India’s government has turned down the military’s request to expand the acquisition of 36 fighter planes from French manufacturer Dassault Aviation SA to plug vital gaps, officials said, nudging it to accept an indigenous combat aircraft 32 years in the making.
Since it toook over last year, the Modi administration has repeatedly said its overriding goal is to cut off the military’s addiction to foreign arms which has made it the world’s top importer.
The air force wanted the government to clear an additional 44 Rafale medium multirole aircraft on top of the 36 that Modi announced during a visit to Paris this year that are to be bought off-the-shelf to meet its urgent requirements.
But a defence ministry official said Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar had told the air force that there weren’t enough funds to expand the Rafale acquisition and that it must induct an improved version of the indigenous Tejas-Mark 1A.
Dassault declined any comment on the government’s decision to cap the Rafale fleet.
“The IAF (air force) needs to have a minimum number of aircraft at all times. The LCA is our best option at this stage, given our resource constraints,” the defence official said.
India’s air force says its requires 45 fighter squadrons to counter a “two-front collusive threat” from Pakistan and China. But it only has 35 active fighter squadrons, parliament’s defence committee said in a report in April citing a presentation by a top air force officer.
The air force would be down to 25 squadrons by 2022 at the current pace of acquisitions, it told the committee.
Safety concerns
An independent investigation by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India into the LCA programme identified 53 “shortfalls” in the plane. In a report in May, the auditor said that the plane wasn’t as light as promised, the fuel capacity and speed were lower than required and there were concerns about safety.
Retired Air Marshal M Matheswaran, a former deputy chief of the Integrated Defence Staff, said the LCA was obsolete.
“It is a very short-range aircraft which has no relevance in today’s war fighting scenarios. If you are trying to justify this as a replacement for follow-on Rafales, you are comparing apples with oranges.”
