NEWS
The bids for India’s $10.4 billion tender for 126 combat aircraft was opened on November 4, though the name of the winner is yet to be declared. Air Chief Marshal N.A.K. Browne on the occasion of the Air Force Day had declared that the name of winner will be anounced In November. Browne’s assertion came a day after the Acquisition Council led by Defence Minister A.K. Antony gave its go-ahead for the opening of the commercial bids from European consortium EADS Cassidian and French Dassault—the two shortlisted companies. EADS Cassidian has offered its multi-role Eurofighter Typhoon while Dassault’s offer is its ‘omni-role’ Rafale jet fighter.

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The news may hav e surprised many but it was nonetheless true as it came directly from the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal ‘Charlie’ Browne—who just the previous day had attended the Defence Acquisition Council (DAC). It may be recalled that after years of dithering since the issuance of the request for information (RFI) in 2001, Indian defence establishment reached the stage of issuing the request for proposal (RFP) only in 2007. From then on, to reach the point of finalisation of the tender in just over four years is a remarkable feat indeed, considering that it has as a norm taken over two decades to finalise deals for other defence equipment, which were processed through the competitive commercial route.

Even though the Defence Ministry officials are tight-lipped about the DAC decisions—understandably so—the panel headed by Defence Minister A.K. Antony is understood to have taken the final decision on the niggling and highly controversial offset issues associated with the medium multirole combat aircraft (MMRCA) deal. As is well known by now, according to the Indian defence procurement norms, a minimum of 30 per cent of all foreign military purchases worth more than Rs. 300 crore are to be reinvested by the vendors to spur growth essentially in the domestic military industry. For the MMRCA deal, the offset obligations have been fixed at 50 per cent which means the winning firm would have to reinvest more than Rs. 22,000 crore in India, either alone or in joint-venture partnership(s) with Indian company(s) engaged in military, homeland security or civil aviation sector. It is learnt that the offset proposal from Dassault (Rafale) and Eurofighter consortium (Typhoon), presented before the DAC by DG Acquisition Vivek Rae, have been accepted in principle.

It was only after a series of highly competitive field trials and technical evaluations that Rafale and Typhoon had been shortlisted this April after eliminating other competitors – US Boeing’s F/A-18 Super Hornet, Lockheed Martin’s F-16IN, Russian UAC’s MiG-35 and Swedish Saab Gripen. Apart from Gripen, the others were essentially much older models which reached in the same status only through a series of evolutionary upgrades. There is little doubt that Rafale and Typhoon would be neck and neck in the ‘technology’ race. The Typhoon since its very inception has been continuously improved upon with the latest tranche acquiring the characteristics of a true multi-role combat aircraft. The Rafale—its makers proudly proclaim—was designed and developed from the scratch as a multi-role combat aircraft. As a matter of fact, Dassault coined a new term for Rafale, calling it an MMRCA with ‘omnirole’ capabilities. These were amply demonstrated during the ongoing North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) air campaign over Libya with Rafales operating from southern Italy could perform multi-faceted tasks such as air defence, aerial reconnaissance, electronic warfare (EW) and precision attack, etc in a single sortie.