It’s a great step: Ex-IAF Chief

Shubhadeep Choudhury

Tribune News Service

Bengaluru, April 11

The decision to purchase 36 Rafale fighters in a flyaway condition – a climb down from the original plan of purchasing 18 fighters in ready condition and producing the remaining 108 in India – has been welcomed by former IAF Chief FH Major.

“This is a great step”, Major said. It was during Major’s tenure as IAF Chief the MMRCA (Medium Multirole Combat Aircraft) tender for 126 planes was first floated in 2007 and various contenders checked out.

The IAF had evaluated and test-flown Boeing's F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, Lockheed Martin's F-16IN Super Viper, Saab's Gripen NG, the Russian MiG-35, Eurofighter GmbH's Typhoon and Dassault's Rafale. In 2012, IAF announced that it had chosen Rafale for the multibillion dollar contract. But since then the deal got stuck primarily over financial nitty-gritties.

“This is MMRCA only. Rafale was chosen for the MMRCA contract”, Major said about the latest deal. He said the step to acquire 36 planes in flyaway condition would provide the IAF two squadrons of fighter jets quickly which it needed badly. “This will also give the Indian industry some time to set up the infrastructure locally to produce these jets in India”, he said.

On the issue of less number of jets to be produced in India as a result of the decision (to purchase 36 jets in a flyaway condition instead of the original 18), the former IAF chief said the number of MMRCAs required could exceed 126 in which case more such planes would be manufactured in India than what was being estimated now.

For MMRCA, the government had increased offset obligation to 50 per cent to benefit the Indian industry. The contract fitted well in the Modi government’s Make in India slogan. But the latest deal can be seen as going against the interest of HAL (Hindustan Aeronautics Limited), the Indian partner chosen for license manufacturing the French fighters in India. However, no one at the Bengaluru-based public sector aeronautics major is grudging the decision announced yesterday.

“We did not initiate any concrete step at the HAL for manufacturing the planes here”, a HAL official said. “After all there was never much clarity on whether the deal with Rafale would be finally signed”, the official pointed out.

Dismissing media reports that land had been acquired near Bengaluru by HAL for setting up an MMRCA (Medium Multirole Combat Aircraft) manufacturing unit, the official said that land in question was meant for manufacturing of helicopters. “There was never any question of acquiring land or bring together a team for MMRCA”, he said.