$12-BILLION PRIZE
All leading world aircraft makers producing advanced combat planes consider the tender for delivering 126 fighters to the Indian Air Force under the MMRCA (Medium Multirole Combat Aircraft) programme the most important and the largest of all present-day tenders. The contract is estimated at $11-12 billion. The Russian MiG-35, US Lockheed-Martin F-16 and Boeing F/A-18, French Dassault Rafale, European Eurofighter Typhoon and Swedish SAAB Gripen are going to compete for this prize. In April, some mass media reported that Rafale refused to participate, but then it was denied and now the French fighter seems to take part in the tender.
Most market analysts think there are no evident winners. The winner will be chosen after comparative tests of all participating fighters that should start in April-May. To this end, each participant should present two aircraft – a single- and double-seat one. Indian Air Force pilots will carry out tests in two stages. At the first stage, they will estimate their flight performance and applicability for the Indian climate and terrain including high-level airdromes. The second stage scheduled for this autumn will probably take place at test bases of manufacturing countries – the Indians will compare characteristics of on-board equipment and armament. After flight tests, India is going to bolt out three or four outsiders. The choice from the resulting short list of 2-3 fighters will be made considering many factors. India will take into account the cost and financing structures, amount of technologies transferred, offset programme for compensation deliveries, which should account for at least 50% of the contract price and local production options. 108 of 126 fighters should be assembled and manufactured at a growing rate at Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) enterprises in India. Foreign policy trends will be important, too. It was initially planned that the Indian Air Force will get MMRCA aircraft in 2012. Speaking at the Aero India show, however, Indian Air Force Chief of Staff (this post corresponds to Commanderin- Chief in Russia) Chief Air Marshal Fali Homi said that fighters deliveries would start in 2013 if everything was al right. India’s Air Force is going to raise the number of its combat squadrons from the current 32-33 (each having 14-18 aircraft) to 39.5 by 2017 and to 42 by 2020. These plans also envisage important modernization programmes, firstly relating to the MiG-29. At the press briefing devoted to the MiG-35 at Aero India 2009, RSK MiG Engineering Center Chief Vladimir Barkovskiy said the company had started fulfilling the modernization contract worth about $1 billion. Six Indian MiGs (four MiG-29s single-seat fighters and two MiG-29UB two-seat combat trainers)
have already arrived in Moscow.
Mr.Barkovskiy said that “India has now 62 MiG-29 fighters in total”. Another 56 aircraft will be upgraded at the Indian 11th aircraft maintenance base. “We have visited this enterprise and concluded that Indian specialists would cope with this task”, noted the chief of RSK MiG Engineering Center. Well-known Indian newspaper The Times of India announced some other information in its local Bangalore edition on February 13. It reported that India has 69 MiG-29s and all of them should be modernized already by 2011. The contract for upgrading 51 Dassault Mirage 2000 may be signed soon, too. But no doubt that Su-30MKI fighters are the beauty and pride of the Indian Air Force. The contracts for their deliveries and license production totally cost about $8.5 billion. About 100 aircraft have already been put into service, while India totally ordered 230 Su-30MKIs. By the way, the MMRCA project (126 aircraft) costs 41% more than the Su-30MKI one (230 aircraft) given the 1.8 times less number of aircraft.
The military-technical cooperation between Russia (the Soviet Union) and India started as early as 1963 from the contract of the then-advanced MiG-21 fighter. Of course, the 45-year military-technical cooperation between our countries raises
the chances of the MiG-35 in the tender. The Zhuk-AE AFAR radar designed by Fazotron-NIIR and new missile equipment may play the decisive role, too. The Vayu Show Daily issued at Bangalore’s show reported that the MiG-35’s armament includes Kh-59MK2 air-to-surface missiles with a range of up to 285 km and 300-kg penetrating or cluster warhead. The missile works by the fire-and-forget principle, has terrain recognition and correlation guidance capability and can engage targets lacking radar, optical and IR signature. The MiG-35 can be also armed with the Kh-38 modular missile that has modifications with laser, active radar and IR homing devices as well as satellite navigation system. The 520-kg missile has a warhead weighing 250 kg. The Kh-59MK2 and Kh-58 are developed by Tactical Missiles Corporation. The MiG- 35’s air-to-air missiles will be renewed, too. The fighter will get RVV-MD and RVVSD advanced short- and medium-range missiles that outperform the well-known
RVV-AE and R-73.
But India has some reasons not to choose the MiG-35. The main one is that it does not want to put all the eggs in one basket buying foreign military equipment, which is a consistent and firm position. As it was already told, the Su-30MKI is the main aircraft of the Indian Air Force. In these conditions, the expected consolidation of RSK MiG and Sukhoi companies that has already started when Mikhail Pogosyan became their sole chief will not only make Russia the monopoly supplier of combat aircraft to India if it chooses the MiG-35 but will leave no choice even among manufacturers. By the way, two US companies – Boeing and Lockheed- Martin – are participating in the tender and the US is not afraid of the so-called internal competition, which Rosoboronexport is actively trying to get rid of.
AFAR and PR
But there is another side of the problem, which is traditionally underestimated by Russia. It is the PR support of our contract bid. Russia sent only one MiG-35 to the Aero India show held in February this year. At first it seemed to send two fighters but did not manage to prepare the second one, while the US sent there as many as five F-16s. They included two F-16E/F Block 60s of the UAE Air Force and three F-16C/D Block 50s of the US Air Force. Lockheed-Martin offers India a special modification dubbed F-16IN Super Viper, which, however, differs from the UAE’s F- 16E/F chiefly by the name. But there is a special sense in the name, too! In Russian, Super Viper does not sound very good, but it raises the respects for the fighter and its aggressiveness by the Indians who have a special attitude to poisonous snakes. Index IN also proves that the model was created specially for the client. By the way, Sweden was the first to use this designation offering their Gripen IN. How could we surpass the invasion of Falcons that turned to Super Vipers in Bangalore? Indeed, we have an excellent Strizhi pilot team with six MiG-29s. Why not send them to India to show their skills over the Yelahanka air base? Of course, it is expensive but it is a trifle against $12
billion to be received by the winner.
Another PR solution of Lockheed-Martin was the demonstration flight of India’s-first individual Olympic champion Abkhinava Bindra in F-16’s dual cockpit. During the 45-min flight, he even had hold of the control stick. The popularity of the 26-year air rifle shooter can be compared with that of Yuriy Gagarin in the Soviet Union in the 1960’s. With that, Indian newspapers and even Russian and international mass media using Lockheed-Martin’s press releases to tell about this advertisement flight forgot that the first India’s Olympic gold was won by its field hockey team at Moscow 1980 Olympics.
To tell the truth, Russia gave as good as it got, too. A day before Bindra’s flight, RSK MiG’s test pilot Mikhail Belyayev piloted the MiG-35 with retired Air Marshal Kharish Masand, who was the chief of the Indian Air Force 28th Squadron, which was the first to get MiG-29s. The
62-year Masand highly appreciated the MiG-35’s flight performance, “One can only imagine what younger Indian pilots can do on this aircraft!” Interestingly, the pretty 30-year Indian journalist Suman Sharma was the first Indian citizen to fly on both the MiG-35 and F-16. So, the score of demonstration flights is 2 to 2, but the US surpassed us by the attention in Indian mass media due to a better choice of a passenger. The agreement of Northrop Grumman with two Indian companies Bharat Electronics and Dynamatic Technologies for manufacturing in Bangalore components for US APG-68(V)-9 radars installed on F-16s was not accidental, too. Though these radars have mechanical scanning and the F-16IN employs the APG-80 AFAR radar of the same producer, one can say that well begun is half done. By this step, the US proved that it is ready to cooperate with Indian electronics
industry.
AFAR equipment plays an important role in the MMRCA. The Indian Air Force stress they want to have this breakthrough technology on delivered fighters very much. The US installs Northrop Grumman APG-80 AFAR radars on F-16E/F fighters of the UAE Air Force and Raytheon APG-79 one – on F/A-18E/F Block 2 fighters of the US Naval Air Force. These
very radars are offered to India.
The French Rafale can be equipped by a new Thales-made AFAR radar. Sweden also has an AFAR radar on their newgeneration Gripen NG, which can be called the dream of the Indian Air Force meeting all their requirements. Indeed, the Gripen has achieved everything and even more that India has been fruitlessly trying to do for about twenty years developing their own LCA Tejas fighter. But unfortunately, Sweden does not produce its own tranceivers – the basis of AFAR. To test the technology, Sweden bought US-made tranceivers and combined them with well-reputed blocks of their own PS- 05/A radar. By the way, Fazotron has chosen the same method of combination with tried-and-true blocks. But then the Swedes were disappointed. It turned out that the US did not want to sell tranceivers for series production offering the radar only in block. Thus, Sweden would have to ask the US permission for every export contract. The Swedes did not agree with it and signed a contract for tranceivers with French company Thales. But this had happened before Thales and Dassault received a state order for the development and production of AFAR radar for French Rafale fighters. Later on, Dassault bought a large block of Thales stock thus getting a possibility to influence its decisions. But the most important thing is that the Gripen became the main Rafale’s rival not only in India, but in Brazil, too. France told Sweden that it would deliver tranceivers only for the test model but not for series ones. So, Swedish designers had only two possible transceiver suppliers left – Scotland and Russia. In the author’s opinion repeatedly expressed in his articles for a number of years (he is an expert in the Swedish aircraft and electronics industries) the Russian-Swedish cooperation in this field would have been fully mutually-beneficial. After getting a denial by Russia, Sweden turned to Edinburgh-based company SELEX S&AS UK. At first, this Scottish company was called Ferranti, then – GECMarconi, after that – BAE Systems and now, in the era of total globalization, this is a division of Italian holding FINMECCANICA. SELEX has the Vixen AFAR radar, which won tenders for equipping the US Coast Guard HC-130 patrol aircraft and US Customs and Border Service
Cessna Citation.
And what about Eurofighter Typhoon? This company has a unique position relating to the AFAR radar. They are trying to convince Indian Air Force authorities that their fighter’s Captor mechanical scanning radar is better than expensive and not well-proven AFAR ones. To confirm this position, three Typhoons and chiefs of staff of the German, UK, Italian and Spanish air forces arrived in India. Notably, the Russian MiG-35 did not receive such a support from the Russian Air Force. Europeans noted that 167 Typhoons have already been built and there are firm orders for 707 aircraft, which will load production lines up to 2020. By the way, orders for the F-16 will soon end, while any country wants to have an aircraft still being manufactured in series. The fleet of Typhoons has already amassed 57,000 flight hours – 10,000 by the German Luftwaffe and 25,000 – by the Royal Air Force. The main advantage of the EU bid is, perhaps, compensating for the lack of an AFAR radar. The European consortium offered to help India in testing and finishing the long-suffering Tejas including the installation of Typhoon’s Eurojet EJ200 powerplant on the next Tejas Mk2 version. India is attracted by the reduction of operational costs by unifying engines on the both types of aircraft in service. They also say that the newer Tejas with European engines could be exported to third countries jointly with the Typhoon as light and medium fighters with the same engine. It is not clear which markets are meant, but they are probably represented by poor African states still armed with MiG-21s and F-5s. By the way, the modification of the Russian RD-33 engine can also power Tejas and the latter can be unified with MiG-29K and MiG-35 aircraft. Rosoboronexport’s press release says “The development of the Kaveri national aircraft engine for the LCA Tejas light combat aircraft is the main task for India.” India plans to deliver at least 150 LCA fighters to its Armed Forces. It is the Kaveri that should make this aircraft a multifunctional fighter able to engage ground and aerial targets. Powered by this engine, the Tejas LCA can be used as a deck-based fighter, too. Considering the changed requirements for the engine, Russia said it was ready to participate in the Kaveri programme or upgrade it to the level of an advanced Russian aircraft engine. As for finishing the Kaveri that has already been developed for 20 years, the hero of Pavel Luspekayev in a wonderful movie “The white sun of the desert” said “It will hardly happen…” But “East is a complicated matter” (a quotation from the same film), so the cooperation with Indian engine manufacturers may raise the MiG-
35’s chances, too.
Many-sided cooperation
The cooperation between Russia and India is developing in many directions. The AERO INDIA 2009 airspace show proved that Moscow and Deli have strategic relations in the military-technical sphere. This was repeatedly stressed by Indian Defense Minister Arakkaparambil Kurian Entoni, who said “Our joint projects on BraMos missiles, 5th-generation combat aircraft and multifunctional transport aircraft have became the forerunners of new heights to be achieved by our countries in the military-technical sphere. India is interested not only to maintain but to strengthen this interaction as well.” Rosoboronexport considers that at this new stage, the Indian-Russian cooperation remains long-term and mutuallybeneficial. Previously we had only ‘sellercustomer’ relations, but now our countries are actively cooperating in the field of joint developments and production. Rosoboronexport, Irkut Research and
Production Enterprise, Ilyushin Aircraft Corporation and Indian corporation HAL are jointly developing the MTA Russian- Indian medium-range transport aircraft initially positioned as a dual-purpose aircraft. It should both meet requirements of the military and have commercial prospects. This project is carried out on technical and financial risks sharing conditions. The new aircraft is to replace obsolete Indian Air Force C-130 and An-12 aircraft. India has already confirmed its plans to buy 45 aircraft with an option for the same number. Russian military sources say Russia is going to acquire at least 100 aircraft by 2025, which is quite enough for the project’s financial feasibility. Notably, Brazilian company Embraer is planning to create almost the same aircraft. The C390 project is supported by the Brazilian Defense Ministry, besides Embraer aircraft will be based on a successful E190 passenger liner. Brazil has directly told that it wanted to unite efforts on the transport aircraft programme. But Russia and India seem to be unwilling to join efforts with Brazil. The author of this article feels sorry for this unwillingness. The MTA project allowed accumulating a rich experience of implementing joint international projects that will be further used to create combat aircraft, particularly the 5th-generation fighter. According to Indian Air Marshall Fali Homi Major, the Russian-Indian 5th-generation fighter is to make its first flight in 2015 and probably even sooner. This project is being realized according to the intergovernmental agreement on the joint development and production of the 5th-generation fighter signed in October 2007 in Moscow at the 7th meeting of the Russian-Indian Intergovernmental Commission on Military-Technical Cooperation. The advanced aircraft will employ a completely new platform with cutting-edge solutions including stealth technology. The fighter will combine extra maneuverability and supersonic speed, long range and high anti-air defense capability. It will be equipped with advanced communications systems as well as multifunctional intelligence information accumulation equipment with optical, IR, laser and radar sensors. In Bangalore, Indian mass media repeatedly asked when the prototype of the Russian 5th-generation fighter (PAK FA) will make its maiden flight. So, Sukhoi and RSK MiG General Director Mikhail Pogosyan answered that this will happen within a year. Notably, Russia and Brazil have signed a memorandum on military- technical cooperation about a year ago, in which Russia said it was ready to talk with Brazil on the 5th-generation fighter. But nothing has been heard about this project so far. If Russia, India and Brazil start cooperating both on the MTA and PAK FA, Brazil will surely include the Su-35 into their tender. The Su-35 left this Air Force tender last year as it was out of the final short list. The acceptance tests of the new AL-55I engine made by Russia for the HJT-36 Indian combat trainer on order of the HAL corporation have begun following engine testing on the Russian flying platform, which proved its main flight characteristics. Russia and India signed the respective protocol in Moscow on October 16 last year. The next stage allows for the AL-55I’s certification tests on Indian HJT-36 aircraft. At present, Rosoboronexport is actively helping to organize manufacturing the pilot batch of AL-55Is, their certification and license production in India. Speaking about the results of the show, Chief of Rosoboronexport delegation, Deputy General Director Viktor Komardin said “We are fully satisfied with the results of AERO INDIA 2009. In Delhi and Bangalore, we have conducted a number of serious marketing events, useful negotiations and meeting. We think the Indian airspace forum is much more important than European ones and we are going to do our best to raise the prestige of the AERO
