NEWS
During a press conference held on February 10, during Aero India 2011, Air Chief Marshal P.V. Naik, Chief of the Indian Air Force (IAF), said that India’s highly anticipated medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) competition could be wrapped up by September 2011. “We submitted our report to the Ministry in end-July 2010…and we believe the price negotiations will begin in a week or two. I am hopeful of a decision by September,” said Naik. Defence Minister A.K. Antony had also made a statement earlier that India’s search for the MMRCA was coming to a head and the purchase was expected to be completed in the coming financial year.

VIEWS
Was the IAF Chief truly echoing the Defence Minister’s views or as is generally believed by the industry observers, was it a veiled but urgent plea aimed at pushing the Ministry of Defence (MoD) into accelerating the decision-making process? By now, it is almost an open secret that the senior leadership of the IAF is deeply concerned of the MoD’s tardy decision-making process which is affecting the service’s operational preparedness. The IAF had indeed burned in substantial amounts of the proverbial ‘midnight oil’ and submitted the ‘field evaluation’ report of all six competing aircraft viz. the US Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and Lockheed Martin F-16IN Super Viper, the French Dassault Rafale, the Eurofighter Typhoon, the Swedish Gripen IN and the Russian RSK MiG-35, to the MoD by July end last year. Thereafter, almost three months were spent in answering the queries of the Ministry officials. The Technical Oversight Committee (TOC) was finally formed in November last year. Normally, as per the Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP), the TOC is required to complete its task within a month of its constitution, but clearly in this case, it did not happen. One of the reasons being attributed for the delay is the issuance of new DPP 2011, enlarging the scope of offset commitments for defence deals to also include internal security and civil aerospace products. It is reported that the vendors were asked if they would like to reshape their offset offers in light of the new DPP, but none seemed to have responded so far.

There is still a huge fog index pertaining to the offset clauses/vendor commitments. And even though a specific Defence Offset Facilitation Agency (DOFA) has been created in the Ministry of Defence under the Department of Defence Production as a single window agency to facilitate implementation of offset programmes, the fact of the matter is that the Agency itself is on a learning curve due to the absence of any past experience in this field. There are also misgivings on the part of some of the vendors and even their governments’ representatives in absorbing the large offsets that will accrue from the MMRCA deal.