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

.
Hello Fellow Members,
where can i find the information to read more on Indian Rafael deal to get insights.

a link explaining details would be great. Thanks a lot

regards;
 
.
Hello Fellow Members,
where can i find the information to read more on Indian Rafael deal to get insights.

a link explaining details would be great. Thanks a lot

regards;

This sticky thread is the best place to find all the information without scraching your head on the internet web.
 
.
A little long article that came in my mail..
But pls read it.. Its a refresher course of whats discussed here but then again why i posted here is the misinformation and mad campaign against Rafale.

+++
REPORTS
Rafale deal: Is it really an “exorbitant deal” as claimed by “experts”

Posted on September 26, 2016

Last week, the Union cabinet cleared the long-awaited purchase of 36 Rafale fighter jets from Dassault Aviation. With this Rs 58000 crore deal, the nearly two-decade-long Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) saga finally comes to an end. All 36 planes will be delivered to India in a span of 66 months.

The deal was inked after negotiations that lasted close to 18 months, with the Indian side finally bringing down the price by approximately Rs 2460 crores, according to Defence Ministry sources. Even after this, we saw some memes on social media claiming that this was a very bad deal financially:
Untitled-1.jpg


A sample of the memes floating around

Even defence “experts” like Saikat Datta and Ajai Shukla raised their doubts. Saikat writes (emphasis added):

Some have claimed that the Indian government managed to bring the price down significantly to about Rs 58,000 crore. But different figures have been provided by the defence minister. The original price for 126 aircraft was pegged at Rs 90,000 crore, he said in an interview to Doordarshan on April 13, 2015. He revised this figure to Rs 1.3 lakh crore in a subsequent interview to PTI. How this figure was escalated by the defence minister has not been explained. However, if the earlier figure of Rs 90,000 crore is correct then the 36 aircraft are nearly double the cost of the original deal to buy 126 of them.

Ajai Shukla wrote in his first blog, parroted an identical argument, as if both he and Saikat were fed by the same source (emphasis added):

Speaking to Doordarshan on April 13, 2015, Parrikar had revealed Rafale’s bid for 126 fighters, stating: “When you talk of 126 [Rafale] aircraft, it becomes a purchase of about Rs 90,000 crore”, i.e. Rs 715 crore per fighter after adding all costs. Now Parrikar would be buying 36 Rafale fighters for Euro 7.8 billion (Rs 58,000 crore), which is over Rs 1,600 crore per aircraft — more than double the earlier price

So is the latest Rafale deal really a bad one? Not really, considering that the UPA’s Rafale Deal and the latest deal are incomparable as far as the details are concerned, hence comparing the costs of the two without factoring in the differences is basically intellectual dishonesty.

So is the latest Rafale deal really a bad one? Not really, considering that the UPA’s Rafale Deal and the latest deal are incomparable as far as the details are concerned, hence comparing the costs of the two without factoring in the differences is basically intellectual dishonesty.

The original deal for the Rafale was indeed pegged at around Rs 90,000 crore during the UPA era sometime in 2012. But from there till now when the deal was actually finalised, many terms and conditions have changed. India has managed to squeeze in many add-ons into the new deal.

1. Dassault has agreed to make India-specific modifications to the planes, allowing the integration of Israeli helmet-mounted displays. The aircraft will be customised in line with the requirements of the IAF which include radar warning receiver, Doppler beam radar, infrared search and track among others.

2. The deal includes the supply of Meteor, an air to air missile, and Storm Shadow (also known as SCALP), an air-launched cruise missile with a range of over 560 km, with the Rafales. These additions mean the IAF can hit targets inside both Pakistan and Tibet while still staying within India’s own territorial boundary.

3. The deal is said to include a provision for a complete transfer of technology, including for the Thales RBE2-AA radar and software source code, spare parts and maintenance. The French have agreed to supply spares for a period of seven years at initial cost.

4. In addition, the French are also guaranteeing performance-based logistics support, which means that 75 per cent of the fleet will have to be airworthy at any given time. Till three years ago, only about 48 per cent of the Sukhoi fleet was able to fly at any given time, because of poor maintenance.

5. The deal provides for free training of 9 IAF personnel, including three pilots. The IAF will also get a guarantee for an additional 60 hours for the trainer version of Rafale fighters, and a concession to keep the weapons storage in France for an additional six months without any charge (in case the Indian infrastructure is not ready for storing the weapons).

6. The deal comes with a 50% offset clause which means that Indian companies, big and small, will get businesses worth over €3 billion. One main point of the offset was that 74% of it has to be imported from India. This means a lot of business and job opportunities in India, people familiar with the matter said.

7. The deal price was calculated on actual cost (price as on today) plus European inflation indices. In order to further reduce costs, the MoD has capped the European Inflation Indices to maximum 3.5 per cent a year. Thus, if inflation indices go down, India will have to pay less. Even if it goes up India will not pay more than 3.5 per cent increase. By negotiating the inflation at actual indices, but limited to 3.5 per cent, in comparison to 4 per cent or more in earlier deals, we are said to save Rs 4,000-14,000 crore over the deal

8. In the original proposal, the first batch of 18 planes were to be manufactured in France, and the next 108 were to be manufactured in India. Later, as negotiations began, it was discovered that the cost would go up substantially (in fact to the tune of Rs 150 crore per plane) since the cost of labour man hours in India were 2.7 times higher than in France. In contrast, the new Rafale deal is for purchase of 36 aircraft in ready to flycondition meaning the planes would be made in France, eliminating the above price escalation.

Thus, in the original UPA Rafale deal, as the graphic above shows, the price for a Rafale jet itself, just the aircraft, as fixed in 2012 odd was approximately Rs 629 crores per aircraft. This is excluding the estimated price increase of approximately Rs 150 crores per aircraft due to difference in labour rates, as explained

In the latest Rafale Deal which has been finalised, the “plain vanilla price” (of just the aircraft, excluding above add-ons) is about Rs 712 crores per aircraft as per the Economic Times and about Rs 687 crores as per PTI.

Ajai Shukla, in his first blog, claimed that the new price was “over Rs 1,600 crore per aircraft”. In the same blog, he then deducted some amount for all the add-ons and arrived at “price of each at over Rs 1,000 crore” per aircraft, Finally, in his second blog he conceded that the bare-bones price of each aircraft would be around Rs 686 crores per aircraft:

ajai.jpg


So this defence “expert” Ajai Shukla has pegged 3 different prices per aircraft over the span of 2 blogs over 2 days. What caused this change of facts? In the second blog he claimed to have talked to MoD Officials. So are we to conclude, the assertions in the first blog were largely ill-informed “facts” which were not verified?

Saikat Datta too had made similar claims: “the 36 aircraft are nearly double the cost of the original deal to buy 126 of them”. While Ajai Shukla at least mentioned some of the add-ons which were obtained, which explained the change in cost, Saikat Datta was completely silent on all these aspects, even though they were in public domain. Being a journalist on the defence beat, one would expect him to surely know about these. In fact other journalists had a faint idea about the add-ons even back in May 2015. Certainly strange that Saikat Datta completely failed to mention them and in fact even claimed “How this figure was escalated by the defence minister has not been explained”.


Irrespective of above ramblings by “experts” the point is this: The price of just the aircraft, has risen from about Rs 629 crores in 2012 to about Rs 685 crores in 2016 which is a paltry CAGR of 2.16%, and can be easily attributed to inflation and currency fluctuation. Only a fool would expect the price to be constant over 4 years.

In totality, the Rafale deal seems to be a good proposition. Of course just 36 aircraft will not suffice and India will soon have to start negotiations for further procurement, but this indeed is a good deal to close. In the mean-time, it is advisable to take unverified opinions with a truckload of salt, especially after revelations of the existence of “Agusta Patrakars”, journalists who were on the payroll of defence companies during the Agusta-Westland scam.

http://www.opindia.com/2016/09/rafale-deal-is-it-really-an-exorbitant-deal-as-claimed-by-experts/

For Reference:
upload_2016-9-26_19-7-42.png


A dip of 25% from September 2012.

Not taking any sides, but merely pointing the vendetta being played by some sections of the media and in turn getting boots over their own changing positions.

Tagging all so that can read and wonder really....

@Abingdonboy @anant_s @Taygibay @Picdelamirand-oil @Vergennes @randomradio @Ankit Kumar 002 @MilSpec @Koovie @Echo_419 @Dash @hellfire @ito @SR-91 @AMCA @DesiGuy1403 @ranjeet @hellfire @fsayed @SpArK @AUSTERLITZ @nair @proud_indian @Roybot @jbgt90 @Sergi @Water Car Engineer @dadeechi @kurup @Rain Man @kaykay @Joe Shearer @Tshering22 @Dandpatta @danger007 @Didact @Soumitra @SrNair @TejasMk3@jbgt90 @ranjeet @4GTejasBVR @The_Showstopper @guest11 @egodoc222 @Nilgiri @SarthakGanguly @Omega007 @GURU DUTT @HariPrasad @JanjaWeed @litefire @AMCA @Perpendicular @Spectre@litefire @AMCA @Perpendicular@Ryuzaki @CorporateAffairs @GR!FF!N @migflug @Levina@SvenSvensonov @-xXx- @Perpendicular @proud_indian @Mustang06 @Param @Local_Legend @Ali Zadi @hellfire @egodoc222 @CorporateAffairs @Major Shaitan Singh @jha @SmilingBuddha @#hydra# @danish_vij @[Bregs] @Skillrex @Hephaestus @SR-91 @Techy @litefire @R!CK @zebra7 @dev_moh @DesiGuy1403 @itachii @nik141993 @Marxist @Glorino @noksss @jbgt90 @Skull and Bones @Kraitcorp @Crixus @waz @WAJsal @Oscar @AugenBlick @Star Wars @GuardianRED @arp2041 @Aero @Armani @salarsikander https://defence.pk/members/enquencher.34831/ @others
 
.
India’s Rafale deal belies strained procurement ability

Military’s scaled-back agreement to buy fighter jets shows weakness as tensions with Pakistan flare

upload_2016-9-26_19-9-41.png


India has finally inked an €8bn agreement to buy 36 Rafale fighter jets from France’s Dassault. Last week’s deal is one of the biggest weapons contracts New Delhi has ever signed and should plug a significant gap in the country’s air force.

But, while the initial reaction might be relief, the protracted negotiations and the reduction of the deal to a third of its original size underscores the long-running problems with Indian defence procurement, an even more pressing concern given rising tensions with Pakistan. And while Narendra Modi enjoys the credit for a deal he personally helped broker, the Indian prime minister must now also work out where he gets the 90 aircraft he chose not to buy.


“This is a major, major step forward for the Indian air force. This deal has dominated their thinking for a very long time, to the detriment of other programmes,” said Ajai Shukla, a retired Indian army colonel and defence analyst. “But the huge negative is that 36 aircraft is just not enough.”

India has known for a decade it needs to replace its fleet of Russian-built MiG-21s, which were bought between the 1960s and early 1980s. These aircraft have historically high accident rates, peaking in the 1990s at around 25 per 100,000 flying hours, five times the current Nato average.

And across the Indian air force, jets are often grounded: the highest availability rate is among the Russian-built SU-30MKIs, of around 55 per cent.

The original deal to buy 126 Rafales at a quoted price of about €12bn looked set to solve this problem, not least because the French reportedly offered to guarantee that 75 per cent of the fleet is airworthy at any one time.

The deal faltered over how much construction would be done in India, and was eventually salvaged when Mr Modi offered to buy 36 of the original 126 aeroplanes directly from the French government. That disagreement, however, highlighted tensions between Mr Modi’s government, which is trying to boost domestic manufacturing under the tagline “Make in India”, and the armed forces, which want the best equipment available anywhere in the world.

The reduced deal comes just as many Indians are clamouring for the country to assert itself militarily over Pakistan in the wake of last week’s attack on an Indian army base in Kashmir. “This is a massive problem for India,” says Walter Ladwig, a lecturer in international relations at King’s College, London. “The fact that the deal has been shrunk means the projected numbers of aircraft in each country’s air force are going to continue to tilt in Pakistan’s favour.”

The agreement has also been criticised as being too expensive. Mr Shukla pointed out: “For [the price of one Rafale] the Indian air force can buy two and a half Sukhoi-30 MKI fighters — a heavy fighter as capable as the Rafale.”

This is not the first time India has encountered problems with equipping its armed forces. The first Indian-made fighter jet, the Marut, a 1960s fighter-bomber, ended up being underpowered thanks to problems buying the right engines. In 2004, the long-delayed Arjun tank finally entered service, but by last year three-quarters werereportedly grounded thanks to multiple technical issues. Last year, India scrapped a four-year-old tender to buy 180,000 army rifles.

Part of the problem, say military academics, is that the civilian-led Indian bureaucracy is not expert enough to make the right decisions to equip India’s armed services.Scandals such as Bofors — a corruption case over the purchase of artillery in the 1980s that was eventually dropped — have also led to a paralysis in decision making, argue some.

Shashank Joshi, a senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute think-tank, says: “The problem is, every single bureaucrat wants to get through their time in office without having a procurement scandal.”

Another issue is that procurement deals are often taken on a piecemeal basis. The Rafales will be the seventh different type of fighter jet in the Indian air force — each one bringing its own set of spare parts, logistical support and training needs.

These fighters take the total number of squadrons in the Indian air force from 33 to 35. But that remains well short of the 42 sanctioned by the government — and even further short of the 45 requested by air force chiefs.

India could ask for more Rafales to plug the gap — though with no agreed price for future purchases, negotiations would then begin all over again. It could alternatively fast-track plans to build a more advanced jet in conjunction with the Russians.

Other foreign companies such as Lockheed Martin and Saab, which failed in the original tender, are hoping there will be a re-run, but many experts think ministers are likely to propose building more Tejas aircraft, an Indian-built fighter.

Not everyone in the Indian military establishment is likely to be pleased if that is the decision, but for now, say experts, the main task is simply to fill the gaps.

“At least the deal is now done,” said Mr Shukla. “It has dominated the thinking of the ministry of defence for a very long time, to the detriment of other programmes.”

https://www.ft.com/content/d717c15c...NTc3ZS00YzRkLTkyYWYtYjMxMjZmM2U5NGZk-VG9waWNz
 
.
^^

Why I feel that article doesn't make sense at all? Or written by someone that is no privy to the Indigenous efforts going on?
 
. .
A little long article that came in my mail..
But pls read it.. Its a refresher course of whats discussed here but then again why i posted here is the misinformation and mad campaign against Rafale.

+++
REPORTS
Rafale deal: Is it really an “exorbitant deal” as claimed by “experts”

Posted on September 26, 2016

Last week, the Union cabinet cleared the long-awaited purchase of 36 Rafale fighter jets from Dassault Aviation. With this Rs 58000 crore deal, the nearly two-decade-long Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) saga finally comes to an end. All 36 planes will be delivered to India in a span of 66 months.

The deal was inked after negotiations that lasted close to 18 months, with the Indian side finally bringing down the price by approximately Rs 2460 crores, according to Defence Ministry sources. Even after this, we saw some memes on social media claiming that this was a very bad deal financially:
Untitled-1.jpg


A sample of the memes floating around

Even defence “experts” like Saikat Datta and Ajai Shukla raised their doubts. Saikat writes (emphasis added):

Some have claimed that the Indian government managed to bring the price down significantly to about Rs 58,000 crore. But different figures have been provided by the defence minister. The original price for 126 aircraft was pegged at Rs 90,000 crore, he said in an interview to Doordarshan on April 13, 2015. He revised this figure to Rs 1.3 lakh crore in a subsequent interview to PTI. How this figure was escalated by the defence minister has not been explained. However, if the earlier figure of Rs 90,000 crore is correct then the 36 aircraft are nearly double the cost of the original deal to buy 126 of them.

Ajai Shukla wrote in his first blog, parroted an identical argument, as if both he and Saikat were fed by the same source (emphasis added):

Speaking to Doordarshan on April 13, 2015, Parrikar had revealed Rafale’s bid for 126 fighters, stating: “When you talk of 126 [Rafale] aircraft, it becomes a purchase of about Rs 90,000 crore”, i.e. Rs 715 crore per fighter after adding all costs. Now Parrikar would be buying 36 Rafale fighters for Euro 7.8 billion (Rs 58,000 crore), which is over Rs 1,600 crore per aircraft — more than double the earlier price

So is the latest Rafale deal really a bad one? Not really, considering that the UPA’s Rafale Deal and the latest deal are incomparable as far as the details are concerned, hence comparing the costs of the two without factoring in the differences is basically intellectual dishonesty.

So is the latest Rafale deal really a bad one? Not really, considering that the UPA’s Rafale Deal and the latest deal are incomparable as far as the details are concerned, hence comparing the costs of the two without factoring in the differences is basically intellectual dishonesty.

The original deal for the Rafale was indeed pegged at around Rs 90,000 crore during the UPA era sometime in 2012. But from there till now when the deal was actually finalised, many terms and conditions have changed. India has managed to squeeze in many add-ons into the new deal.

1. Dassault has agreed to make India-specific modifications to the planes, allowing the integration of Israeli helmet-mounted displays. The aircraft will be customised in line with the requirements of the IAF which include radar warning receiver, Doppler beam radar, infrared search and track among others.

2. The deal includes the supply of Meteor, an air to air missile, and Storm Shadow (also known as SCALP), an air-launched cruise missile with a range of over 560 km, with the Rafales. These additions mean the IAF can hit targets inside both Pakistan and Tibet while still staying within India’s own territorial boundary.

3. The deal is said to include a provision for a complete transfer of technology, including for the Thales RBE2-AA radar and software source code, spare parts and maintenance. The French have agreed to supply spares for a period of seven years at initial cost.

4. In addition, the French are also guaranteeing performance-based logistics support, which means that 75 per cent of the fleet will have to be airworthy at any given time. Till three years ago, only about 48 per cent of the Sukhoi fleet was able to fly at any given time, because of poor maintenance.

5. The deal provides for free training of 9 IAF personnel, including three pilots. The IAF will also get a guarantee for an additional 60 hours for the trainer version of Rafale fighters, and a concession to keep the weapons storage in France for an additional six months without any charge (in case the Indian infrastructure is not ready for storing the weapons).

6. The deal comes with a 50% offset clause which means that Indian companies, big and small, will get businesses worth over €3 billion. One main point of the offset was that 74% of it has to be imported from India. This means a lot of business and job opportunities in India, people familiar with the matter said.

7. The deal price was calculated on actual cost (price as on today) plus European inflation indices. In order to further reduce costs, the MoD has capped the European Inflation Indices to maximum 3.5 per cent a year. Thus, if inflation indices go down, India will have to pay less. Even if it goes up India will not pay more than 3.5 per cent increase. By negotiating the inflation at actual indices, but limited to 3.5 per cent, in comparison to 4 per cent or more in earlier deals, we are said to save Rs 4,000-14,000 crore over the deal

8. In the original proposal, the first batch of 18 planes were to be manufactured in France, and the next 108 were to be manufactured in India. Later, as negotiations began, it was discovered that the cost would go up substantially (in fact to the tune of Rs 150 crore per plane) since the cost of labour man hours in India were 2.7 times higher than in France. In contrast, the new Rafale deal is for purchase of 36 aircraft in ready to flycondition meaning the planes would be made in France, eliminating the above price escalation.

Thus, in the original UPA Rafale deal, as the graphic above shows, the price for a Rafale jet itself, just the aircraft, as fixed in 2012 odd was approximately Rs 629 crores per aircraft. This is excluding the estimated price increase of approximately Rs 150 crores per aircraft due to difference in labour rates, as explained

In the latest Rafale Deal which has been finalised, the “plain vanilla price” (of just the aircraft, excluding above add-ons) is about Rs 712 crores per aircraft as per the Economic Times and about Rs 687 crores as per PTI.

Ajai Shukla, in his first blog, claimed that the new price was “over Rs 1,600 crore per aircraft”. In the same blog, he then deducted some amount for all the add-ons and arrived at “price of each at over Rs 1,000 crore” per aircraft, Finally, in his second blog he conceded that the bare-bones price of each aircraft would be around Rs 686 crores per aircraft:

ajai.jpg


So this defence “expert” Ajai Shukla has pegged 3 different prices per aircraft over the span of 2 blogs over 2 days. What caused this change of facts? In the second blog he claimed to have talked to MoD Officials. So are we to conclude, the assertions in the first blog were largely ill-informed “facts” which were not verified?

Saikat Datta too had made similar claims: “the 36 aircraft are nearly double the cost of the original deal to buy 126 of them”. While Ajai Shukla at least mentioned some of the add-ons which were obtained, which explained the change in cost, Saikat Datta was completely silent on all these aspects, even though they were in public domain. Being a journalist on the defence beat, one would expect him to surely know about these. In fact other journalists had a faint idea about the add-ons even back in May 2015. Certainly strange that Saikat Datta completely failed to mention them and in fact even claimed “How this figure was escalated by the defence minister has not been explained”.


Irrespective of above ramblings by “experts” the point is this: The price of just the aircraft, has risen from about Rs 629 crores in 2012 to about Rs 685 crores in 2016 which is a paltry CAGR of 2.16%, and can be easily attributed to inflation and currency fluctuation. Only a fool would expect the price to be constant over 4 years.

In totality, the Rafale deal seems to be a good proposition. Of course just 36 aircraft will not suffice and India will soon have to start negotiations for further procurement, but this indeed is a good deal to close. In the mean-time, it is advisable to take unverified opinions with a truckload of salt, especially after revelations of the existence of “Agusta Patrakars”, journalists who were on the payroll of defence companies during the Agusta-Westland scam.

http://www.opindia.com/2016/09/rafale-deal-is-it-really-an-exorbitant-deal-as-claimed-by-experts/

For Reference:
View attachment 338258

A dip of 25% from September 2012.

Not taking any sides, but merely pointing the vendetta being played by some sections of the media and in turn getting boots over their own changing positions.

Tagging all so that can read and wonder really....

@Abingdonboy @anant_s @Taygibay @Picdelamirand-oil @Vergennes @randomradio @Ankit Kumar 002 @MilSpec @Koovie @Echo_419 @Dash @hellfire @ito @SR-91 @AMCA @DesiGuy1403 @ranjeet @hellfire @fsayed @SpArK @AUSTERLITZ @nair @proud_indian @Roybot @jbgt90 @Sergi @Water Car Engineer @dadeechi @kurup @Rain Man @kaykay @Joe Shearer @Tshering22 @Dandpatta @danger007 @Didact @Soumitra @SrNair @TejasMk3@jbgt90 @ranjeet @4GTejasBVR @The_Showstopper @guest11 @egodoc222 @Nilgiri @SarthakGanguly @Omega007 @GURU DUTT @HariPrasad @JanjaWeed @litefire @AMCA @Perpendicular @Spectre@litefire @AMCA @Perpendicular@Ryuzaki @CorporateAffairs @GR!FF!N @migflug @Levina@SvenSvensonov @-xXx- @Perpendicular @proud_indian @Mustang06 @Param @Local_Legend @Ali Zadi @hellfire @egodoc222 @CorporateAffairs @Major Shaitan Singh @jha @SmilingBuddha @#hydra# @danish_vij @[Bregs] @Skillrex @Hephaestus @SR-91 @Techy @litefire @R!CK @zebra7 @dev_moh @DesiGuy1403 @itachii @nik141993 @Marxist @Glorino @noksss @jbgt90 @Skull and Bones @Kraitcorp @Crixus @waz @WAJsal @Oscar @AugenBlick @Star Wars @GuardianRED @arp2041 @Aero @Armani @salarsikander https://defence.pk/members/enquencher.34831/ @others

Better you should write articles , these so called experts are too ill informed or ignorant to write defence articles or may be foreign payroll on work.
 
.
India’s Rafale deal belies strained procurement ability

Military’s scaled-back agreement to buy fighter jets shows weakness as tensions with Pakistan flare

View attachment 338259

India has finally inked an €8bn agreement to buy 36 Rafale fighter jets from France’s Dassault. Last week’s deal is one of the biggest weapons contracts New Delhi has ever signed and should plug a significant gap in the country’s air force.

But, while the initial reaction might be relief, the protracted negotiations and the reduction of the deal to a third of its original size underscores the long-running problems with Indian defence procurement, an even more pressing concern given rising tensions with Pakistan. And while Narendra Modi enjoys the credit for a deal he personally helped broker, the Indian prime minister must now also work out where he gets the 90 aircraft he chose not to buy.


“This is a major, major step forward for the Indian air force. This deal has dominated their thinking for a very long time, to the detriment of other programmes,” said Ajai Shukla, a retired Indian army colonel and defence analyst. “But the huge negative is that 36 aircraft is just not enough.”

India has known for a decade it needs to replace its fleet of Russian-built MiG-21s, which were bought between the 1960s and early 1980s. These aircraft have historically high accident rates, peaking in the 1990s at around 25 per 100,000 flying hours, five times the current Nato average.

And across the Indian air force, jets are often grounded: the highest availability rate is among the Russian-built SU-30MKIs, of around 55 per cent.

The original deal to buy 126 Rafales at a quoted price of about €12bn looked set to solve this problem, not least because the French reportedly offered to guarantee that 75 per cent of the fleet is airworthy at any one time.

The deal faltered over how much construction would be done in India, and was eventually salvaged when Mr Modi offered to buy 36 of the original 126 aeroplanes directly from the French government. That disagreement, however, highlighted tensions between Mr Modi’s government, which is trying to boost domestic manufacturing under the tagline “Make in India”, and the armed forces, which want the best equipment available anywhere in the world.

The reduced deal comes just as many Indians are clamouring for the country to assert itself militarily over Pakistan in the wake of last week’s attack on an Indian army base in Kashmir. “This is a massive problem for India,” says Walter Ladwig, a lecturer in international relations at King’s College, London. “The fact that the deal has been shrunk means the projected numbers of aircraft in each country’s air force are going to continue to tilt in Pakistan’s favour.”

The agreement has also been criticised as being too expensive. Mr Shukla pointed out: “For [the price of one Rafale] the Indian air force can buy two and a half Sukhoi-30 MKI fighters — a heavy fighter as capable as the Rafale.”

This is not the first time India has encountered problems with equipping its armed forces. The first Indian-made fighter jet, the Marut, a 1960s fighter-bomber, ended up being underpowered thanks to problems buying the right engines. In 2004, the long-delayed Arjun tank finally entered service, but by last year three-quarters werereportedly grounded thanks to multiple technical issues. Last year, India scrapped a four-year-old tender to buy 180,000 army rifles.

Part of the problem, say military academics, is that the civilian-led Indian bureaucracy is not expert enough to make the right decisions to equip India’s armed services.Scandals such as Bofors — a corruption case over the purchase of artillery in the 1980s that was eventually dropped — have also led to a paralysis in decision making, argue some.

Shashank Joshi, a senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute think-tank, says: “The problem is, every single bureaucrat wants to get through their time in office without having a procurement scandal.”

Another issue is that procurement deals are often taken on a piecemeal basis. The Rafales will be the seventh different type of fighter jet in the Indian air force — each one bringing its own set of spare parts, logistical support and training needs.

These fighters take the total number of squadrons in the Indian air force from 33 to 35. But that remains well short of the 42 sanctioned by the government — and even further short of the 45 requested by air force chiefs.

India could ask for more Rafales to plug the gap — though with no agreed price for future purchases, negotiations would then begin all over again. It could alternatively fast-track plans to build a more advanced jet in conjunction with the Russians.

Other foreign companies such as Lockheed Martin and Saab, which failed in the original tender, are hoping there will be a re-run, but many experts think ministers are likely to propose building more Tejas aircraft, an Indian-built fighter.

Not everyone in the Indian military establishment is likely to be pleased if that is the decision, but for now, say experts, the main task is simply to fill the gaps.

“At least the deal is now done,” said Mr Shukla. “It has dominated the thinking of the ministry of defence for a very long time, to the detriment of other programmes.”

https://www.ft.com/content/d717c15c...NTc3ZS00YzRkLTkyYWYtYjMxMjZmM2U5NGZk-VG9waWNz

Looks like they are going to parrot the Serviceability of the Su30s at 55% for a long time to come.... (Facepalm)

A little long article that came in my mail..
But pls read it.. Its a refresher course of whats discussed here but then again why i posted here is the misinformation and mad campaign against Rafale.

+++
REPORTS
Rafale deal: Is it really an “exorbitant deal” as claimed by “experts”

Posted on September 26, 2016

Last week, the Union cabinet cleared the long-awaited purchase of 36 Rafale fighter jets from Dassault Aviation. With this Rs 58000 crore deal, the nearly two-decade-long Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) saga finally comes to an end. All 36 planes will be delivered to India in a span of 66 months.

The deal was inked after negotiations that lasted close to 18 months, with the Indian side finally bringing down the price by approximately Rs 2460 crores, according to Defence Ministry sources. Even after this, we saw some memes on social media claiming that this was a very bad deal financially:
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A sample of the memes floating around

Even defence “experts” like Saikat Datta and Ajai Shukla raised their doubts. Saikat writes (emphasis added):

Some have claimed that the Indian government managed to bring the price down significantly to about Rs 58,000 crore. But different figures have been provided by the defence minister. The original price for 126 aircraft was pegged at Rs 90,000 crore, he said in an interview to Doordarshan on April 13, 2015. He revised this figure to Rs 1.3 lakh crore in a subsequent interview to PTI. How this figure was escalated by the defence minister has not been explained. However, if the earlier figure of Rs 90,000 crore is correct then the 36 aircraft are nearly double the cost of the original deal to buy 126 of them.

Ajai Shukla wrote in his first blog, parroted an identical argument, as if both he and Saikat were fed by the same source (emphasis added):

Speaking to Doordarshan on April 13, 2015, Parrikar had revealed Rafale’s bid for 126 fighters, stating: “When you talk of 126 [Rafale] aircraft, it becomes a purchase of about Rs 90,000 crore”, i.e. Rs 715 crore per fighter after adding all costs. Now Parrikar would be buying 36 Rafale fighters for Euro 7.8 billion (Rs 58,000 crore), which is over Rs 1,600 crore per aircraft — more than double the earlier price

So is the latest Rafale deal really a bad one? Not really, considering that the UPA’s Rafale Deal and the latest deal are incomparable as far as the details are concerned, hence comparing the costs of the two without factoring in the differences is basically intellectual dishonesty.

So is the latest Rafale deal really a bad one? Not really, considering that the UPA’s Rafale Deal and the latest deal are incomparable as far as the details are concerned, hence comparing the costs of the two without factoring in the differences is basically intellectual dishonesty.

The original deal for the Rafale was indeed pegged at around Rs 90,000 crore during the UPA era sometime in 2012. But from there till now when the deal was actually finalised, many terms and conditions have changed. India has managed to squeeze in many add-ons into the new deal.

1. Dassault has agreed to make India-specific modifications to the planes, allowing the integration of Israeli helmet-mounted displays. The aircraft will be customised in line with the requirements of the IAF which include radar warning receiver, Doppler beam radar, infrared search and track among others.

2. The deal includes the supply of Meteor, an air to air missile, and Storm Shadow (also known as SCALP), an air-launched cruise missile with a range of over 560 km, with the Rafales. These additions mean the IAF can hit targets inside both Pakistan and Tibet while still staying within India’s own territorial boundary.

3. The deal is said to include a provision for a complete transfer of technology, including for the Thales RBE2-AA radar and software source code, spare parts and maintenance. The French have agreed to supply spares for a period of seven years at initial cost.

4. In addition, the French are also guaranteeing performance-based logistics support, which means that 75 per cent of the fleet will have to be airworthy at any given time. Till three years ago, only about 48 per cent of the Sukhoi fleet was able to fly at any given time, because of poor maintenance.

5. The deal provides for free training of 9 IAF personnel, including three pilots. The IAF will also get a guarantee for an additional 60 hours for the trainer version of Rafale fighters, and a concession to keep the weapons storage in France for an additional six months without any charge (in case the Indian infrastructure is not ready for storing the weapons).

6. The deal comes with a 50% offset clause which means that Indian companies, big and small, will get businesses worth over €3 billion. One main point of the offset was that 74% of it has to be imported from India. This means a lot of business and job opportunities in India, people familiar with the matter said.

7. The deal price was calculated on actual cost (price as on today) plus European inflation indices. In order to further reduce costs, the MoD has capped the European Inflation Indices to maximum 3.5 per cent a year. Thus, if inflation indices go down, India will have to pay less. Even if it goes up India will not pay more than 3.5 per cent increase. By negotiating the inflation at actual indices, but limited to 3.5 per cent, in comparison to 4 per cent or more in earlier deals, we are said to save Rs 4,000-14,000 crore over the deal

8. In the original proposal, the first batch of 18 planes were to be manufactured in France, and the next 108 were to be manufactured in India. Later, as negotiations began, it was discovered that the cost would go up substantially (in fact to the tune of Rs 150 crore per plane) since the cost of labour man hours in India were 2.7 times higher than in France. In contrast, the new Rafale deal is for purchase of 36 aircraft in ready to flycondition meaning the planes would be made in France, eliminating the above price escalation.

Thus, in the original UPA Rafale deal, as the graphic above shows, the price for a Rafale jet itself, just the aircraft, as fixed in 2012 odd was approximately Rs 629 crores per aircraft. This is excluding the estimated price increase of approximately Rs 150 crores per aircraft due to difference in labour rates, as explained

In the latest Rafale Deal which has been finalised, the “plain vanilla price” (of just the aircraft, excluding above add-ons) is about Rs 712 crores per aircraft as per the Economic Times and about Rs 687 crores as per PTI.

Ajai Shukla, in his first blog, claimed that the new price was “over Rs 1,600 crore per aircraft”. In the same blog, he then deducted some amount for all the add-ons and arrived at “price of each at over Rs 1,000 crore” per aircraft, Finally, in his second blog he conceded that the bare-bones price of each aircraft would be around Rs 686 crores per aircraft:

ajai.jpg


So this defence “expert” Ajai Shukla has pegged 3 different prices per aircraft over the span of 2 blogs over 2 days. What caused this change of facts? In the second blog he claimed to have talked to MoD Officials. So are we to conclude, the assertions in the first blog were largely ill-informed “facts” which were not verified?

Saikat Datta too had made similar claims: “the 36 aircraft are nearly double the cost of the original deal to buy 126 of them”. While Ajai Shukla at least mentioned some of the add-ons which were obtained, which explained the change in cost, Saikat Datta was completely silent on all these aspects, even though they were in public domain. Being a journalist on the defence beat, one would expect him to surely know about these. In fact other journalists had a faint idea about the add-ons even back in May 2015. Certainly strange that Saikat Datta completely failed to mention them and in fact even claimed “How this figure was escalated by the defence minister has not been explained”.


Irrespective of above ramblings by “experts” the point is this: The price of just the aircraft, has risen from about Rs 629 crores in 2012 to about Rs 685 crores in 2016 which is a paltry CAGR of 2.16%, and can be easily attributed to inflation and currency fluctuation. Only a fool would expect the price to be constant over 4 years.

In totality, the Rafale deal seems to be a good proposition. Of course just 36 aircraft will not suffice and India will soon have to start negotiations for further procurement, but this indeed is a good deal to close. In the mean-time, it is advisable to take unverified opinions with a truckload of salt, especially after revelations of the existence of “Agusta Patrakars”, journalists who were on the payroll of defence companies during the Agusta-Westland scam.

http://www.opindia.com/2016/09/rafale-deal-is-it-really-an-exorbitant-deal-as-claimed-by-experts/

For Reference:
View attachment 338258

A dip of 25% from September 2012.

Not taking any sides, but merely pointing the vendetta being played by some sections of the media and in turn getting boots over their own changing positions.

Tagging all so that can read and wonder really....

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Ajay Shukla is the one who was harping that the F35 program is a better fit for india yes? did anyone show him that the F35 recently caught fire

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https://warisboring.com/the-f-35-can-just-catch-on-fire-sometimes-eecce430792b#.yxuwm8h93

(Sorry out of topic)
 
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Courtesy @ashok321

EXCLUSIVE: Manohar Parrikar speaks about the Rafale deal and what it means for India

SEP 25, 2016, 11.07 AM
EXCLUSIVE-Manohar-Parrikar-speaks-about-the-Raffle-deal-and-what-it-means-for-India.jpg




The Rs 58,000 crore deal executed by India to purchase 36 Rafale fighter jets from France is undoubtedly one the most well negotiated pacts and one that will bring along huge gains for the domestic aviation industry besides creating job openings for the people of India.

So what makes this deal, first since the purchase of Sukhois from Russiain the late 90s, a win-win for India.

In an exclusive chat with DefenceAviationPost.com , Union Defence Minister, Manohar Parrikar said, "In any foreign deal, there are 3-4 things that have to be taken care of. First is the cost, which we have negotiated at a much lesser price than the earlier price being quoted by the French team."

It is noteworthy to point here that the 7.878 billion Euros deal has been clinched at a price that is 750 million euros less than what was quoted by the French team in January 2016.

"Second is the percentage of offsets which in this case is much higher than any other foreign military sales so far. This creates a huge potential for the aviation industry and is in line with the Prime Minister's Make in India initiative," the minister said.

It may be mentioned here that deal comes with a 50% offset clause which means that Indian companies will get businesses worth over 3 billion euros or Rs 22,500 crores.

Parrikar said the most significant feature of this contract are the enhancements for India which even French aircrafts do not have.

Firstly, these fighter jets come along with state-of-the-art missile weaponry profile that increases the strike capabilities of the IAF to a great extent. It includes Meteor Beyond Visual Range (BVR) air-to-air missile with a range in excess 150 kms. Then it also comes along with Scalp (Pointed Offence) which is a long range air to surface cruise missile with a range of over 300 kms.

Further, these fighter jets will be customised in line with the requirements of the IAF and will include Helmet Mounted Displays, radar warning receiver, infrared search and track among others.

"So from all directions it is a win-win deal for India. Rafale is a potent aircraft and will add to the capability of the IAF," the minister added.

Experts say that Rafale coming fitted with Meteors and Scalp will shake up Pakistan Air Force hugely and PLAAF (air warfare branch of China) to a fair extent.

They added that the enhancements negotiated under the deal for 36 Rafale means that India's adversaries will need four modern fighter jets to counter one Rafale. Simply put, the enemy will need four Su30 or four F16D (latest acquired by Pakistan) or four JF17 (which again Pakistan has) to counter one Rafale with its existing capabilities.

"This 1:4 ratio will clearly give Indian an edge over its adversaries and the deal for 36 Rafale is equivalent to procuring 144 modern fighter jets," an official said requesting anonymity.

Timelines is another major aspect of this deal. The deliveries of fighter jets will start in 36 months and completed in 18 months thereon.


Under the contract, the French manufacturer Dassault has to ensure that 75% of the fleet or 27 fighters are operationally available at any given time.

In a nutshell: Significance of Rafale Deal for India

Rafale is an exceptional twin-engine fighter and is capable of carrying out all combat missions including air defence, interception, ground support,in-depth strikes, reconnaissance, anti-ship strikes and nuclear deterrence.

It has everything to qualify as fifth generation aircraft minus the stealth.

Its radar and BVR capabilities are the best in the world (so experts call it a 4.5 generation)

Only the US has 5th Gen Fighters in F22 and F35.


Since air power is most sensitive to technology, the offence defence ratios change significantly with each technological jump
Experts say that Rafale coming fitted with Meteors will shake up Pakistan Air Force hugely and PLAAF to a fair extent.

Rafale was chosen after lot of indepth studies and testing by the IAF that included Swedish Grippen, American F16 and F18, Russian MiG35, Eurofighter Typhoon and French Rafale.

http://www.businessinsider.in/EXCLU...t-it-means-for-India/articleshow/54505988.cms

+++
upload_2016-9-26_20-33-40.png


https://defence.pk/threads/dassault...ussions-thread-2.230070/page-380#post-8726014

This news article says what i said here beforehand..Nice to know information is finally reaching many news papers..

@Abingdonboy @Vergennes @SpArK @MilSpec @Picdelamirand-oil @Taygibay @GuardianRED @Nilgiri @Armani @randomradio @hellfire @Ankit Kumar 002 @anant_s @zebra7 @[Bregs] @BON PLAN @others
 
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Where is my tag? :cry:

Firstly, these fighter jets come along with state-of-the-art missile weaponry profile that increases the strike capabilities of the IAF to a great extent. It includes Meteor Beyond Visual Range (BVR) air-to-air missile with a range in excess 150 kms. Then it also comes along with Scalp (Pointed Offence) which is a long range air to surface cruise missile with a range of over 300 kms.
French fighters do also support these systems (Meteor in future), so what is extra we are getting (not in french configuration)?

Further, these fighter jets will be customised in line with the requirements of the IAF and will include Helmet Mounted Displays, radar warning receiver, infrared search and track among others.
You mean by Israeli or Indian components instead of french. Is our ones superior to french?

Experts say that Rafale coming fitted with Meteors and Scalp will shake up Pakistan Air Force hugely and PLAAF (air warfare branch of China) to a fair extent.
Agreed, It is much better than PLAAF's Python variants or PAF's AIM-120C AMRAAM.

They added that the enhancements negotiated under the deal for 36 Rafale means that India's adversaries will need four modern fighter jets to counter one Rafale. Simply put, the enemy will need four Su30 or four F16D (latest acquired by Pakistan) to counter one Rafale with its existing capabilities.
Never understood the comparison part how 4 will matter if they are shot down long before they spot Rafale or if they managed to shoot first and avoid any loss on their part.

or four JF17 (which again Pakistan has) to counter one Rafale with its existing capabilities
JF-17 is overrated here on PDF this with RCS of 5m2+ is simply be blown off by Rafael no matter the numbers (Unless Rafale run out of Missiles).
Frankly it is not even built to fight Aircraft like Rafale.

"This 1:4 ratio will clearly give Indian an edge over its adversaries and the deal for 36 Rafale is equivalent to procuring 144 modern fighter jets," an official said requesting anonymity.
If this is True Mathematicians will Rule the World.:haha:

It has everything to qualify as fifth generation aircraft minus the stealth.

Its radar and BVR capabilities are the best in the world (so experts call it a 4.5 generation)

Only the US has 5th Gen Fighters in F22 and F35.
It is already Low Observable (RCS<1m2) , just not as much as F-35 or F-22.
:tup:
 
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Courtesy @ashok321

EXCLUSIVE: Manohar Parrikar speaks about the Rafale deal and what it means for India

SEP 25, 2016, 11.07 AM
EXCLUSIVE-Manohar-Parrikar-speaks-about-the-Raffle-deal-and-what-it-means-for-India.jpg




The Rs 58,000 crore deal executed by India to purchase 36 Rafale fighter jets from France is undoubtedly one the most well negotiated pacts and one that will bring along huge gains for the domestic aviation industry besides creating job openings for the people of India.

So what makes this deal, first since the purchase of Sukhois from Russiain the late 90s, a win-win for India.

In an exclusive chat with DefenceAviationPost.com , Union Defence Minister, Manohar Parrikar said, "In any foreign deal, there are 3-4 things that have to be taken care of. First is the cost, which we have negotiated at a much lesser price than the earlier price being quoted by the French team."

It is noteworthy to point here that the 7.878 billion Euros deal has been clinched at a price that is 750 million euros less than what was quoted by the French team in January 2016.

"Second is the percentage of offsets which in this case is much higher than any other foreign military sales so far. This creates a huge potential for the aviation industry and is in line with the Prime Minister's Make in India initiative," the minister said.

It may be mentioned here that deal comes with a 50% offset clause which means that Indian companies will get businesses worth over 3 billion euros or Rs 22,500 crores.

Parrikar said the most significant feature of this contract are the enhancements for India which even French aircrafts do not have.

Firstly, these fighter jets come along with state-of-the-art missile weaponry profile that increases the strike capabilities of the IAF to a great extent. It includes Meteor Beyond Visual Range (BVR) air-to-air missile with a range in excess 150 kms. Then it also comes along with Scalp (Pointed Offence) which is a long range air to surface cruise missile with a range of over 300 kms.

Further, these fighter jets will be customised in line with the requirements of the IAF and will include Helmet Mounted Displays, radar warning receiver, infrared search and track among others.

"So from all directions it is a win-win deal for India. Rafale is a potent aircraft and will add to the capability of the IAF," the minister added.

Experts say that Rafale coming fitted with Meteors and Scalp will shake up Pakistan Air Force hugely and PLAAF (air warfare branch of China) to a fair extent.

They added that the enhancements negotiated under the deal for 36 Rafale means that India's adversaries will need four modern fighter jets to counter one Rafale. Simply put, the enemy will need four Su30 or four F16D (latest acquired by Pakistan) or four JF17 (which again Pakistan has) to counter one Rafale with its existing capabilities.

"This 1:4 ratio will clearly give Indian an edge over its adversaries and the deal for 36 Rafale is equivalent to procuring 144 modern fighter jets," an official said requesting anonymity.

Timelines is another major aspect of this deal. The deliveries of fighter jets will start in 36 months and completed in 18 months thereon.


Under the contract, the French manufacturer Dassault has to ensure that 75% of the fleet or 27 fighters are operationally available at any given time.

In a nutshell: Significance of Rafale Deal for India

Rafale is an exceptional twin-engine fighter and is capable of carrying out all combat missions including air defence, interception, ground support,in-depth strikes, reconnaissance, anti-ship strikes and nuclear deterrence.

It has everything to qualify as fifth generation aircraft minus the stealth.

Its radar and BVR capabilities are the best in the world (so experts call it a 4.5 generation)

Only the US has 5th Gen Fighters in F22 and F35.


Since air power is most sensitive to technology, the offence defence ratios change significantly with each technological jump
Experts say that Rafale coming fitted with Meteors will shake up Pakistan Air Force hugely and PLAAF to a fair extent.

Rafale was chosen after lot of indepth studies and testing by the IAF that included Swedish Grippen, American F16 and F18, Russian MiG35, Eurofighter Typhoon and French Rafale.

http://www.businessinsider.in/EXCLU...t-it-means-for-India/articleshow/54505988.cms

+++
View attachment 338292

https://defence.pk/threads/dassault...ussions-thread-2.230070/page-380#post-8726014

This news article says what i said here beforehand..Nice to know information is finally reaching many news papers..

@Abingdonboy @Vergennes @SpArK @MilSpec @Picdelamirand-oil @Taygibay @GuardianRED @Nilgiri @Armani @randomradio @hellfire @Ankit Kumar 002 @anant_s @zebra7 @[Bregs] @BON PLAN @others
Why we need scalp,the proposed air launched brahmos and brahmos mini have also same range. How scalp can outperform brahmos?
@Abingdonboy @Picdelamirand-oil
 
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