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Dassault Rafale, tender | News & Discussions [Thread 2]

He clearly stated there was a requirement for an additional 6 SQNs of Rafales, the comment about "Rafale-like" a/c is nonsensical but intentional so as to not seem that he was undermining the GoI/MoD's bargaining position.

In July he said we need 80 Rafales, in October he says he needs 6 squadrons. He sounds confused. But thats not the point here. The point that needs attention is what is IAF's (A subset of India's requirement) is. Falling numbers (squadron strength) or operational gaps (High-MID-Low combo). Here both seems to be equally important. but one has to be prioritised. In such a case what seems to be the issue herethat IAF has prioritized both, while MoD has prioritized Operational gap and then numbers. This 36 is for the operational gaps, which once added will help IAF in filling that gap for sometimeuntill GOI finds an alternative. FGFA or AMCA, LCA Mk2. There are options available.

There is also another issue, where if you seal the deal for 126 Acs then you have to committ half of teh money while signing, meaning less funds for additional shopping in the budget year. The MoD and PMO got it right by spreading the expenditure evenly.

Comparing the IAF to the force it was in the 80s to how it will be in 2030 or 2040 (the Rafales will serve for 30+ years) is illogical. India was a very different country in the 80s and so was the IAF. The maintenance issues were not so apparent because the IAF understood they could only afford limited numbers and hence had single types per airbase (i.e. all of the Miragee 2000s deployed at Gwalior). But the IAF today wants full spectrum war fighting capability meaning that all their assets can be deployed to any of their geographically dispersed airbases= this would not be feasible for just 36 fighters- Dassualt, the IAF and MoD/PMO know as much.

Agreed. They can be based out of a single airbase, not an issue for maintainance.

This is nonsense the IAF has NEVER "erased" the low-end requirement but had pushed forward with other procurements as the LCA matured. The IAF has been consistent for 20+ years, there is none of this doctrinal shift you are talking about. They want a top end air dominance fighter (MKI/FGFA) a light point-defence fighter (LCA) and a long range strike fighter to compliment both (Rafale). Neither the MKI nor the LCA can be considered substitutes for the Rafale, the Rafale is an essential purchase whether you like it or not and it is simply unthinkable to go for a number as low as 36.

Anyone dreaming about this needs to wake up- it would HARM India's interests.

On paper they never did, but they did so by sytematicaly by their lack of focus on LCA. I dont blame IAF here. ADA is also to be blamed equally. But IAF could have accepted LCA in its current config, with a little higher number than 40. Could have been welcome step for ADA, HAL as further confidence booster. Like I said, they keep crying about falling numbers, but they expect GOI to do some miracle to fill that number, like committing all the resource to buy a foreign fighter. IAF khush.

So now the LCA is a substitute for the Rafale? It never was and never will be. The IAF never refused to induct the LCA, they simply insisted it met their AQSRs which it now does.

The LCA will be in service with 200+ units, the Rafale with 80-120+ (189 perhaps).

Mate, they wanted additional Mirages, that time where was Rafale?, since the French offered an advanced version they opened up competition. LCA was not even in picture then, heck not even Rafale!, it was MIrage 200 in IAF's mind. Do you see where they messed up?


Utter, utter hogwash my friend. So now road-mobile SAMs are a substitute to long range fighter jets? Please, this is sheer lunacy and no one is proposing this either in the IAF or MoD.

S400 to "shut up" the IAF- that's a new one!

Yes, its a new one, but the idea has merit.

Then when Modi announces how many Rafales are actually coming I hope you will support him still

Yes.

and regarding CAG, they might question this, but the idea has merit. Remember this is a govt to govt deal. India holds better bargaining power with French govt than Dassult.
I am not against more Rafales, I am trying to explain that MoD's approach is in the right direction.
 
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Wont say off topic, but some info on what M Parikar is doing in MOD.

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Cut your coat according to your cloth. That’s the loud and clear message Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar has sent out to the three armed forces. In less than six months after taking over, Parrikar has studied various complex issues dogging the Defence Ministry and has come to his own conclusions on what needs to be done. By his own admission, Parrikar spent the first four months as defence minister taking inputs from a range of experts both within and outside the MoD before making up his mind.
The first thing he said he realised, was the mismatch that existed between various acquisition plans of the three armed forces and the availability of funds. “Many grand plans were made without taking the budget into consideration,” he told me.

During a couple of on-camera and off-camera (but on record) conversations, Parrikar talked to me about how the planning for the much-touted Mountain Strike Corps (MSC) was faulty. “The need for acquiring an offensive capability against the Chinese was projected (and sanctioned) but not the funds. I will not go into who is responsible for this faulty planning and projection but the fact is, they (the army) was using war reserves to equip the Mountain Strike Corps. Fortunately, we realised the mistake early and I can assure you that the reserves have not depleted to a level where it can be termed alarming. After a review, we have realised that the MSC will have to be frozen at a point where it is now..”
Later, in another interview to Hindustan Times, he confirmed the actual figures. “I have frozen the cost at Rs 38,000 crore over the next eight years. It will consist of 35,000 men,” the Defence Minister said. So from 70,000 men and Rs 88,000 crore, Parrikar has made the Army cut the size of the MSC down to almost 50 percent. And rightly so, since funds are not infinite.

Indeed, the biggest example of Parrikar’s dictum is the decision on the purchase of 36 Rafale combat jets from France. “The Air Force may want 126 Rafales and I may want to give them 500 but where are the funds? We have to be realistic. So why not go for LCA (Light Combat Aircraft) Tejas, Mark II made in India which will save us some money and give a boost to the indigenous aerospace industry? At the same time, we understood that the IAF needed the Rafale jets, so I went to the Prime Minister, who took a very bold political decision. This proves that important acquisitions have to be made at the government-to-government level,” he said.
Rafale and MSC are two big ticket items that have been cut down according to the availability of funds, but in his review, Parrikar also found that the bureaucracy in the ministry — both civil and military — was sitting on some 400-odd big and small projects that are critical to the three armed forces. Without getting into details, he said, “The first thing I did was to look at projects that are stuck at various stages of clearances since the most common complaint across the board was ‘nothing moves’ in the MoD.” A thorough review revealed that nearly one-third of the 400-odd projects were now irrelevant. So they were discarded. About 50 projects were accelerated since they were of critical importance.

The next step was to prioritise the projects. Over the past month, Parrikar and his closest aides have managed to identify critical schemes across the three services that needed immediate funding and implementation. The purchase of 50,000 bullet proof jackets, for instance, was sanctioned on a fast track basis once it was realised that troops involved in counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency operations were facing a severe shortage. Similarly, a small bureaucratic standoff had held up supply of Extreme High Altitude Clothing (for soldiers posted in Siachen and similar terrain) for more than two years. Parrikar personally intervened and resolved the issue, he said.

But more than anything else, the former Goa Chief Minister seems to have brought in a sense of purpose in the notoriously risk-averse MoD. Without directly criticising India’s longest serving Defence Minister AK Antony, Parrikar said that the ministry was rudderless for a long period. “There was no control over the system. There were no reviews, no feedback and there was no fear of punishment for non-performance. An important ministry like Defence cannot run like this,” Parrikar remarked. Elsewhere too he has spoken on how ineffective supervision led to the mess that the three armed forces find themselves in. A case in point is the freedom and impunity with which the Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) operated in recent times, not meeting deadlines, obfuscating performance and delaying critical projects for the IAF. Under Parrikar however, HAL and other leading defence Public Sector Undertakings are now subject to fortnightly reviews and so is the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). Perform or perish is the new mantra in the defence ministry.

The bottom line, according to the minister, an IIT Powai graduate and a voracious reader, is that people elect politicians to take a firm decisions. “Out of let’s say 10 decisions I take, five may be good, two may be average and three may turn out to be big mistakes but as long as the decisions are taken in good faith, I am willing to take them,” Parrikar told me. It’s an attitude that is not only refreshing but also reassuring. But his job has only begun. As I wrote earlier, the defence minister has a steep mountain to climb. He has only taken the first few steps towards ascending the summit.

Perform or perish is the new mantra in the Defence Ministry | Latest News & Updates at Daily News & Analysis
 
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^^^
Yeah, I deplore the absence of links in general too but it happens over long convos that the links are
there albeit a few pages back.

And I swear to you that I am not personally going to make money out of that deal.
. . . of course if Dassault wants to send me a Rafale watch or flight jacket or model even, I'll accept it! :tongue:

Read you later, Tay.

And I feel equally certain you stand to gain something from trying to swing public opinion in favour of Rafale. :P Still that is your business and there is no reason why you should not have an agenda.

Now that we have both got that cleared, let us stick to verifiable facts.
 
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It also appears he did it by doing something impossible when two Indians or more are involved :
taking decisions!
:pop:


Especially if you read it carefully : its first contract in India
I won't have the gall to teach maths to Indians but first implies more.
:pop:


Answered below before I got to it :

:pop:


Not at all, here's why!

Dassault clears a profit at 200M$. They'll teach Reliance to do so easily exactly due to greed.
As soon as Reliance operates the plant as well as Dassault does, they make as much money!

Doesn't that take money out of Dassault's pocket which it won't agree to? - you may ask.
Yes but then again that,s your 50% offset right there . . . and . . .
the money will be made back on the numbers going up from 36 to …
Integration of Indian weapons for example that some clear minds pointed out as only coherent with a bigger buy
is money that almost reverses back 100% to Dassault. Voilà, even steven!

Good day all, Tay.

P.S. Congrats Parik, you got my first on account of my fondness for coherent thinking!


I hope indian government doesn't sacrifice 4.5billion $ for the reliance , thinking that they will get a bird at 200 million ,
And pay 300 million at the end.

Reliance have greater influence in political circles , I will be surprised if they deliver rafale at the same cost of dassault.
 
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This 36 is for the operational gaps, which once added will help IAF in filling that gap for sometimeuntill GOI finds an alternative. FGFA or AMCA, LCA Mk2. There are options available.
I have asked someone to come up with an alternative- this is the real world, let's not dream up some extravagant plan that will never take place. The simplest solutions are often the best. As I have pointed out- the FGFA and LCA are NOT substitutes for the Rafale, they are air dominance and pint defence aircraft respectively. They have multi-role capabilities sure but that doesn't change the limitations they have fundamentally making them unable to match the Rafale as a long range strike fighter.

500 LCAs and 500 FGFA in service would still present a large requirement for Rafales (or a similar a/c)- you can play around with these numbers are much as you like it means nothing, the capability gap will remain- the IAF (and MoD) know this.


There is also another issue, where if you seal the deal for 126 Acs then you have to committ half of teh money while signing, meaning less funds for additional shopping in the budget year. The MoD and PMO got it right by spreading the expenditure evenly.
Inaccurate, it is 10% upfront and the rest of the cost paid for in instalments over 10-15 years this was the stipulations for the original MMRCA, now with a govt-govt agreement the GoI/CNC may have got an even sweeter deal.

Agreed. They can be based out of a single airbase, not an issue for maintainance.
Severely limiting the capabilities of the aircraft and IAF as a whole. This makes sense from an economic perspective but is against the IAF's plans/doctrine and hence is not what is being discussed.


Mate, they wanted additional Mirages, that time where was Rafale?, since the French offered an advanced version they opened up competition. LCA was not even in picture then, heck not even Rafale!, it was MIrage 200 in IAF's mind. Do you see where they messed up?
Well if you actually put a timeline on the 126 MRCA---->MMRCA (with 6 competing fighters) it makes a lot more sense. The original 126 Mirage 2000 idea cam in the very early 2000s (2000/2001) directly off the back of the 1999 Kargil war wear the Mirages had performed impressively. Back then the IAF was very low on true multi-role aircraft (the Mirage was basically it) so instinctively they had placed a rather limited RFI for, basically, the Mirage 2000 in numbers 126-189. Given the size of this deal the MoD/GoI wanted to extract the maximum utility for India's aerospace sector from it as such the competition became just as focused on the industrial benefits as the fighters themselves. The Mirage 2000 production line had closed by the time the procurement process was officially launched in around 2007 (now christened the MMRCA) with a revised set of (very exacting) ASQRs and industrial requirements and the rest is history...
 
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^^^
Yup so real image there with "pointer" and yes, the exercise is correct too. 8-)

Bonsoir chez vous, Tay.
 
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I would like to stress upon these two points you have mentioned.

Back then the IAF was very low on true multi-role aircraft (the Mirage was basically it)

Lets see how many in the world actually use multirole fighters?. France, as Rafale is only true multirole fighter available. And precisely so they have this one fighter in their plate, which does everything for them. So they dont have any heavy or low end fighters (apart from some).
USAF on the contrary doesnt have any multirole fighter and operate in the high and low combination only. USN otoh has a medium category, the 18s. but thats not a multirole platform either.

Multirole, or omnirole is suitable when you have one fighter that can be configured for multi missions, which means, airsuperiority,deep strike and point defence. When in India we have Su30 MKI for air superiority, deep strike Mirages, Jaguars and Migs for point defence, so where do you see multiroles fit here in large numbers? I see a flaw in IAF strategy here!, you are just buying a fighter for teh sake of it, Damn the logic!. I am a fan of Rafale, and was advocating for 126 for a long time, but as I rose upto see the bigger, clearer picture? I understood the reality. I saw IAF's whims and fancies. and so should you. 36 is perfect for filling an operational gap, may be you would see another 18, just like we baught the Mirages.

Given the size of this deal the MoD/GoI wanted to extract the maximum utility for India's aerospace sector from it as such the competition became just as focused on the industrial benefits as the fighters themselves.

This is bakwas. Your aerospace will only improve en route LCA. There is hardly anything you will get for industry with the kind of TOT you will get.
 
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Dassault will soon sign the 36 Rafale fighter jets contract with India.

"I think we approach the goal with a first contract for 36 aircraft. It will lead certainly to others later. I am quite optimistic about signing fast enough," Eric Trappier, CEO Dassault Systems said after he received the Industrial of the Year award by Usine Nouvelle magazine Tuesday.

Indian Rafale Fighter Contract 'Soon Enough'; Dassault CEO

@PARIKRAMA @Abingdonboy @Immanuel
 
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Dassault will soon sign the 36 Rafale fighter jets contract with India.

"I think we approach the goal with a first contract for 36 aircraft. It will lead certainly to others later. I am quite optimistic about signing fast enough," Eric Trappier, CEO Dassault Systems said after he received the Industrial of the Year award by Usine Nouvelle magazine Tuesday.

Indian Rafale Fighter Contract 'Soon Enough'; Dassault CEO

@PARIKRAMA @Abingdonboy @Immanuel


As we have heard soon enough too many times, it wouldn't surprise anyone.
People will react only when it's actually signed :D
 
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