Why India must think twice about Trump’s F-35 offer

AFORMER foreign secretary has advised "India to adjust to a whole new world" with "only transactions and deals" and believes that there are "no friends and enemies in this scenario." Obviously, the diplomat's assessment originates from the ‘real-time’ unpredictability of the sole ‘super power’, President Donald Trump, who appears difficult to be dealt with by today's "whole new world."

Simply put, the ‘scenario’ today has dramatically turned to ‘T’ for ‘transactional Trump’, and ‘D’ for ‘dollar deals Donald’, with the USA launching its global blitzkrieg for ‘deal’ and ‘transaction’. The US unilateralism is compelling friends and foes alike to either scurry for cover or make a personal appearance before Trump to keep him in good humour, notwithstanding the bleak prospect of any meaningful result. Trump loves the driver seat for deals, dictating all in his durbar to put their signatures in the DC-prepared draft of transaction documents.

Trump now wants India to buy the Lockheed F-35 fighter to reduce America's $35 billion bilateral trade deficit with Delhi.

However, India knows well (as does the USA, presumably) that any international deal, transaction, contract, or even the hatching of criminal conspiracy, is a bilateral process and essentially a matter of ‘offer plus acceptance’ for the sealing of the deal. From India's perspective, too, shouldn't then the F-35 be looked into?

Barring the US Douglas DC-3 Dakota and Fairchild Packet C119G transport and air-dropping, the Indian Air Force has never had a US fighter in its combat squadron inventory since 1947. Hence, the sudden transformative, unilateral and command-like-offer to India to buy the Lockheed F-35 multirole fighter by the transactional President of the US (POTUS) deserves a scrutiny, especially in light of the contemporary geopolitical weather and history of erratic, overbearing US policy towards Delhi-DC bilateral contours over the decades.

First, let us be clear that no air force of a country of India's shape and size is made in a day and an air force building is no garden party or a matter of joke. It is a serious business of high-tech, high-risk, high-investment and exceptionally high-quality trained personnel or men behind the machines.

Jane's All the World's Aircraft shows that the period from the "request for proposal" to the "first delivery" of the F-35 fifth generation multirole stealth fighter Lockheed, spanned over 15 years (December 1995-May 2011). Also, India was never under the US radar either as an industrial partner or a potential buyer or readymade user of the high-tech Lockheed fighter. The F-35 essentially was for the advanced west and its defence and security partners from the non-west.

Thus, in late 1996, "Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Singapore, Spain and Sweden were briefed on the programme." It was clear from the beginning that it would be an enormously expensive flying machine.

First-level collaboration with 10 per cent cost-sharing was sought from the UK; Italy and the Netherlands were level-two partners, with 5 per cent cost sharing; level three involved the payment of 1-2 per cent with Denmark and Norway and, finally, came Australia, Canada and Turkey, who were to bear the cost on their own.

Consequently, the cost of each fighter was exorbitant. As seen from the annual publication of Jane's All the World's Aircraft, from 2012-2013, each unit cost of the US Air Force F-35A was quoted as $37.3 million. It escalated to $94.3 million in 2017 and is now well over $100 million per fighter. On top of this, if one takes into account the depreciation of the Indian rupee vis-a-vis the US dollar, the expenditure by the Indian exchequer can be truly mindboggling. It can make any F-35 "deal" or "transaction" highly explosive and an impossible hot political potato, with the questionable possibility of the US fighter role, responsibility and utility in the Indian defence system.

There are also multiple technical factors which surely would be beyond the comprehension of the millions of uninitiated, who get impressed by the air display and further charged by the emotional public debate of/for optics.

The F-35 is already a highly questionable and controversial commodity in the USA itself. There have been too many glitches and cost and time overruns that have made both the POTUS and his principal Man Friday, Elon Musk, making comments on the US aviation industrial capacity and capability. The POTUS is after Boeing for its inability to deliver two ‘Air Force One’ transport craft for the White House. Musk is all over F-35, making comments like: "F-35 fighter jets are obsolete" and "meanwhile, some idiots are still building manned fighter jets like F-35."

Expectedly, the outgoing US air chief has given Musk a mouthful of expletives.

Tech and economics aside, India is expected to follow zero-tolerance to flight safety failure if it afflicts an extraordinarily "sophisticated stealth" like F-35. Regrettably, things went wrong early in October 2010 itself, with a brief grounding of the fleet at the Edwards Air Force Base (AFB), owing to a "software problem affecting the pump that could have caused un-commanded inflight shutdown of engine."

Almost 15 years have gone by, but unexplained and unexpected inflight glitches continue to plague the F-35s. A few citations would suffice. In two successive accidents in June and July of 2014, a mixed group of F-35s "suffered catastrophic engine failure at Eglin AFB which was followed by a fleet-wide grounding order." This is similar to what the Indian Air Force faces today — a whole fleet of the indigenous Advanced Light Helicopter Dhruv being grounded after the January 5, 2025 crash.

For the F-35, however, the most serious finding of the accident inquiry report was "rubbing between third-stage fan blades in low-pressure section of the P&W F-135 engine and the inner wall of compressor casing."

Unfortunately, the F-35 offered by the POTUS still suffers from nagging niggles which do not inspire confidence of any potential user. That's the irony, but also the reality. One, therefore, would hate to see a possible increase in the number of widows and orphans in our Air Force stations during peace time.