by Maroof Raza

The UPA claims that the deal is far more expensive than what it had negotiated. But, those inconclusive talks were about Rafale aircraft platform only. Not the fully loaded weapon system that India will get.

The Rafale aircraft deal is fast turning into a political slug-fest over allegations of nepotism and an overpriced deal for the 36 Rafale aircraft ordered by India. The UPA claims that the deal is far more expensive than what it had negotiated (though the UPA never signed this deal). More so, those inconclusive talks were about the Rafale aircraft platform, not for a fully loaded fighting machine that the 36 Rafale’s due for India would come in 2019, with the whole stack of weapons and armaments along with the aircraft. Thus the price being quoted now is exponentially higher – from 9.7 million euros only per aircraft platform, to 7.87 billion Euros for the fully loaded version of all 36 Rafale fighters, inclusive of additional weapons and technologies that are to be added to the entire fleet.

This would include helmet mounted sites, state of the art missiles – Scalp and Meteor – to the Rafales that have an operational range one and a half times of our current day best fighters, the Sukhoi 30 MKI. Also, the manufacturer Dassault has assured that at all times, 75% of the Rafale fleet would be kept airworthy. This compares well with our Sukhois which have never crossed the 60% serviceability mark.

The Rafale apparently meets all the requirements of the IAF, and getting 36 fighters in ready to operate condition with massive armaments on board not just in multi-role (as the MMRCA had asked for) but even better, in ‘omnirole’ will give the IAF the desperately needed punch to deal with the dual threat of China and Pakistan. At least until the additional 90 aircraft are made or purchased to make up the IAF’s vintage fleets of MiGs. While it is certainly the job of the opposition parties to act as watchdogs, and question this deal, but as this deal is a G2G (Government to Government) deal now, there is no room for middlemen in such FMS contracts. And the UPA should know that, having done numerous such FMS deals with the US in the past several years, worth billions of dollars.

Moreover, the Congress leadership was aware of this factor as the IAF had begun to look for a fighter variant to replace its vintage fleet of MiGs, as far back as 2001 (when the RFI and then later RFP were sought). The Rafale along with the Eurofighter was eventually shortlisted in the UPA’s time. Then the price negotiations had started. The current NDA government claims that the price of the platform is 9% cheaper than what was being negotiated by the UPA, but this variation is only for the aircraft platform.

However, the deal wasn’t clinched by the UPA. Moreover, much of this aircraft’s selection and the deal was done during the UPA’s rule. And it was apparently under their rule that the usual tender and selection process was attempted and dropped and so the G2G or FMS route was considered, ie, India’s government was to buy Rafale’s directly from the French government. And PM Modi just followed upon on where the story had stalled.

Now the UPA’s demand to reveal the additional technology and firepower on these aircraft, in the public domain, (which it knows, can’t be done) is contestable. It would give away its India-specific capabilities that would allow our adversaries to put in place counter-measures. The questions thus are: why all this noise by the opposition parties? Is there a desire to even get over the ghost of Bofors that haunts the Congress party and hasn’t allowed any big arms deal to go through since the 1980s?

And why hadn’t the current NDA leadership taken the opposition parties into confidence about this deal? And endless delays in inducting the aircraft will only make India more vulnerable. As for the allegations of favouring Anil Ambani’s Reliance group, this is also contestable since it is the prerogative of the manufacturer to choose one or more Indian partners like Anil Ambani’s Reliance defence company. In the current G2G deal, there is no need to identify offset partners. This is to be done only when the other 90 aircraft are to be assembled/made in India. And Reliance apart there will be many more bidders for these arrangements.