Probably waiting for the election to be over. Possibly also waiting for DAC to clear a second tranche of Rafales.
LCA Tejas Mk1 & Mk1A - News and discussions
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Probably waiting for the election to be over. Possibly also waiting for DAC to clear a second tranche of Rafales.
That depends very much on the results of this election. Please take a look at the Congress manifesto and what it says about the Rafale. Further more the same holds true if the third gender of Indian politics comes to power either in a coalition with the Congress or with the Congress's external support.
In case Modi returns to power, you'd still see the decision being made in the next fiscal year.
Regardless of who comes to power, IAF will ask for Rafale. And in case the UPA pushes for a probe, they will only get embarrassed.
It's of greater benefit for them to order the second tranche with savings of billions and then claim they made a better deal than Modi did.
Don't fall that nonsense of Shukla or random. IAF is not sitting on anything, the decision remains at MoD, which has not released the results of the inquiry wrt MK1A costs, that according to IAF are unreasonably high. You can't cut down IAFs budget to a bare minimum and then ask them to procure fighters with limited capability at (if true), too high costs. And as IAF kept saying all along, the MMRCA requirement has nothing to do with light or heavy class fighters. LCA was and will always be considered alongside more capable MMRCA, because LCAs alone can't defend the country.
So what's the deal with fighter acquisitions now? I recently read some article on a new 114 plane tender, is that the new, re-born avatar of the original MMRCA?
What happened to separate tenders for ~100 SE and ~TE fighters? Are LCA's going to be trusted as the lone solution for SE fighters? What's the likelihood of another 36 off-the-shelf Rafales, and how will such a purchase affect the tender? When can we even expect a result to this tender?
What the hell's going on?
Yep. That's why we are calling it MMRCA 2.0.
SE tender as replaced by MWF. TE tender became MMRCA 2.0 and even Gripen and F-16 are participating, although they are unlikely to get shortlisted.
Yes. For both Mig-21 replacement and SE MII.
If Modi comes back, IAF will get a new contract done by next year end. If Congress comes back, IAF will get the contract after a lot of hue and cry.
MMRCA 2.0? Personally, I'm expecting 2023-24.
Normal procurement circus.
2 more questions.
1) What's the likelihood of Rafale winning this new tender? Is this really a whole new competition all over again, or just the illusion of a competition before giving the contract to Dassault in order to reduce angles of attack from the Opposition?
2) What's gonna happen with the Navy's requirement for 57 MMRCA's in all this? What's the likelihood of a grand package deal to produce Rafales in India for both the IAF and INAA?
@Aashish was talking a lot about these things but then promptly disappeared...
The plan was to hand over a 90 jet contract to Dassault right away. But I think a lot of factors changed this quickly. I suppose one of them was to wait for the more advanced F4, the second was to introduce SPM policy, and the third was to not take a political risk since Dassault's plan is to make Rafales with Reliance. No one would complain if Reliance won in a competitive tender instead.
The likelihood of Rafale winning depends entirely on the RFP. None of the competitors, including Gripen and SH, can match up to the Rafale F4. But that would mean the Rafale F4 would also be expensive. So if Rafale is shortlisted with Gripen E and SH, then Rafale should at least be within 10% margin of the LCC of the other two jets, if it has to become L1. But if the IAF sets up the RFP in such a way that only Rafale is shortlisted, then it will easily win, and now the DPP allows single vendor situation.
Personally, I don't think the navy's MMRCA is realistic. But the navy plans to release the RFP by the end of this year, or early next year. So they are likely to go ahead with the program. In case Rafale wins this tender, they plan to club this with IAF's 2nd order of 36 and then MII. This is entirely Dassault's decision, not GoI's.
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Those actually look like light indicators. To indicate if something is wrong. Probably works as a switch as well. I'm just guessing.
