Amid political slugfest over Rafale jet deal, the deputy chief of Indian Air Force, on Thursday afternoon, flew the fighter jet manufactured for India. Air Marshal Raghunath Nambiar flew from the front cockpit at the Istres air base in France, and the sortie lasted over an hour. This is a testbed for which Dassault, the manufacturer of Rafale, has made all the India specific software and system enhancements, according to officials privy to the development.
A six-member IAF team is already at the Dassault manufacturing unit, where Rafale jets for India are under production. Delivery schedule of 36 Rafale jets is 67 months and the first aircraft will reach IAF by mid-2019 and the rest over the next 30 months.
Last week, Air Marshal R. Nambiar made a statement that what is being alleged does not match with facts at all, and the government has saved nearly 40 per cent of money compared to previous MMRCA (Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft) deal. His remarks drew flak from opposition Congress.
India-specific enhancements will include air-to-air weapons like METEOR, a beyond-visual-range missile with ranges more than 150km; MICA-RF, a beyond-visual-range missile with ranges more than 80km, and MICA-IR, a close combat missile with ranges more than 60km. It also includes air-ground weapons like SCALP missiles with range in excess of 300km.
According to an IAF official, the induction of METEOR and SCALP missiles will provide a significant capability edge to the force over India’s adversaries on both eastern and western fronts.
The cost of the deal includes basic cost of an aircraft, infrastructure and training, India-specific enhancement accessories, and performance-based logistics. Apart from basic cost and expenditure on infrastructure and training, IAF is closely eyeing the performance-based logistics. As per the performance-based logistics agreement, aircraft manufacturer will ensure a minimum 75 per cent of the fleet will always be available for operations.
Meanwhile, the Congress launched a fresh attack on Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman after former chief of the state-run Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) T.R. Raju claimed to have contacted Sitharaman over HAL's capability to manufacture Rafale jets. The opposition party demanded resignation of Sitharaman accusing her of lying over HAL's capabilities.
Later in the day, official sources came out in defence of Sitharaman by saying Raju is factually incorrect. Sources said that Raju was the member of the Contract Negotiations Committee of the ministry of defence and there were many areas of disagreement between Dassult Aviation and HAL.
"HAL, in its letter dated 11/10/2012, addressed to MoD, brought out these disagreements pertaining to the work share between them. Subsequently, in July 2014, HAL in its another communication to the ministry highlighted one major unresolved issue regarding responsibility sharing between Dassult and HAL for license manufacture of aircraft."
“Further, the man-hours required for manufacture of various components of the aircraft in HAL was also a point of disagreement between them. There is therefore a contradiction in the claims attributed to ex-CMD of HAL," an official explained, while adding that since the workshare between Dassault and HAL was never agreed upon, the statement claiming lower life cycle cost is completely presumptive and due to all these reasons, the proposal of 126 MMRCA could not be progressed further.