France’s Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian inked the agreement with his Indian counterpart Manohar Parrikar in New Delhi, ending nearly 18 months of wrangling over financial terms between New Delhi and Dassault Aviation, the jet’s manufacturer. So Rafale won the contract.
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India will purchase 28 single-seater Rafale fighter jets while eight jets will be two-seaters.
As the deal could not work out, another deal for purchasing 36 Rafale combat jets in fly-away condition was inked during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to France in April past year. The agreement will boost its air squadron strength while adding enough air power to give it an edge over Pakistan.
The deal also comes with a 50 per cent offset clause which means Indian companies will get business worth at least three billion Euros, and generating hundreds of jobs..
India has finally cleared the decks for the acquisition of 36 Rafale aircraft for the Indian Air Force (IAF) in a deal that is said to be in India’s favour.
Sources tracking the final negotiations had confirmed to NDTV that the IAF’s Rafales will come equipped with the Meteor created to knock out enemy aircraft and cruise missiles significantly more than 100 km away. Other air-to-ground missiles are Mica and Scalp with respective ranges of 70 km and 300 km. Sources said the missile has a range in excess of 150 km and is of much higher capability than the 80 km range of such weaponry with Pakistan.
Friday’s agreement represents a substantial reduction from the 126 planes originally mooted, but is still one of India’s biggest defence deals in decades.
To New Delhi’s advantage, the aircraft would come with several India-specific enhancements, including an Israeli helmet-mounted display.
The Rafale is a twin-jet fighter aircraft able to operate from both an aircraft carrier and a shore base. The PBL terms and conditions negotiated for the present procurement are better as compared to the previous French offer in terms of availability of aircraft and longer PBL duration.
Ministry of defence and Indian air force (IAF) officials claim to have beaten down the French by €750 million on the overall fighter contract price, negotiations for which began seriously in January after French president Francois Hollande’s Delhi trip. This was when the commercial negotiations gathered pace.
The officials didn’t want to be named or disclose the exact value of the deal which analysts estimate to be in the billions of dollars.
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But the Indian side wanted the price to be reduced further.
