Narendra Modi has announced the deal to buy 36 Rafale fighter jets directly from France in the month of April 2016, but it took 17 months to sign the deal.
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“[The deal] will be formally signed by the Indian and French defence ministers in New Delhi on Friday”, an Indian government official said Thursday.
The Modi government had cleared the deal amid indications that the French government waived off the advance guarantee, allowing India to save 134 million euros. India signed a formal agreement to buy 36 Rafale fighter jets from France’s Dassault for a reported 8.78 billion dollars, one of its biggest defense deals in decades.
The fighter plane will be equipped with Meteor, a beyond-visual range air-to-air missile expected to considerably advance IAF’s capability in aerial combat. This will mean that India can hit targets inside both Pakistan and across northern and eastern borders while staying within Indian territorial. 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. The armaments cost about 710 million Euros while Indian specific changes, including integration of Israeli helmet mounted displays, will cost 1700 million Euros. France has to ensure that at least 75 percent of the aircraft, or 27 planes, are operationally available at any given time by providing proper maintenance, spare parts and ammunition.
“The fundamental thing is the air force does not have new aircraft, the old ones need to be replaced and Rafale is a spearhead”.
Hollande again pushed the deal on a visit to India in January, when he was Modi’s guest for Republic Day celebrations, but officials privately acknowledged that price had become a sticking point.
The Defence Ministry has capped the European Inflation Indices to maximum 3.5 per cent a year. But that condition is gone and Make in India is also gone.
If we make calculations of the number of Rafale fighter jets and the amount of deal, a single jet will cost around Rs. 1,640 crore.
According to Dassault, Rafale – a twin-engine, canard delta wing, multirole fighter aircraft – equipped with a range of weapons is capable of carrying out all combat missions such as air supremacy, interdiction, ground support, in-depth strike, anti-ship strike and nuclear deterrence deterrence.
In April of a year ago, Mr. Modi’s government reduced the size of the deal to 36 jets from 126, and removed a condition that the majority of them be assembled in India by the state-run Hindustan Aeronautics.
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Defense experts estimate that India will spend almost $100 billion over the next decade on buying new weapons systems.
