What was hanging fire for the last two years due to issues related to price negotiations between the two sides seems to have been resolved with India finalising a Rs 10,000 crore deal with France

It appears to be official now. What was hanging fire for the last two years due to issues related to price negotiations between the two sides seems to have been resolved. India finalised a Rs 10,000 crore ($2.1-2.2 billion) deal with France in the first week of April to upgrade the Indian Air Force (IAF’s) fleet of Mirage 2000 jet fighters. The deal had been stuck for the past two years primarily due to differences over the price being offered by French OEM Dassault and Thales. After going through the detailed list provided by the Indian side for the fighter’s upgradation, the French companies had initially quoted an exorbitant price close to $3 billion (Rs 13,500 crore). This amounted to about $58 million (Rs 26 crore) per aircraft, which was coming close to the price of a brand new fighter jet of that caliber. With the final price arrived at through not only hard negotiations, but also through carefully timed nudges at the highest political quarters, per unit cost to upgrade 51 aircraft is still coming to a hefty $43 million (Rs 190 crore). However, the Indian government has decided to ink the deal in view of the fact that the upgradation is crucial for the IAF which is battling with ageing fleets and diminishing numbers in its combat force levels.

First inducted in 1985, the IAF had acquired a total of 51 aircraft (41 single-seat fighters and 10 twin-seat trainers) by 1988. At the time of the 1999 Kargil conflict, Mirage 2000, also known as the Vajra (Thunderbolt) was the frontline fighter of the IAF. The IAF went on to acquire an additional 10 aircraft in 2004 with somewhat improved avionics such as the RDM-7 radar, but the bulk of its Mirage fleet was indeed in need of a midlife upgrade.

French manufacturer Dassault and its associated partners in the Mirage 2000 programme have continued to keep the aircraft on par with the latest models of the US F-16 fighters. By the late 1980s, Thomson-CSF had already begun work on a privately funded update of the Mirage 2000C to be renamed Mirage 2000-5, which first flew on October 24, 1990.

The French Air Force had by 1993 decided to upgrade a major portion of its Mirage 2000 fleet to the 2000-5 specification as a stopgap arrangement before the induction of the Rafale, which at the time was still under development. The upgraded aircraft were redesignated Mirage 2000-5, and became operational in 2000. And while the Rafale has become operational in the French Air Force, it is considering further upgrades for the type, at least for the aircraft with sufficient residual operational life to Mirage 2000-5 Mark 2 standards.

In response to the initial request for information (RFI) issued in 2001 for the ambitious 126-aircraft MMRCA programme, the French manufacturer offered Mirage 2000-5 to compete with the Russian Mikoyan MiG-35, the US Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcon and the Swedish SAAB JAS39 Gripen aircraft. The undue delays in progressing the programme to the next stage from the Indian side and the fact that two more heavy-weight contenders, Boeing’s F/A-18 Super Hornet from the US and EADS Eurofighter Typhoon, had joined the competition, it prompted Dassault to replace the Mirage 2000-5 with its own state-of-the-art twin-engine Rafale jet fighter by citing its inability to keep the Mirage 2000 assembly line open for an indefinite length of time.