Rafale deal is heading for Collapse

India plans to take a final call, one way or the other, on the gigantic $20 billion MMRCA (medium multi-role combat aircraft) project to acquire 126 French Rafale fighters before Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits France and Germany in April.

Sources said the defence ministry is now hopping mad with French aviation major Dassault’s continuing refusal to take “ownership” of the 108 Rafale fighters which are to be manufactured by Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) in India with transfer of technology after the first 18 jets are delivered off-the-shelf to IAF.

The MoD is also upset with Dassault’s attempts to “change the price line”, which led to its selection over the Eurofighter Typhoon as the L-1 (lowest bidder) three years ago, by deciding the “costing” for HAL on its own. “It will amount to a de facto hike in the L-1 price,” said a source.

If Dassault continues to renege from its earlier commitments, refusing to be “fully compliant” with the original RFP (request for proposal), India will be left with no option but to scrap the entire MMRCA project despite having invested almost a decade in the selection process. Incidentally, the defence procurement policy and Central Vigilance Commission guidelines do not allow the L-2 (Typhoon) to re-enter the negotiations.
As was first reported by TOI, even though 90% of the draft contract is ready, the finalization of the complex MMRCA project has been stuck for almost a year now due to Dassault’s reluctance to stand guarantee for the fighters to be made in India in terms of liquidity damages and production timelines.

Sources said defence minister Manohar Parrikar has written to his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian that India was still awaiting the “empowered” delegation he had promised to send to resolve the imbroglio. The two ministers had decided to “fast-track” the negotiations during talks in New Delhi on December 1.

“The ball is firmly in the French court. India cannot allow any violation of the RFP in such a mega project, nor can it afford to let the negotiations drag on endlessly. A final call has to be taken, one way or the other,” said the source.

If the MMRCA project is indeed scrapped, it will bring to an end the mega fighter selection process launched by India way back in August 2007. This “mother of all defence deals” had global aviation majors salivating at the prospect of bagging the lucrative deal.

After extensive field trials by IAF test pilots, Swedish Gripen, Russian MiG-35, American F/A-18 ‘Super Hornet’ and F-16 ‘Super Viper’ were ejected out of the high-voltage competition.

Subsequently, the commercial bids of the two remaining contenders — Eurofighter Typhoon (EADS), backed by UK, Germany, Spain and Italy, and French Rafale (Dassault) – were opened in November 2011.

Rafale was then declared the winner in January 2012, having beaten the Typhoon both on direct cost of acquisition as well as “life-cycle costs” of operating the fighters over a 40-year period with 6,000 hours of flying. But the final commercial negotiations with Dassault have progressed at a glacial pace since then.

India is ramping up amphibious capabilities with warships

India is on its way to indigenously build four warships, which will be the biggest-ever made in the country other than the under-construction 40,000 tonne sea-borne aircraft carrier the INS Vikrant.The Ministry of Defence (MoD) had re-issued a request for proposal (RFP) to Indian private sector shipyards in September to build four amphibious assault ships, also called the Landing Platform Docks (LPD) in naval parlance.

Each of these will approximately cost Rs 6,000 crore and are expected to deliver over the next 10 years.Each of these ships will be anything between 35,000 and 40,000 tonnes. The Indian shipyards have been asked to locate their own foreign collaborator. “The bids have come in,” a source in the Navy said. The RFP was sent to ABG, Larsen & Toubro (L&T), and Pipavav Defence and Offshore Engineering.The successful private shipyard and its foreign collaborator will be given order for two such ships and the two others will be made by the MoD-owned Hindustan Shipyard Limited, Visakhapatnam, at the same price being paid to the private builder.

This signals an important change in the long-term strategic plan as this will be huge jump over the existing capability of launching offensive sea-borne. The LPDs are essentially the first step towards increasing capability to launch “out-of-country operations”.The LPDs are essentially a modern-day sea-based version of the Roman epic “Trojan horse”. Each carries, in its huge lower deck, hundreds of Indian Army troops with tanks, vehicles and cargo. Such a ship can deliver men and equipment near a sea beach and does not need a berthing dock, hence providing the option for landing thousands of troops near a spot chosen to attack.

The size of the LPDs indicates the Indian Navy’s growing amphibious warfare capacity. As of now, the biggest such variety of vessel is INS Jalashwa, a 16,900 tonne ship. Another five warships classified as Landing ship tank large (LST-L) are some 5,600 tonnes each, another four ships are just 1,100 tonnes and lastly the smallest are 650 tonnes and six of these are in service.

Forces that move across sea are referred to as “amphibious task force”. At present, India has the capability to move a Brigade, some 5,000 men, using the lone LPD, INS Jalashwa, along with a fleet of five smaller 5,600-tonne (LST-Ls) each of which can carry 10 tanks, 11 combat trucks and 500 troops.Each of the new LPDs will have three times the capacity and have multi-role helicopters, including heavy lift helicopters to provide even greater flexibility.

Foreign shipbuilders offering such ships include DCNS of France, Germany’s ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems, Fincantieri of Italy, South Korea’s Hanjin Heavy Industries & Constructions Co and Navantia of Spain.India has sought a vessel of 213 metre, endurance at sea for 45 days, the vessel must be able to house combat vehicles (including main battle tanks, infantry combat vehicles and heavy trucks on one or more vehicle deck), and the vessel should be able to undertake all-weather operations involving heavy lift helicopters of up to 35 tonne.