Between 2025 and 2045, there's 20 years. That gap has to be bridged. MKI is not good enough for that. Neither is LCA Mk2.
That's why I want the 72 Rafales.
No, it's not. It's far, far cheaper. In fact, Dassault would like to use the Indian line to export, 'cause it's so much cheaper. HAL had estimated that the unit cost of the locally produced jet will drop by half when the last of the 126 are delivered.
Flyaway cost of the jets made at home will be cheaper - but only if you disregard the capex needed to set up the line in the first place. And we'll be paying royalties in Euros on every single plane that rolls out.
Any jet would get cheaper the more you produce. Producing AMCA for example will be cheaper than Rafale.
And you think exports cannot compensate for the difference even more? It will pay for our own jets and more.
Like how we exported loads of MKIs from our line?
Exports ain't gonna happen, let's be realistic. Rafale is too important an export for France to hand off considering their new venture (FCAS) will be a sensitive product who's exports will be heavily restricted.
Rafale's more than competitive with any jet that's operational or will be operational within its envelope.
Dassault insists on canceling FCAS for a larger modernized Rafale instead.
Been over this before. Nobody in the French Air Force thinks Rafale will be survivable against 5th (let alone 6th) gen fighters. That's why FCAS with internal bays & stealthy airframe is being pursued.
Otherwise, they'd just develop a next-gen engine and jam it in the Rafale.
Dassault will say whatever it wants cuz it has to sell you Rafales. Watch what they do, not what they say.
The point of ToT is primarily to benefit the IAF. It gives them access to executive supervision and local upgrades, both hardware and software. All other benefits, like saving forex, creating jobs and experience, businesses making money, finding a comeptitor to HAL etc are just byproducts.
I know. I'm just saying it's not worth it cuz the platform will be obsolete soon.
So first let's get the numbers in order. The IAF wants 114 jets; not 36, not 54 >> 114.
Firstly, I deeply doubt we can afford 114 MRFA. Secondly, I doubt IAF/MoD is even interested anymore.
AFAIK, we haven't even taken out an AoN for the requirement 8 years after buying the first 36 Rafales, so quite evidently we're treating this as a time-pass. You can easily say we can afford it no problem, but I need to see evidence, proof of intent to even say we want to pursue this anymore.
I don't know if the hold-up is purely financial, a result of internal re-assessment of requirements, or due to political reasons (the scam allegations). Either way, I don't think the fact that there is a hold-up can be denied anymore. Now they want to review the whole thing.
You can't go by IAF statements. They have standing orders to speak a certain way and until new orders come they'll maintain their line. Even if the whole MRFA charade was going to be cancelled tomorrow, till 11:59PM tonight they'll continue to say the tender is still on.
When they started talking about buying 201 Tejas Mk2 instead of 106, I think that's the moment things fell into place.
And what you are suggesting is instead of buying the tech and building it in India,
I'm saying you don't need to buy tech you already know how to build at home.
If you want to buy the full platform off the shelf because your domestic solution will take more time to mature, that's fine. Go buy a couple squadrons more to hold the fort. But investing billions on buying & transferring foreign 4.5 gen tech when we've spent a significant amount of time & money developing our own would be foolishness.
If you want to keep the 72 Rafales flying without a hitch, all you need is a PBL contract. The ToT & local line are unneccessary at this point. They don't bring anything new to the table.
you want to either compromise on India's defenses for at least 2 decades with very low numbers, which has already been compromised for 10 right now,
I want to do the opposite. I want us to pursue a truly large number (~400) of single-engine AESA-equipped aircraft (met through 180 Mk1A and 200 Mk2) functioning as air defence fighters, over half of which (the 201 Mk2s) would be capable of multi/swingrole duties including CAS & Strike (as long as you're talking about the Western front).
I want them backed by hundreds if not thousands of Loyal Wingmen/CCAs which exponentially increase the abilities by acting as force multipliers with multirole capability (A2A+A2G) of their own. Not to mention the IRF which can place ordnance on targets from standoff ranges.
These assets would immensely free up more capable platforms like Rafale or MKI to only pursue specialized duties like Deep Strike or Air Superiority. This was NOT the case back when we formulated the original 100-150 MRCA requirement in early 2000s. Back then we only expected to induct around 200 Tejas (all variants combined) which was to be a replacement of the MiG-21 as a point-defence fighter and nothing else.
Back then the word 'drone' was used to describe a trash can with wings like the Searcher Mk1 that has a EOIR camera & nothing else.
Back then BrahMos was in its infancy and was purely meant for the Navy. Nobody had faith in DRDO's ability to develop tactical missiles.
Today, things are very different and you don't even want to take any of that into account.
Now that the scope of Tejas Mk2 has increased tremendously, all of a sudden you're acting as though the entire 100-150 MRCA requirement was meant to address DPSA duties. IT WAS NOT. Deep Strike was but a subset of the various roles to be performed by those jets. In fact I doubt if the actual requirement of DPSAs would have been more than 72 from from among those ~150 total.
Remember that the aircraft that originally competed were designed to replace multiple older ones in their respective countries, because they made such a leap in terms of operational availability & serviceability compared to older types like Jaguar, which reduced the number of airframes needed to put up the same number of sorties/flight hours per year.
In the current MRFA we're just blindly following requirements laid out 20 years ago. Perhaps that's why neither IAF nor MoD is showing any serious intent in pursuing the deal even after all these years.
or just hand over $30B to the French for absolutely no benefit to India. So no direct control or no jobs.
Eh? An off the shelf buy of a further 36 would cost around $5-6B or so, no more. ISEs, weapon integration, air base infrastructure for 2 more squadrons, it's all been paid for. But the price starts to increase rapidly if you go beyond 2 more squadrons, even if ToT not included.
Not to mention, we'll need to keep around $10B aside for stop-gap 5th gen purchase later this decade.
As for AMCA, my date is a 2037-38 FOC. I estimate that we will get the engine deal going in 2025, finish development and certification in 2035 and certify it on the AMCA by 2037-38, and inductions by 2040. So, in our procurement process, we get FOC first, and then release the build orders, which will then take at the minimum 2 years to deliver, followed by a squadron a year. And at the end of 2045, we will have all 5 squadrons, and at the minimum 2.5 years later, we will have all AMCA pilots at 500 hours or beyond. That's at least 2047-48 before the entire fleet becomes fully operational. FOC + 10 years.
So when you claim AMCA will achieve FOC in 2040, your timeline is even worse than mine. We have to push it to 2042-43 to 2050-51 instead.
Forget the engine deal, if it happens it happens. Getting the AMCA airframe in hand is what's important first & foremost. F414 is sufficient from a sustainability/servicability perspective (and actually an improvement over the M88). The engine, radar, IRST & most of the avionics of AMCA Mk-1 would already be proven on the Tejas Mk2.
Before 2040, the AMCA as a platform will be fully capable, and completely superior to the Rafale in terms of survivability. Yes, Rafale crews would be more experienced, but like I said the platform isn't survivable so it won't matter. They can't enter airspace controlled by J-20Bs and come back alive. AMCA can.
Yes, AMCA with F414 will not have the performance to take on & defeat J-20Bs reliably. But Rafale would be way worse so there's not really a choice. And building MRFA under license won't solve that problem because that's a platform deficiency, not a logistical one. The only thing that would change if you bring a lot more Rafales into theatre would be we would lose a lot more pilots. The platform cannot turn the tide.
But that's where a foreign 5th gen stop-gap could come in. If we get around to buying it in time, that is.
If you still insist on just 36 jets,
I insist on all 72 Rafales and at least 200 upgraded MKIs to be alloted to the LAC (something which can only happen if at least 200 Tejas Mk2s are procured to take care of the Western front btw).
And, assuming we buy at least 3 squadrons (54) of 5th gens, I want 2 of those squadrons (36) on the LAC. Once AMCA achieves FOC, the other squadron can pivot to LAC as well.
All that your approach has us doing is that we bring 40 more Rafales to the LAC (because you insist that we need Rafales equally on both fronts, so only half of the additional 80 would be on LAC). But, pursuing MRFA in its current form would more than likely prevent Tejas Mk2, AMCA & the 5th gen buy from being pursued in sufficient numbers in the same timeframe, which will indeed force us to split the entirety of our 150-strong Rafale fleet evenly on the two fronts, or at least on a 60-40 basis.
So out of 150 Rafales, we still only end up with 75-100 on the LAC. As opposed to 72 in my view of things. So the numbers are actually fine in both our versions - the only difference is due to our view of how the OTHER things are shaping up. You're of the opinion that everything else that we're doing (which we didn't plan on doing back in the 2000s) has no effect on required MRFA numbers, I'm not. That's all.
In the long run, you want to procure additional Rafales to the detriment of everything else if need be. I think that would actually be worse.
Just that the IAF will not be able to fight China at all between 2033 and 2045+.
I fail to see how 2 additional squadrons of Rafales on LAC (which is really all that you are advocating if we adopt your PoV) would make the difference between being capable of stalemating China and a total defeat.
And no, MKI MLU and LCA Mk2 won't cut it. Neither jet is superior to the main MRFA offerings; Rafale and Typhoon.
MKI MLU with a 2000+ TRM AESA and Astra Mk-3 is actually far more capable (and cheaper) than Rafale with a <900 TRM AESA & Meteor in A2A combat. It would be a true-blue Air Superiority fighter that would be able to shoot the same target from farther away than Rafale can, and be able to egress quickly if need be.
Unfortunately, neither MKI MLU nor Rafale can realistically win an A2A engagement against J-20B cuz they'll be shot dead before either of them can see the Chinese jet.
Before 2040, only F-35 can even potentially win that engagement (after that, AMCA can as well). If that's not available, Su-57E is gonna have to do.
It's estimated that PLAAF will buy another 1000 J-20s by 2035, which means at least 300 J-20s will be deployed against India, up from the current 64. To counter that we need 150 Rafales inducted between 2030 and 2035, and then hold the line for 15-20 years before AMCA in adequate numbers can properly take over.
Except you can't counter J-20B with Rafale. That's the problem.
Our initial 36 F3Rs were fine as a stopgap because it's so much more superior to the F-16, J-10C and J-16, even the initial J-20s with their old engines and unproven avionics. But for the new timeframe, Rafales are necessary in large numbers 'cause it's going to be a contemporary jet. Any advantage it had in terms of capabilities has been negated by the new J-20B. So now we need half of what they can realistically deploy against us.
You cannot win A2A engagements by deploying more Rafales. It's not a sortie generation problem, it's a physics problem. Rafale gets seen first, Rafale gets shot first, every single time.
Only AMCA can realistically hold its own against another stealth aircraft. But until it's ready, we need a stop-gap 5th gen platform.
Btw, Rafale F5 will be competitive with the J-20.
Sigh.
Only using shaping-based stealth is almost outdated.
Except there isn't a single new fighter program in development anywhere in the world (including France) that doesn't have a stealth-shaped airframe. Because everyone knows you cannot survive the future battlefield without it.
Upgrading of non-stealth 4.5gen platforms is to keep them relevant as second-line fighters, not because they can negate what stealth platforms can do because of those upgrades.
I've been over the Active Stealth discussion with you in depth at least twice before. To summarize, the fact that IAF wants to pursue a stealth-shaped AMCA clearly spells out at least one of two things as true:
1) Active Stealth is only a form of ECM/ESM, and doesn't work the way you think it does. Have shown you in detail how it doesn't. The long & short of it is that Rafale simply won't have sufficient radiating elements to fool a single 400-TRM main beam from a 1000-TRM FCR, never mind a whole battlespace filled with dozens if not hundreds of such radars which would add up to tens of thousands of TRMs scanning from different angles, which even F5 with tile radars won't have the number of TR elements needed to counter.
All that active cancellation can do reliably is to fool the seekers on incoming AAMs/SAMs, momentarily making them lose their track so they can be evaded. It's not a magic stealth generator. All that F5 does on top of that is that it can spoof missiles coming from a lot more angles compared to F3/F4 which have a very limited FoV for the jammers.
But it's far more survivable to not be seen & get locked on in the first place which is what a stealthy airframe can achieve.
2) Hypothetically, assuming active stealth does work to cloak the fighter throughout the sortie, the French have refused to share the tech with us, which forced us to go down the path of passive stealth with AMCA. Otherwise we'd have dumped AMCA the moment we bought Rafale and just focused on indigenizing it 100% and just developed a NG engine for it (and not for AMCA). But that's not what we're doing.
Either of those two options mean the same thing as far as IAF is concerned: we cannot obtain stealth through Rafale. Means we cannot obtain look-first/shoot-first through Rafale.
You can actually assume that the Rafale's RCS will be competitive with the J-20 and F-35 within the decade.
Sigh.
Anyway, I believe the IAF will buy at least 150-200 Rafales, not just 114.
Wake me up when they at least issue an AoN for the 114, never mind 200.
This is our timeline. So now you tell me how your 36 new Rafales are gonna cover the entire landmass of India while fighting off 300 J-20s.
Told you above.
Now you tell me how I'm wrong and how 150 Rafales can fight off 300 J-20s which they can't even see.