Race begins for India’s fighter jet jackpot topping $10 billion
Uncertainty over an agreement for 126 of Dassault Aviation’s Rafale warplanes means India still needs scores of fighter jets to replace its Soviet-era fleet
Fighter jet makers that lost out on the world’s biggest deal a few years ago are gearing up for another shot at hitting a jackpot that may exceed $10 billion.
Uncertainty over an agreement for 126 of Dassault Aviation SA’s Rafale warplanes means India still needs scores of fighter jets to replace its Soviet-era fleet. Sweden’s defence minister, on a visit to New Delhi this week, pitched Saab AB’s Gripen in a bid to jump ahead of its rivals.
“This is the biggest fighter jet competition out there,” said Justin Bronk, a research analyst at London’s Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies. He estimated that India could probably afford to buy another 100 warplanes at the moment.
When it comes to air power, India’s need for new jets is increasingly urgent: About one-third of its 650-plane fleet is more than 40 years old and set to retire in the next decade. Prime minister Narendra Modi is looking to modernize India’s armed forces to keep pace with neighbours China and Pakistan.
India is nearly back where it started in 2007, when it called for bids that included technology transfer to build up its local defense industry. Five years later, Dassault beat out Saab, Boeing Co., Lockheed Martin Corp. and Eurofighter for a contract worth about $11 billion to build 126 planes.
Talks stallTalks with Dassault stalled in part because India sought quality guarantees for 108 jets that would be made locally by state-run Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. On a trip to Paris in April, Modi announced he would buy 36 twin-engine Rafales directly from the French government [but note that no actual contract has been signed–Dassault’s CEO also touts the plane for Canada at the link].
While the status of the other 90 planes remains unclear, Modi’s administration has hinted that it’s looking elsewhere. Defence minister Manohar Parrikar told local television channels in April that India wanted to buy “light-weight, single- engine” aircraft to replace MiG-21s that are slated to be phased out beginning next year.
Sitanshu Kar, a defence ministry spokesman, said earlier this week that he didn’t know how many planes India would look to buy in a new agreement. He didn’t answer several calls to his mobile phone on Thursday.
The value of any new deal will likely be “in the tens of billions of dollars,” according to Jon Grevatt, Asia-Pacific defense-industry analyst for IHS Jane’s. Apart from the Rafale, Eurofighter’s Typhoon [see “Germany still hopeful of selling Eurofighters to India“–foreign sales are need or the production line may shut down in 2018, see penultimate paragraph here] and Gripen, other possibilities include Boeing’s F/A-18 Super Hornet [production for the US Navy looks like limping along], Lockheed Martin’s F-16 or F-35 joint strike fighter [I have doubts the US would be willing to sell to the Indians], and Russia’s MiG-35s, he said…
Sweden proposes to build Gripen under ‘Make in India’ as France falters on Rafale
India and Sweden were in talks today [June 10] over a bigger role for Swedish firms in India’s defence manufacturing, including jet fighters worth billions of dollars, after a deal with French giant Dassault Aviation was scaled back.
Sweden’s Saab has clawed its way back into the race to equip the Indian Air Force’s ageing squadrons after Prime Minister Narendra Modi struck a pact to buy 36 French Rafale planes, instead of 126 originally planned, to cut costs.
Saab has offered to produce its single-engine Gripen plane locally under Modi’s “Make-in-India” programme, after an earlier version was passed over in favour of the French aircraft.
Swedish Defence Minister Peter Hultqvist held talks with Indian government leaders in New Delhi, and was due to meet his counterpart, Manohar Parrikar, later on Wednesday to resume defence supply talks after a gap of four years.
With India allowing up to 49 percent foreign participation in the defence sector, Sweden is looking at India as a manufacturing base, Navtej Sarna, Secretary (West) in the foreign ministry, said.
…Modi has vowed to slash India’s dependence on arms imports, saying it weakened its strategic autonomy, and vowed to build a domestic industrial arms base [see “Not That Easy: PM Modi Tries to Motivate Indian Defence Industry“].
French falter
One reason the Dassault deal faltered was that the French firm and state-run Hindustan Aeronautics could not agree on terms under which 108 of the proposed 126 Rafale planes would be manufactured in India.
Saab India chairman Lars-Olof Lindgren told Indian military website StratPost last year that the firm had done the ground work to build the Gripen in India.
“We already have a Make in India plan for our aircraft,” said Lindgren, a former ambassador to India…
India’s air force says its needs 42 squadrons to face the threat from nuclear rivals Pakistan and China, but because of years of delays and budget constraints, it is currently down to 34 squadrons, each of around 18 aircraft [emphasis added].
The main reason is that an indigenous light combat aircraft (LCA) meant to form the backbone of the air force is nowhere near completion, 32 years after it was proposed…
Eternal India or something.
Tagged: China, France, Germany, India, Pakistan, Russia, Sweden, Trade, U.S.
