Jet fighters : Why France should thank India.

Yesterday, I cleaned the hundreds of useless links from my  browser. Of course, I had to open many of them to find out if they still held any shred of interest. And once again surfaced all the peculiarities of military equipment acquisitions, most of which my readers are probably not fully familiar with. Here are a few examples of such quirks in the wonderful world of war planes :

The United Arab Emirates are tough cookies as air forces go. Their last two deals were for custom made fighters with all the gizmos they wanted added on. Their American F-16s are more modern and powerful than those even maker Boeing sold to its country’s service and the same goes with their French Dassault Mirage 2000, top of the line even compared to French Air force’s ones. So when they look around or wave petro-dollars, every maker starts fantasizing! Proof be found below :

http://gulfnews.com/business/general/uk-and-uae-in-talks-on-typhoon-1.1147482

http://gulfbusiness.com/2013/02/france-woos-uae-over-rafale-fighter-jet-deal/#.USK_8kaEAT8

Two Arabian peninsula/Persian Gulf sites giving on the same day quite conflictual reports? Gulfnews has the European joint venture Typhoon A. K. A. Eurofighter in the lead but as the GulfBusiness report says : “The on-off negotiations with France have been under way for several years.” which until the deal is signed is good news for neither contender.

Let’s check the top planes of today to get a better idea of the scene.
– The USA has two modern planes at the top,  the F-22 Raptor and the F-35 Lightning II. Alas, the F-22 is not for sale. It never was in the first place even to best buddies but it is not in production anymore in the second. As for the F-35, it was sold by addition of 8 allies in the design and manufacture beforehand. However, it cannot be sold to others at present time since the program is experiencing slight turbulences. In a couple years maybe! So that for now, only older models as the F-15 Eagle, F-16 Falcon and F-18 SuperHornet are on offer. All respectable planes if not the latests of designs and kept up to date well enough for those interested. Still, in all truth, when sold recently, the main lever was political relationships more than pure abilities in most cases. Uncle Sam has on occasion limited the use or availability of its jets or their weapons but in all fairness is not sole culprit of such ways.

– China is in a similar situation, still building up a force of J-10 B Chengdu for its own use and only the Pakistanis that shared development of the J-17 Thunder with them can possibly get it for now.

– Russia has the most varied offer on the block. Their Mig-35 is spanking new and the Sukhoi 27-30-etc family has some room to grow. On the other hand, if many nations appreciate those products, many others would rather eschew them and maintain an exclusive relation with America; that split is known.

– Europe however offers an interesting range of aircrafts. Close to the US still for reasons of American equipment onboard is the Swedish Gripen and its upcoming iteration the NG. This light fighter was acquired or leased by a couple countries, South Africa and recently Switzerland for instance. Switzerland is a rare case of a deal where the political aspects may have been less important than basic financial considerations. Having evaluated three contenders, the Swiss selected instead the one that fit their budget, the Gripen and not top scorer French Rafale; good for them! If you want a more independent buy, then the four nation consortium that makes the Eurofighter Typhoon springs to mind. The plane is recent and functional; political ties are not too extensive and you can pick from Deutschland, Espana, Italia or the U.K. as interlocutor. Saudi Arabia did pick it to complement its American Eagles. Which leaves the aforementioned French Rafale as the free choice. Since France considers its military independence paramount, the plane is made in autarchy ( or almost since say the ejection seat is British 😉 ). As we speak, it has still not been sold abroad though.

Sadly for the French, the independence thing works fine but is rather costly. Their plane is not the cheapest. It is however arguably the best offer on the block until the JSF-35 soothes its teething pains and gets fully inducted. Nonetheless, over the last decade, in addition to Switzerland for price reasons, a couple competitions were lost by the  poor Rafale, excelling in most tests but giving way to alliance preferences and in a couple other cases muddling promised deals over unnecessary complications. How very French! 😎

Enter India. The Hindi behemoth has been buying planes from Russia and sometimes France or Franco-British Jaguars at one point. It is slowly but hopefully establishing itself in the military aviation field by learning to manufacture planes brought in service at home and is on the way to making these themselves. In the last few years, pressed by the on-going tension with neighboring Pakistan and wary of the even bigger than itself China, Bharat has climbed to the very top of the arms buyers on the globe. There was one caveat though. India is also at the top of the list on corruption and if one wants to learn how to make ultra-modern jet fighters, it is crucial that the choice be made on quality alone and not money or politics. With that in mind, the Indian government named A.K. Anthony, their Mister Clean, as Defence Minister. He then proceeded to devise a plan separating the different roles in such a competition so that no overlap would be possible. The testing and grading was left to the Indian Air Force which came through by submitting the contenders to a stringent set of qualification runs before producing a list. The top two aircrafts on that list were then asked to specify a pricing range for the tested planes that included Technology transfers needed to acquire knowledge and produce the plane locally but also costs of maintenance over the service life of it. After which a bidder would be chosen and only in the last part of the process would government intervene as a negotiating actor per say.

The Dassault Rafale won. Designed as a do-it-all machine, from air combat to air support, with nukes or anti-ship, on an aircraft carrier, the Rafale is indeed an incredible machine. Still, as we said before, between politics and blunders, it did not sell until India came along. Had not India however suffered from profound corruption problems, it may not have been so intense in its look at the plane’s possibilities and so harsh in its selection process. And the Rafale may not have seen its abilities recognized!

And there, you find today’s title explained : France should thank India and its fight against corruption for that process … as soon as the ink has dried on the contract.
And maybe send a Hallmark card to China and Pakistan while they’re at it, although their role in this affair is much more common. 🙂
Come on, les amis, say thanks!

Good day all, Tay.

Friends of the French plane can keep abreast of its fate here :
http://rafalenews.blogspot.ca/

And if you want to know more on the wonderful world of warplanes in general, this blog is really nice :
http://theaviationist.com/