IAF's 15-years-long wait for Rafale aircraft almost over
Today, French President François Hollande arrives in India to seal the Rafale fighter aircraft deal.
But, first a look back into the history.
On September 7, 2009, as he was returning to France from a visit to Brazil, Nicolas Sarkozy was smiling.
He had met Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president, who promised that he would immediately buy 36 Rafale fighter planes for the Brazilian air force.
That day, the French delegation told the press that it was a "proposal that Brazil could not refuse". They were unanimous that Lula had realised that the Rafale was the "best in the world".
Delays
Le Figaro, the largest circulation French daily, incidentally owned by the Dassault Aviation group, announced the "success" of the French president.
"Nicolas Sarkozy has not gone (to Brazil) for nothing... It is a political, diplomatic and industrial success for the French president; the sales of the 36 planes represent a contract of $5 billion," it wrote. The same day, Lula confirmed that the Brazilian air force had chosen the Rafale to re-equip its fleet.
And then? Nothing happened. When President Dilma Rousseff visited Paris in December 2012, President Hollande also tried to sell the "best plane", but in the end, again nothing happened.
The moral of the story is that unless a contract is inked, nothing is "done" in matters of defence equipment. Like the Doubting Apostle, one can't be sure until the ink is dry on the contract.
Many factors can intervene; one is corruption (incidentally, both Lula and Rousseff have lost their job - for corruption). Another one is "influence".
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| PM Narendra Modi with French President Francois Hollande. (Photo credit: Reuters) |
The Russian ambassador to India, Alexander Kadakin, declared in 2014: "We (Russia) are still very surprised that Rafale is being bought, because if the Rafale is intended to oppose Pakistani or Chinese planes… these Rafales will be like mosquitoes on an August night. They will be shot down like mosquitoes. That's why I don't understand why."
These were the type of "forces" opposing the deal.
French defence minister Jean Yves Le Drian, accompanied by Eric Trappier, the chairman of Dassault Aviation and his colleague of Thales and MBDA (a European developer and manufacturer of missiles), arrived in Delhi on Wednesday night and the 7.87 billion euros deal for 36 Rafale fighter jets is set to be signed on Friday. The basic cost, armaments, offsets and service value were finalised a few days ago.
It was included in a several-thousand pages Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA). It is the end of a long saga which started in 2001. While the initial request for information for 126 Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) was issued in 2001, the request for proposal (RFP) was only publicised in 2007.
This is when the "complications" started. However, in January 2012, after a long competitive process which lasted five years, in which the American F/A-18 and F-16, Russian MiG 35, European Eurofighter and Swedish Saab Gripen participated, Dassault and its partners Thales and Safran were selected for supplying 126 planes to the IAF.
Out of the 126, 18 planes were to be manufactured by Dassault in France, while the remaining 108 planes were to be built in India, under a large transfer of technology agreement, by Hindustan Aeronautical Limited (HAL).
Negotiations
Soon several disagreements cropped in; the transfer of technology was probably too ambitious. Further, Dassault was not ready to take the "full responsibility" for the 108 fighters to be manufactured in India by HAL. The negotiations had reached an impasse, when in a masterstroke Prime Minister Narendra Modi unlocked the situation.
On April 9, 2015, an Indian delegation arrived in Paris ahead of the PM and the French side was informed of Delhi's decision to purchase 36 planes "off-the-shelf". It was a quick, pragmatic, and smart move.
While dropping the MMRCA framework, India considered primarily the negotiating table, the IAF's "critical operational necessity".
On January 25, 2016, as President Hollande arrived in Delhi to participate in the Republic Day celebrations the next day, defence minister Manohar Parrikar and Le Drian signed an MoU for the purchase of 36 Rafale aircraft.
During the following joint press conference at Hyderabad House, Hollande said that the "real" deal would be inked "dans les jours prochains" (in the coming days).
Future
Later Dassault Aviation clarified that it would take about four weeks; the French officials accompanying the president during his State visit were quite optimistic that this could be done. It took eight more months to finalise the deal.
The main complication was the "offset" option; in September 2015, on a special intervention by Modi, France agreed to a 50 per cent offset clause: in other words, the French group of companies led by Dassault would reinvest 50 per cent of the deal value in India. It was not "off-the-shelves" anymore.
On September 18, a new report said: "Though the deal could have been firmed up earlier, issues like pricing and offsets took time as India wanted a better contract."
The report adds: "This means creating business worth at least three billion euros for Indian companies, both big and small, and generating hundreds of jobs in India through offsets."
A French official had said once, "With India, you have to learn patience". He was right. But retrospectively, it is a shame that the process lasted 15 years and that the IAF had to wait all this time.
The consolation is that the 50 per cent offset should bring a new life to the Indian airplane industry and eventually India will one day be able to produce a Kaveri world-class engine for its own aircraft, something China is unable to do.
(Courtesy of Mail Today.)