MMRCA: mother of all short-lists

News By : Newsclick.in

Source : IDRW

SOURCE :Newsclick.in

Late last week India’s Ministry of Defence announced its much awaited short-list for the multi-billion dollar “mother of all deals” for acquisition of medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA). .Those closely following the acquisition process especially the field trials, have not been too surprised by the down-selection of the Rafale from France and the Eurofighter Typhoon from the European consortium. For about a year, the grapevine had it that these two aircraft had emerged favouritesNevertheless the announcement has churned up a mini-storm, mostly triggered by both the US contenders being rejected. Critical comments from US commentators can be attributed to sheer disappointment, after all $10 billion is not small change! Sections of the Indian strategic commentariat and corporate media too seemed astonished that India had spurned this opportunity to cement the US strategic partnership.

But remarks by some officials also indicated pressure could be mounted on India to somehow allow the US aircraft back into the tender Shaping of the Acquisition Some aspects of this acquisition, and not just its dollar value, make it different from earlier ones. 126 modern fighter aircraft with lifetime support and technology transfer are not going to come cheap. In fact India has already spent more than this on the several recent acquisitions to fill long-pending gaps in defence capability.

Compared to earlier aircraft acquisitions by India, the MMRCA deal has taken less time, although most international articles on the deal continue to comment on the long, tortuous process involved. The initial Request for Information (RFI) for the Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MRCA) as it was then called was put out in 2001, so the process has taken 10 years. The Request for Proposals (RfP) was expected to be issued in December 2005 but was announced by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in August 2007. In contrast, India took over 20 years before finally purchasing Jaguar strike aircraft, and over 20 years again before finally acquiring Hawk trainers, both from the UK. Clearly India has been more purposeful with the MMCRA.

This is largely because the Indian Air Force (IAF) is faced with a huge assets crunch and has determinedly pushed MoD towards a timely and effective decision. Against sanctioned strength of 39.5 squadrons, each with 18 aircraft, the IAF has seen its strength dwindle to 30 squadrons expected to go further down to 27 during 2012-17 due to attrition of older aircraft, leaving the defence forces badly depleted. 

The indigenous Tejas Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) expected to replace the bread-and-butter MiG21, has been long overdue, forcing the IAF to keep dwindling numbers of MiG21s active long past their expiry date through increasingly desperate measures. With no suitable advanced trainers, and fresh pilots going straight from basic training to the demanding MiGs, India has paid a horrendous cost in human life in MiG crashes. The induction of Sukhoi 30 MKIs starting from 200? staved off the immediate crisis and in the face of continued delays in the LCA programme, India ordered an additional 56 Su30s on top of the initial 140 including local production.

The MRCA RfI was floated initially with the idea of filling the gap between the low-end LCAs whenever inducted and the air superiority Su30s. Three developments since then have hugely influenced the MRCA acquisition.

First, the IAF in particular and the defence forces as a whole have embarked on a large-scale modernization. Second, this led the IAF to re-conceptualize its future fleet and scale-up its requirement from an MRCA to an M-MRCA, that is, from a light-weight aircraft to a heavier fighter that could carry more weaponry and undertake both air defence and ground attack roles. The IAF now saw its future fleet as comprising the LCA, a few Jaguar strike aircraft and multi-role lightweight Mirage 2000s, the heavier Su30 MKIs for air superiority and 4th Generation MMRCAs, complemented by Hawk advanced trainers and a forthcoming new indigenous basic jet trainer. A contract for co-development of a 5th Generation fighter with the Sukhoi bureau completed the picture. 

This vision and corresponding procurement processes were now driven more by the user service. Third, India was now prepared to flex its economic and political muscle in the international arms bazaar. India had fashioned an offsets system to ensure that foreign vendors spend 30-50% of order value within India on local production thus boosting domestic industrial capability.

As a result, between the initial RfI and the RfP, the nature of the acquisition had undergone a significant change, in terms of both the type of aircraft and the conditions that the supplier would have to fulfill.

Dropped Bidders Given the shift in the IAF requirement, the lighter more air-to-air contenders could actually have been dropped earlier itself, but perhaps the IAF wanted a closer look at different options.

The F-16’s latest Block 70 version from US defence contractor Lockheed Martin, is an excellent proven platform. Apart from being lightweight, however, it is ultimately a 40 year old plane that has been phased out from the US Air Force and whose assembly line is scheduled to shut down unless the Indian order had revived it. Under similar circumstances, having realized the IAF preference, the Mirage 2000 was withdrawn from the Indian tender by Dassault as early as 2006. The US in contrast pushed for the inclusion of both American contenders in the tender belatedly, in the afterglow of the Indo-US nuclear deal and blossoming strategic partnership, prompting some wags to say “123 = 126”! The Americans did not deem it an important factor that F-16s, albeit of the earlier Block 50/52, were in service with Pakistan since the 1970s. 

Lockheed Martin, with virtually no industrial or business links in India, would also have found it very difficult to meet the 50% offset requirement. It was either extreme US naivety or arrogance to think that India would salivate and jump to buy anything the US put on the table, or do so out of sheer gratitude.

The JAS-39 Saab Gripen NG from Sweden, made with some collaboration with UK’s BAE Systems, also does not really fit the MMRCA profile. However, the Gripen NG is a contemporary 4th generation aircraft with superb handling characteristics, and is a heavier more powerful version than earlier models. Like other Swedish fighters, it is designed to operate from short runways or even roads, a useful feature in India’s Himalayan airfields. It also uses a variant of the same GE-414 engine that the LCA is now configured with but, with Boeing’s F/A-18 also using this engine, the US may mount pressure against its Swedish rival as it did when it prevented Sweden from selling the Viggen fighter to India in the 1970s because it had a US-made engine that it did not want India to get!

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