If India had Rafale jets, results would have been different – Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said last week. He was referring to India-Pakistan February 27 aerial dogfight in which Pakistan Air Force (PAF) shot down two Indian aircrafts.
The remarks came nearly three months after Modi government pleaded to Indian Supreme Court (ISC) in November 2018 – had Rafale jets been used in the Kargil war with Pakistan in 1999, Indian casualties would have been lower.
It was justifying India’s acquisition of Rafale aircrafts from French company, Dassault Aviation. Indian apex court eventually delivered a shaky verdict in the government’s favor – dismissing the call for an independent court monitored investigation over purchase of 36 Rafale jets for €7.8 billion.
A request to review Rafale decision will be heard by ISC on 06-March-2019.
Now after an enormous delay of almost two decades, India is expecting to finally receive the first batch of Rafale multirole fighter jets in September 2019 but the latest addition to Indian Air Force (IAF) fleet will ‘no game changer’, Mikhail Khodarenok, a military analyst and retired colonel in Russia’s missile defense forces, told RT.
The complete delivery will be made by 2022.
Although Rafale will enhance Indian military capabilities over Pakistan but ‘it won’t lead to any game-changing moments due to the relatively small number’ of jets ordered’, the analyst added. He further said that it would take time for IAF to integrate the planes and train pilots to fly them.
‘Optimistically speaking, the Rafales will be fully-ready for combat only after several years’, Khodarenok explained.
Indian aircraft acquisition plan dates back to 2001 when it identified the need to buy advanced fighter jets to beef up the anemic capability of IAF and to rejuvenate the aerospace industry by achieving self-reliance in producing hi-tech military aircrafts.
New Delhi then took six years to define the absolute demand and issued Request for Proposal (RFP) for the acquisition of 126 aircrafts in 2007. Dassault Aviation’s Rafale fighters were finally shortlisted in 2012 at the cost of $10.2 billion.
According to the agreement, India had to purchase 18 off-the-shelf jets from Dassault and the remaining 118 aircrafts were to be constructed in India by Indian state-owned enterprise Hindustan Aeronautical Limited (HAL).
But the deal was wedged in price negotiations and other time specifics. Over the time, Modi government rose into the power in 2014.
During his very first trip to France in April 2015, Modi stunned Indian nation while announcing to renegotiate the Rafale deal and purchasing only 36 flyaway Rafale aircrafts – instead of 126 – from Dassault in a government-to-government deal for €7.8 billion.
Signed in September 2016, the new agreement ruled that all the 36 Rafale jets will be imported from France – stroking a blow to Indian technology transfer and ‘Make in India’ drives.
As a matter of fact, nearly one-fourth of the total IAF airborne strength is outmoded – 10 of its 42 squadrons are needed to immediately grounded over poor safety record, including Russian made Mig-21s and Mig-27s, dubbed as ‘flying coffins’.
Since 1963, India has purchased a total of 874 MiG-21s from Russia with varying avionics, radars, and missiles – out of which about 490 aircrafts were involved in accidents and crashing, killing nearly 200 pilots. IAF is still flying some 120 MiG-21s that will be retired in phased by 2021-2022.
The last time Russia produced MiG-21 was in 1985, almost 34 year ago but India continued to keep flying these machines by refurbishing or upgrading.
Air Commodore Prashant Dikshit (Retd.) conveyed his grim worries on IAF capability, saying that the numbers of the Rafale purchase were cut from 126 to 36, the FGFA program with Russia is stalled, the Tejas have slow production rates (just 8 per year) and the tender for the next lot of 110 new planes has just come out, which can take years to fructify.
Meanwhile, Indian opposition has continuously been slamming its federal government – beckoning the new pact an ‘insurmountable loss’ to the taxpayers’ money as well as accusing BJP regime for unfairly picking Anil Ambani’s Reliance Defence Limited (RDL).
Rahul Gandhi strongly criticized Modi, asserting he has destroyed Indian strategic asset – HAL – by snatching Rafale from it and gifting it to Anil Ambani. He freshly molested Modi, ‘YOU are WHY brave IAF pilots like Wing Cdr. Abhinandan, are risking their lives flying outdated jets.’
While Indian defense preparedness goes in the backburner over Rafale controversy and HAL’s fiascos – its regional rivals, China and Pakistan, are growing rapidly and Indian $250 billion military modernization program is fracturing.
In March 2018, a senior General in a report to Indian parliamentary defense committee said that there are huge deficiencies and obsolesce of weapons, stores, and ammunition existing in the Army. About two-third of the army inventory is obsolete.
Earlier in 2017, Indian army rejected an Indian-made riffle for the second consecutive year in a row, after it failed to clear the quality tests. Its other locally-made military products like Arjun tanks, Teja LCAs, and even bullet-proof jackets cannot frequently be used on the sensitive borders of China and Pakistan over performance issues.
Indian vice army chief summed up Indian military production, Pakistan has better industrial base than India as far as defense production is concerned. Pakistan’s defense equipment exports are definitely more than India does.