRCA contract was relatively muted, with criticism more focused on the limited role that the Chancellor, Ms Angela Merkel, played in the campaign, compared with the involvement of the French President, Mr Nicholas Sarkozy on Dassault's behalf.

By contrast, in Britain, it has been vitriolic at points, making clear the presumptiveness that prevailed in some quarters, despite the fact that it had been clear that having tested all the first-round contenders against 660 different criteria, the final round was all about costs. “Well, that's gratitude,” The Daily Mail newspaper — reportedly the most read newspaper web site in the world — declared furiously.

“We give India £1 billion in aid, THEY snub the UK and give France a £13-billion jet contract!” Some Conservative MPs called on the government to revisit the decision on aid.

Mr Cameron, steering clear of any retaliatory rhetoric, vowed to do all he could to persuade India to revisit the decision — though whether he will do so at a potential cost to diplomatic relations is another matter altogether, say some observers.

BOOST FOR SARKOZY

That a country that exited the Eurofighter project — originally initiated in the 1970s as a cost-sharing project across European nations — had beaten the consortium on the complex cost calculations, including life cycle costs and technology transfer, was bad enough.

Let alone a company that is yet to sell a single Rafale outside France, despite coming close to deals in the UAE, Brazil, Libya, Switzerland and South Korea. (At one point a French minister warned that the project would have to be scrapped if no sales were agreed soon).

That it was a French victory, so soon after India had opted for a $2.5-billion upgrade of its Mirage 2000s grated even more in Britain, given the sparring between the leaders of the two nations in the past few months.

Mr Sarkozy has made no secret of his contempt for Mr Cameron's criticism of Euro Zone nations — at one point telling him to join the euro or ‘shut up'. Just the day before the contract was announced Mr Sarkozy declared Britain had ‘no industry left', a comment that wouldn't have rankled so much if there weren't elements of truth to it.

The MMRCA contact is a boost for Mr Sarkozy so close to the May Presidential elections, with the potential impact — should the contract be signed — set to be felt beyond just Dassault Aviation itself (Thales will supply information systems and Safran the twin M88 engines).

‘Dogfight' was the way Ashley J. Tellis of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace characterised the global battle to win the MMRCA contract in a report last year, even before the initial shortlist was drawn up.

It has proved an accurate description: with the first round of short-listing last year being seen inaccurately by some of a rebuffing of a closer strategic relationship with the US, rather than the reality, which was a reflection of the military's technological needs and a willingness by the bidders to share technology.

Last week's decision is likely to face the same sort of pressure.

It is up to the government to combat that pressure, through transparency about how it arrived at the cost ranking, and to show that it is capable of having a relationship with diverse partners, based on a strict set of criteria, and that it is a relationship that no nation can take for granted.

Business Line : Opinion / Columns : Rafale win leaves UK smarting

 

[SQ8]

You yourself answered the question. If PAF will fall in two weeks max, why would we need deep strike excellent A2G fighter with advanced avionics and weapons...may be for a neighbor like China which has superior aircraft and larger airforce, rail and road network to border areas.

As sancho said, its surprising from your side.

For years we left our north eastern border without guard even after 1962 episode thinking that Himalaya is the best border guard. But now things are changed.....China has updating infrastructure in Tibetan Plateau. J-10s are there. We should keep up the pace with others.

man..how do you know they will be based in the west ?

if at all they are based in westerns frontier, one or two squadrons may be based out of sri nagar afb or udhampur afb in any response to chinese fighters ingressing through leh sector....

IAF is keen the deliveries of the 126 fighters begin from mid-2015 onwards to stem its fast-eroding combat edge. Plans are in place to base the first MMRCA squadrons in the western sector against Pakistan, first Ambala and then Jodhpur, followed by Hashimara in the eastern sector against China, say sources.

This is why I put the question forward.
While I know that its more of a fleet upgrade program.. the IAF should now base those squadrons which operated obsolescent aircraft and will be replaced by the MMRCA more to the north and east.

 

[Kazhugu]

This is why I put the question forward.
While I know that its more of a fleet upgrade program.. the IAF should now base those squadrons which operated obsolescent aircraft and will be replaced by the MMRCA more to the north and east.

dont mind the unnamed sources dude...they want their 15 minutes in the media....

as i said if at all any of the mrca squadron is based on the western theatre..it will one or two squadrons operating out of any afs in jammu kashmir for keeping an eye on the leh sector...

this is not to say that rafale will not be used in combat against pakistan..that depends on the op scenario...im just talking about the initial stationing...

 

[Jason bourne]

which Rafale variant will India get?

all i think..

 

[SQ8]

FOLKS.. please post all news on the MMRCA program HERE. And tell others to do so as well.
Unless its a really important subject such as the signing of the deal with MoD.. do not post it on a new thread.
It helps keep the section less cluttered and also allows people to search for news and information more easily.

Thanks

 

[SQ8]

Someone in BRF is saying that 65-70 Gripens with Full TOT are being procured in addition to these 126 Rafales...

Someone in BRF is probably high.
Its understandable that India has money, but I know this for a fact that Indians arent wasteful.(anymore)
Why would the IAF want to buy another fighter with capabilities that the LCAmk2 is supposed to partially mirror anyway.
Why would the IAF want to add more headaches to logistics when clearly its focus seems to be on increasing commonality and reducing the types it wants to operate?.

dont mind the unnamed sources dude...they want their 15 minutes in the media....

as i said if at all any of the mrca squadron is based on the western theatre..it will one or two squadrons operating out of any afs in jammu kashmir for keeping an eye on the leh sector...

this is not to say that rafale will not be used in combat against pakistan..that depends on the op scenario...im just talking about the initial stationing...

Well that is surprising thing. I do not object to the Rafale's usage against Pakistan. What I object to is the immedieate focus of it.Pakistan does not represent a credible threat to India anymore, China does. Even now India is lacking in the northeast sector and that is where I believe the Rafale should go.
That does not mean some Rafale sq not be based on the western front or on more developed bases in the west for training and general rotation.

 

[ARCHON]

Someone in BRF is probably high.
Its understandable that India has money, but I know this for a fact that Indians arent wasteful.(anymore)
Why would the IAF want to buy another fighter with capabilities that the LCAmk2 is supposed to partially mirror anyway.
Why would the IAF want to add more headaches to logistics when clearly its focus seems to be on increasing commonality and reducing the types it wants to operate?.



Well that is surprising thing. I do not object to the Rafale's usage against Pakistan. What I object to is the immedieate focus of it.Pakistan does not represent a credible threat to India anymore, China does. Even now India is lacking in the northeast sector and that is where I believe the Rafale should go.
That does not mean some Rafale sq not be based on the western front or on more developed bases in the west for training and general rotation.

Mig-21, Mig-27, Jaguar, Mirage in future replacement by Rafale and Gripen means 4 replaced by 2.

Mirage and Rafale logistics have commanality hence its 4 replaced by 1

 

[jha]

Someone in BRF is probably high.
Its understandable that India has money, but I know this for a fact that Indians arent wasteful.(anymore)
Why would the IAF want to buy another fighter with capabilities that the LCAmk2 is supposed to partially mirror anyway.
Why would the IAF want to add more headaches to logistics when clearly its focus seems to be on increasing commonality and reducing the types it wants to operate?.

Yes...
There are many people who claim to have inside sources in MoD...

 

[SQ8]

Mig-21, Mig-27, Jaguar, Mirage in future replacement by Rafale and Gripen means 4 replaced by 2.

Mirage and Rafale logistics have commanality hence its 4 replaced by 1

Yes...
There are many people who claim to have inside sources in MoD...

As there are here.. but if there is such a decision. I would be surprised.
Since it makes no sense. Buying the Gripen is overlapping capability and burdening logistics for NO significant gain. If they want to buy the Gripen.. scrap the Tejas... why bother with it?