Germany stopped selling weapons to Saudi Arabia over the war on Yemen’s Houthi militia. It has now started selling weapons to Saudi Arabia again, to intercept missile attacks from the same Houthis aimed at Israel.
Enjoy this special video report of the flightline at the Dubai Airshow 2023 held earlier this month.
Saurabh Joshi explains why the Indian Navy’s fighter contest is expected to be cut short, with the aircraft being selected by default in a walkover next month.
In the first edition of a new weekly video series, StratPost editor Saurabh Joshi examines whether India could acquire its first-ever U.S.-built fighter aircraft, with the navy considering the F/A-18 Super Hornet for its next carrier fighter.
Also noteworthy will be the Exocet anti-ship missile, with the SM39 submarine variant already delivered for the Indian Navy’s Scorpene submarines.
French website Mediapart has revealed an agreement was concluded between Dassault and the Anil Ambani-led Reliance Group the day before an Indian defence ministry review overturned the selection of the Rafale as the winning bid in the IAF contest for 126 MMRCA fighter aircraft.
IAF: The first batch of five Indian Air Force (IAF) Rafale is likely to arrive in India by end July 2020. The aircraft will be inducted at Air Force Station Ambala on 29 July subject to weather.
The F-15EX is neither a ‘navy fighter’ nor a renamed F-16 and the IAF is curious about it. That’s why the Rafale might finally have a formidable challenger, if India can get past the fact that it’s American.
The IAF’s new contest for fighter aircraft is expected to get underway over the next few months. But there remain a number of significant outstanding problems ahead, that could delay or derail the process.
Part III of this analysis examines the implications of the single most interesting data point to emerge from the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India. This date has never been mentioned in earlier media reports, and what is almost startlingly significant is not only what transpired on this date, but the fact of the date, itself.
Part II of this analysis examines how the defence ministry’s Contract Negotiation Committee (CNC) interpreted an inflated cost analysis of the Eurofighter bid and undervalued the cost of the Rafale bid, five times.
Part I of this three-part analysis is a contextual reading of the February 2019 CAG report and outlines how the IAF’s MMRCA contest was fixed to get the Rafale back into the contest after it was rejected, three times, and how the threats to a Rafale win were removed.
This dismissal by the court also has several errors and in one instance, restricts the exercise of its own jurisdiction, which is likely to have implications for future cases that could pertain to defence or national security.
One representative of an MMRCA 2.0 competitor said, “The process is so elaborate, difficult and expensive. If you’re permitting cheating, at least have the decency to not make the rest of us work so hard.” “Just the thought of it being tailored to one of the contestant would discredit the whole idea of a competitive bidding process,” said another.
Even after two decades since the acquisition case, the Very Short Range Air Defence (VSHORAD) search has seen a system absent from trials and failing trials, being passed as technically compliant and ending up as, apparently, the cheapest. Also problematic is the difficulty its purchase could pose by provoking U.S. sanctions under their CAATSA.
