Even as the Americans, Europeans and Russians jostle to bag the “mother of all defence deals”, India too is now pressing the throttle to ensure the contract to acquire 126 new fighters under the Rs 42,000-crore medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) project is inked by mid-2011.
IAF, after all, wants to induct the first lot of these 126 fighters by 2014 to retain its combat edge. It is left with just 32 fighter squadrons (each has 12 to 18 jets) at present, down from the “sanctioned” strength of 39.5 squadrons. This when Pakistan is getting new American F-16s and Chinese fighters, while China assiduously builds new airbases in Tibet and south China.
“We are ready with the flight evaluation trials (FET) report of the six foreign fighters in contention. Based on it, we are right now generating the staff evaluation report. Both will be submitted to defence ministry by this month-end,” said IAF chief Air Chief Marshal P V Naik, in an exclusive interview to TOI on Thursday.
The eagerly-awaited reports, which have evaluated the fighters on as many as 643 technical attributes after the gruelling field trials, will be followed by evaluation of offset proposals, opening of commercial bids and the final complex negotiations.
The hotly-contested race to bag the lucrative MMRCA project, the largest such programme around the globe, is among F/A-18 `Super Hornet’ and F-16 `Falcon’ (both US), Gripen (Swedish), Rafale (French), MiG-35 (Russian) and Eurofighter Typhoon jets.
“We definitely need the MMRCA, LCA (the indigenous Tejas light combat aircraft) and FGFA (the fifth-generation fighter aircraft to be developed with Russia) without any delays to retain our combat edge,” said ACM Naik.
“We also have signed deals for 230 Sukhoi-30MKI fighters (over 110 have been inducted) with Russia. Another 42 Sukhois will be ordered soon. We want at least 42 fighter squadrons by 2022,” he added.
All eyes, of course, are on the MMRCA project. “The trials have been conducted in an exemplary, fair and professional manner. We have to be very transparent because the deal is very large,” said the IAF chief.
“The amount of data collated in our voluminous and exhaustive reports is phenomenal. They, in fact, can serve as a template to evaluate aircraft by any country,” he added.
As reported earlier, India is also likely to factor in its geo-strategic interests while deciding the MMRCA winner, with PM Manmohan Singh himself holding large defence deals must be leveraged to serve the country’s larger diplomatic ends.
This will be the first time that India will take into account “life-cycle costs” — the cost of operating the fighters over a 40-year period, with 6,000 hours of flying — rather than just pitching for the lowest bidder in a defence contract. While 18 jets will be bought off-the-shelf, the rest will be manufactured in India under transfer of technology to Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd.
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