Dogfight over $10b fighter deal
February 10, 2011
It’s the biggest fighter jet import order in a long time, and for a long time. It’s the deal the world's great military-industrial powers have been waiting to clinch — the Indian Air Force's Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) purchase that could fetch the deal winner over $ 10 billion. And with Air Chief Marshal P.V. Naik saying he expected India to have signed off on the deal by September, the dogfight between the contenders is intensifying.
Signs of that intensification were more than apparent during the Aero India show at the Yelahanka Air Force Station on Thursday, with some of the contenders — Lockheed Martin (F-16IN), Boeing (F/A-18), EADS (Eurofighter Typhoon), the French Dassault (Rafale), SAAB (Gripen) — making light or dismissing outright competitors.
Officials of the European contenders mocked Lockheed Martin's apparently recent bid to let the F-35 Fifth Generation fighter among the contending Fourth Generation fighters, saying that it was a sign of the F-16IN losing altitude in the contest. The world’s largest military equipment maker, they alleged, has sought to confuse Indian decision-makers by putting out talk of the F-35. Worse, they alleged, the Fifth Generation tag is a marketing gimmick, because “Lockheed Martin has put out a self-serving definition of what constitutes a Fifth Generation jet,” EADS officials said.
“If you are saying stealth is a defining 5G characteristic, then the greater the capabilities of the electronic scanning (AESA) radar, the other must-have, the more questionable stealth becomes”, the officials said. “Also, designing a fighter for stealth means compromising on agility and lethality. Stealth is a survivability concern. You can sneak in on an enemy, but you will still need to have a good punch to take out the enemy. Also, stealth works so long as you are not detected, but once detected, stealthy aircraft lack agility to escape. Stealth and survivability can be ensured in more than one way. The Eurofighter relies on agility, the F-22 relies on agility to survive. So, is India prepared to sacrifice weapons carriage, supercruise, agility for stealth”.
Lockheed Martin officials, in turn, seemed to be dismissing fellow US giant Boeing's bid to win the contract for its F/A-18 Super Hornet by dangling a 'roadmap of future development' of the aircraft that would give it Fifth Generation characteristics and keep the jet relevant for the next several decades. "Fifth Generation capabilities cannot be grafted onto an existing aircraft. They have to be built in from the start", they said.
Orville Prins, Lockheed Martin's VP (Business Development), told Deccan Chronicle that talk of offering the F-35 was not new. Company officials had been speaking to Indian authorities on the possibility for over five years, he said, adding that US government officials had indicated that there were no barriers to selling F-35 fighters to India.
Nonetheless, "The IAF has said it is committed to the MMRCA deal and will go through with it, and the aircraft on offer is the F-16IN", Mr. Prins said, adding for good measure to dispel concerns over India buying an aircraft that even the Pakistan Air Force flies, "If India chooses the F-16IN, it will be the finest F-16 ever built. It will have a proven AESA radar and all the capabilities that that brings". The PAF F-16s do not have AESA radars.
Asked about concerns over America's willingness to transfer technology, Mr. Prins said, "The IAF's request for proposal stipulated technology transfer in five categories in four phases. Our proposal is fully compliant. There's no requirement for 100 per cent technology transfer in the RFP. The final proposal was submitted by the US government. So, there should be no problem on the ToT front". "Other contenders have US technology in their fighters. In offering ToT, they will have to go through the same US government requirements as we do", he added.
Dogfight over $10b fighter deal | Deccan Chronicle | 2011-02-11