Rafael would have cost more to produce - yes. Not to maintain we already planning to have 126 of them.
You mean a single engine and twin engine, light and medium aircraft cost equal to maintain? Start with fuel, than maintenance of that extra engine, and so on..
You can't replace a single engine light fighter with twin engine medium one - says who ??? Do you know which planes heavy MKIs are replacing ??? Or coming Rafaels will be replacing ???
MKI and Rafale are multirole aircraft. They are replacing air-sup and strike aircraft at the same time. It means they can replace a mig 21 and mig 27 (both single role) simultaneously. Mirage is already a multirole plateform. One Mki or one Rafale is cost effective when replacing two short life single role maintenance heavy aircraft. You reduce the burden of shrinking fleet size, reduce infra, reduce groundsmen, service people etc. Would Rafale be equally effective replacing a cheaper, lighter multirole aircraft?
And those planes they are replacing are outdated. They have no place 10 years from now. Same is not true for upgraded mirage.
Off shelf is out if question I know. Bt that's the problem here.
Opportunity to gain experience of what ??? Upgrading 3rd gen plane to 4th ??? I though HAL was more interested in building 5th gen ( sarcasm ) calling it apportunity is wrong. Say a waist of time , money and manpower. Direct upgrade would have been more fast and some relevance
Building a plane from scratch and upgrading a platform, irrelevant of its generation, are different experience.