A Rafale Marine attached to Squadron 17F of the French Navy lands on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77) in the Atlantic Ocean on May 10, 2018 | U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class David Mora Jr.
It was interesting how it turned out, eventually. A hurried approval by the Indian defence ministry’s Defence Acquisitions Committee (DAC) right before Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Paris. But there was no reference, after all, to the purchase of naval Rafale fighters in the statement released. A statement that had to be republished because of an apparent error, which required the deletion of a reference to the purchase of additional Scorpene submarines by India.
Worried by news reports poking fingers through these surprising inconsistencies, brushed aside as silly mistakes, both companies; Rafale-manufacturer Dassault and Scorpene-manufacturer Naval Group issued individual statements assuring the world that their platforms had indeed been selected for purchase by India, and it was all going to be okay.
Except, these were only the latest in a series of dissonant notes that have emerged in the Indian Navy’s process for the acquisition of 26 naval fighter aircraft.
Patented Process
The process itself is a truncated innovation, ostensibly intended to speed up an important acquisition process, but which therefore deviates in some ways from regular processes laid down by the Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP), and evolved to make sure there could, in fact, even be a contest.
For those who come in late, the Indian Navy contest was between the French Dassault Rafale Marine and the U.S. Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet. The only other naval fighters in the world are Russian, which India already operates and does not want, and the F-35, which is not on offer to India.
So if one of the two rival aircraft could only carry a single Anti-Ship Missile while the other could carry four, the minimum acceptable requirement is the ability to carry only a single Anti-Ship Missile. Otherwise, one of the aircraft would have been out, straight away and there couldn’t have been a contest. Or if the two-seat version of one of aircraft is incapable of operating from aircraft carriers and are merely standard, land-based air force fighters, the requirement of eight two-seat, carrier-capable aircraft becomes four aircraft that are not required to be capable of carrier operations.
This, by the way, is not a trivial surrender of capability. The more military technology moves to be enabled for, and dependant on, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to facilitate control and operation of Manned Unmanned Teaming (MUM-T) platforms, the more important that second seat will become. Not to mention, the potential advantages of access to future capabilities like electronic attack fighters and unmanned carrier-capable mid-air refuelling aircraft that are now precluded as logical follow-ups.
There has been little question as to the relative capabilities of the two aircraft, but that has seemed secondary. As it turned out, the question became about about cost savings that might potentially accrue with figures of expected expenditure tossed around that have landed on USD 8 billion, because the Indian Air Force (IAF) already operates the Rafale. But the presumptions of cost savings remain premature, at this stage.
The announcement of the Defence Acquisitions Committee (DAC) before Bastille Day read, ‘The DAC granted Acceptance of Necessity (AoN) for procurement of 26 Rafale Marine aircraft along with associated ancillary equipment, weapons, simulator, spares, documentation, crew training and logistic support for the Indian Navy from the French Government based on Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA). The price and other terms of purchase will be negotiated with the French Government after taking into account all relevant aspects, including comparative procurement price of similar aircraft by other countries.’ Since the announcement was specifically about the Rafale Marine, and the only other country that operates the aircraft is France, India will end up doing a price check with France, about the price being charged by France.
And even though announcements of a mere Acceptance of Necessity do not usually rate a mention in a concluding statement after international summits, Indian news media in Paris helpfully explained that there was no reference to the purchase of the aircraft in the statement because India was driving a hard bargain. The French needn’t have worried. The contest was over — their objective had been achieved.
Last December both aircraft manufacturers and their governments were asked to extend the validity of their offers to June 30, 2023. And then, only one of the two was asked to extend the validity of their offer before it expired on that date. That’s how simply the contest was decided.
Now, say, you’re planning to buy a car. You have two options that could fulfil your specific requirements. You ask both dealers to come and show off their cars. They drive their cars around as you stand in the parking lot. But — and this is important — you don’t get in for a test drive. Around a year later, you ask one of them to come back to your office and ask them to resubmit their quote. Ostensibly, because your buddy owns a different model of the same car and although he uses it very differently, maybe you can get a good rate on servicing and repairs, despite the fact that the cars are very different models and meant to be used very, very differently.
So you end up selecting a car without a test-drive.
Both aircraft conducted operational demonstrations in India last year. But now the Indian Navy has ended up selecting an aircraft without a test flight by their own personnel, because only one of the two manufacturers were invited to extend their offers. The Rafale Marine, as mentioned before, is only a single-seat aircraft, so there was no scope for a ride-along during the operational demonstration flights. And the U.S. Navy sent a single-seat F/A-18 Super Hornet for the operational demonstration, so it wasn’t a possibility. It is difficult to see how air force trials of the aircraft for a different role, over a decade back, could have decided a contest for a naval fighter, today. The novelty of this innovative process means, we’re only at the end of the Request For Information (RFI) stage of the process. What the DAC has announced is the Acceptance of Necessity (AON) for acquiring 26 Rafale Marine aircraft. The test-flights, if required, will take place once the stage begins for the Request For Proposal (RFP), even though such tests might seem a bit redundant at this point. It remains unclear why test flights were considered exercises that could be dispensed with, and what purpose their omission served before the selection of the aircraft. But their absence did not evidently hurt the selection of the French aircraft.
The absence of any mention of the Rafale purchase from the Paris joint statement is of no consequence. The contest is over. The French know you will buy Rafale fighters for your navy, with little room left to negotiate because there is now, no choice. In inviting only Dassault to re-validate the terms of their offer before the 30th of June, the Indian Navy pressed a button that set a series of events in motion.
Consequences
After delivering around 800 fighters to the U.S., the F/A-18 Super Hornet production line is set to close production by the end of 2026, and even with that prospect, the Indian Navy could have managed to have all 26 new fighters delivered in that time-frame. With the U.S. fighter out of contention in India, it is now simply a matter of a straight administrative and commercial decision for the U.S. government and Boeing, to re-purpose those resources to other projects, just the way it transpired with the close of production of the C-17 Globemaster III heavy-lift transport aircraft.
The IAF purchased ten of them and had plans to buy more, but delays ended up with production closing down, until they managed to pick up the single, last aircraft still available for sale. In the past few months, the IAF has been asking around about where they can buy more C-17 aircraft. No joy, unsurprisingly. That’s a story for another day. But this is also why the individual invite is something Dassault would have been counting on, for the Rafale to be conclusively selected by the Indian Navy. Once the Rafale was selected, their only rival would go ahead and close down their production line, and the decision would then be truly irreversible.
But there’s also an even bigger windfall that Dassault has won. Bear in mind the consequences of this decision for the IAF’s forthcoming process for the acquisition of 114 Multi Role Fighter Aircraft (MRFA). That contest is also effectively over, before it even began. It is difficult to imagine the leadership of any aircraft manufacturer excited at the prospect of a competition that appears to be a foregone conclusion. The result is an even bigger lottery than Dassault could have imagined winning. With the MRFA gone, Dassault’s Rafale will be a shoe-in for the Indian requirement for those 114 fighters, as well.
Challenges
So how quickly could India begin receiving the new Rafale Marine fighters, once the order is placed? Despite the fact that the RFP will be issued to only a single manufacturer, those will take considerably longer.
Dassault has been blessed with a huge number of orders in the last few years. But it has always had a low production rate for the Rafale because export demand had been sluggish for the aircraft in the past, compared to other aircraft.
Figures released by Dassault earlier in July say the aircraft manufacturer has pending orders of 160 Rafale aircraft on its books. With a new French requirement for 42 additional aircraft released a week prior to these figures, the order book will go up to 202 fighters. According to the same figures, the company delivered four aircraft in the six months ending June 30, 2023. At its current rate of production, an Indian order will take a little over 25 years to reach the beginning of the production line.
But say, despite the imperatives of the current security situation in Europe, the French are accommodative and stick the Indian order on the line before the incoming French order for 42 new aircraft. It will still take 20 years to begin their production. But assume the French could be further persuaded to be even more helpful and put their earlier, current, pending order for 37 Rafale aircraft on hold, to help out their Indian partners. That’s still a little over fifteen years before a spot on the assembly line.
That’s why the French are offering their early-model, ‘pre-owned’ Rafale aircraft to India. Given the above, India would be lucky to get new Rafale fighters, navy or air force, by the next decade. Even if Dassault doubles its current production rate, it still manages to pull the first Indian aircraft into production only at the beginning of the 2030s, if the order were to be placed today. With the contest now over and no alternative left for the Indian Navy, Dassault has no compelling reason to hurry to hike their current capacity to deliver new aircraft.
Perhaps the Chinese could be persuaded to wait, as well.
The low production rate is a problem Dassault needs to fix. It could probably be resolved with the creation of a second production line in India, something that was one of the primary objectives of the Indian Air Force contest for 126 Medium Multi Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA), before it had to be cancelled after it was discovered that the Rafale was not the lowest, technically-qualified L1 bid, after all.
Epilogue
This was an ‘erroneous’ finding that was the result of incomplete and misleading data submitted by the French manufacturer. Since that data was accepted at face value, it led to them winning the contest, helped along with the actions of the technical manager. Actions that were well-documented in Part A of Volume II of the 2019 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India. That ‘selection’ was the justification for the subsequent choice for the order for 36 fighters, which are in service now, and now justify the naval selection. It’s also mildly interesting that the manager in question faces charges of corruption in the VVIP AgustaWestland AW101 helicopter acquisition scandal.
But what’s more significant are the consequences that arose from the absence of the envisaged production line in India. This absence has played no small role in compelling the continued operation of three squadrons of MiG-21 aircraft by the Indian Air Force. Not to mention, the overall existing shortage of fighter aircraft, expected to get worse through this decade. If an assembly line had been agreed in India at that time, the MiG-21 could have been retired much earlier. Do the arithmetic. The past can be helpful for understanding why we are here. The irony is further heightened when you realise that all of these decisions have had far-reaching consequences for the services, just not for anyone involved in the process.
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