The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi may not be providing the exact cost of the Rafale fighter jet deal because it would raise security concerns about revealing the aircraft's classified capabilities, according to a top government official. The Indian Air Force had asked for at least 13 'India-specific' enhancements in the warplanes, which are not existing in any Rafale jet being operated by other countries including the French Air Force itself. Dassault Aviation, the aircraft's manufacturer, had recently delivered 11 Rafale jets to Egypt.
And due to this customisation of specific capabilities, the ministry of defence would not like to divulge the cost details of the jets.
In response to Congress allegations about the price of the Rafale deal, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman distanced herself from disclosing figures by citing security issues. However, the Congress was expected to raise the Rafale deal in the upcoming winter session of Parliament, where the main opposition party would stress upon the need to reveal the exact cost of the deal to justify the price negotiations.
"Customisation of aircraft capabilities is being done as it was an emergency procurement. Over a dozen India-specific enhancement accessories are being fitted into the aircraft, which are out to do certain purposes," a senior MoD official told THE WEEK.
Retired air vice marshal Manmohan Bahadur believed revealing the cost and other specifics would certainly compromise security. "First of all, there is a confidentiality clause in the agreement and secondly, we cannot disclose the specifics which IAF is targeting in the fighter jets," AVM Bahadur told THE WEEK.
Without giving out specifics, an official disclosed that besides radar enhancements that will provide better long-range capability, the IAF also sought a significant capability enhancement in the ability to start and operate from 'high-altitude airfields,' like Leh or from parts of the Northeast. Another specific capability, which the IAF is looking at equipping these jets with the is a helmet-mounted display (HMD) through which pilots would be able counter many threats simultaneously.
According to an IAF official, the customised Rafale jets for India will have a weapon suite much superior to the ones proposed in the earlier proposed deal for 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft that was negotiated by the Congress-led UPA government. The Rafales will include air-to-air weapons such as the Meteor beyond-visual-range missiles with ranges more than 150km, MICA-RF beyond-visual-range missiles with a range of more than 80km and the MICA-IR close-combat missiles with ranges of more than 60km. The air-to-ground weapons include the SCALP missiles with a range in excess of 300km. The induction of the Meteor and SCALP missiles will provide a significant capability edge to the IAF over India’s adversaries on both the eastern and western fronts.
The delivery schedule of the 36 Dassault Rafales is 67 months and the first aircraft will reach the IAF by mid-2019 and the rest over the next 30 months.
After hard negotiations lasting nearly 18 months, the IAF signed a euro 7.87 billion (approx Rs 59,000 crore) deal with the French government under a government-to-government agreement for purchase of 36 Rafale fighter jets in September 2016 from Dassault Aviation.
During the negotiations, four factors were considered before inking the deal: 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, the IAF is closely eyeing performance-based logistics. As per the performance-based logistics agreement, the aircraft manufacturer would ensure that a minimum of 75 per cent of the fleet would always be available for operations.
The country's front-line Sukhoi-30 has only 56 per cent fleet availability. Moreover, the Rafale has lesser turnaround time compared with other fighter jets in the IAF's inventory and can also can do five sorties in a day as compared with other two-engine fighter aircraft available, which have a sortie generation rate of three sorties per day.
