For Dassault, India’s selection of the Rafale is a sweet vindication of sorts. The company had always felt slighted by India’s decision to go for a global tender, when the IAF had expressly said it wanted more Mirage 2000 fighter jets.

Fifty-four months after the Indian Government floated what was without a doubt its largest and most ambitious acquisition effort for combat aircraft ever, it chose the French Rafale to meet its monumental medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) requirement. For Dassault Aviation, the French company that builds the jet, the selection is, quite literally, the kiss of life. To open its export account, albeit belatedly, with the Indian deal is of enormous prestige value to an aircraft that has had the aerospace industry baffled for years over its lack of commercial success. With the IAF’s stamp of approval, and the billions of dollars that will now re-energise Dassault as a manufacturer of combat aircraft, the Rafale programme gets to shake off years of tough luck, international intrigue and criticism that it was a programme cursed never to succeed. For Dassault, winning a deal with one of the world’s most discerning air forces —and a process that is more demanding than most—makes up for the steady stream of disappointments that preceded the victory.

Six years ago, well before the Indian Government had formally floated the MMRCA tender, Dassault abruptly withdrew the Mirage 2000-V from the sweepstakes, putting forth a package based on the much newer Rafale jet. At the time, the move was controversial, but was seen as Dassault’s exasperation with India’s decision not to simply buy more Mirages outright, as well as a recognition that the procurement process had expanded to include more capable aircraft like the Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet. As it turned out, the decision was a good one, because while the IAF sulked at its original choice pulling out of the reckoning, the French Government persuaded New Delhi to look at an aircraft that was very much a part of the same legacy and heritage. The Rafale, therefore, was in and comfortably so.

In April 2009, roughly two years after the MMRCA procurement process had begun, reports emerged that the Rafale had been dropped from the list of contenders because its technical bid did not make the Indian cut. While the report was denied by the Ministry of Defence, it provided the first real scare to a campaign that it was the Indian Government’s default choice. Over the months, Indian test teams flew the Rafale in India and France, testing the aircraft and assessing its combat capabilities. In February 2011, correctly sensing that a milestone in the procurement was close, Dassault for the first time publicly displayed Rafales at the Aero India 2011 show at Yelahanka, near Bangalore. Apart from a memorable flight display, the aircraft flew dignitaries like Member of Parliament Navin Jindal. It was the first time the obsessively lowprofile French firm was stepping out into the light, showing its aircraft off and reaching out to the public in any real sense. As it turned out, the aircraft received huge attention. Importantly, it was still considered to be an underdog in the competition, and one that had most odds stacked against it.

Two months later, just a day before the six companies’ commercial bids were to expire, Dassault and EADS Cassidian were picked out and instructed to extend the validity of their bids, signalling a shock elimination of the other four contenders—the Lockheed Martin F-16IN Super Viper, Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet, Saab Gripen IN and UAC MiG-35. The down select created massive upheaval in the aerospace market, turning several notions on their heads. For starters, the IAF had asked the government to choose between two of the most modern but also most expensive aircraft in the competition. In several other aspects, it was an unexpected decision: the aircraft were heavy twin-engine fighters, not quite medium to light airplanes that the IAF had originally set out to procure to augment its Mirage fleet. Something was amiss, but it was put down to an expanded requirement and the parallel recognition that buying newer aircraft made better sense in the long-term, an idea that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) supported in full.