Last Modified: Wed, Oct 26 2016. 04 27 AM IST
Clarity is required on
the deal’s India-specific technologies and their industrial viability plan
The Rafale deal is back in the news. This past Thursday, Swaraj
Abhiyan founder Prashant Bhushan alleged that the Union government had paid
double the price for individual aircraft units. Defence minister Manohar
Parrikar responded that this was the “best deal” and one that had not been
offered to any other country. On Sunday, Bhushan shot back. He said that the
Rafale deal will prove to be another “Bofors” for the Narendra Modi government.
The truth, as is usually the case, lies somewhere in the middle.
The Rafale is a great plane and its induction
will do a lot for the air force. However, as the dust settles on the excitement
over the Indian Air Force’s purchase of the plane, it is becoming increasingly
evident that the numbers are very complex and throw up more questions than
answers.
As of now the deal for 36 aircraft is valued at
a total of $8.9 billion. This translates into a per-unit price of $247 million.
The actual planes are valued at $3.78 billion or $105 million per plane. By
itself this does not seem like a particularly large blowout of the initial
Rafale offer in the 2007 MMRCA tender, where the cost hovered around the $90
million mark.
What’s interesting, however, is how the rest of
the money is allocated. A full $1.9 billion will be spent on customizing the
aircraft to Indian specifications. Publicly this has included speculation about
an Israeli-manufactured helmet-mounted display (HMD). An HMD shows flight and
combat-critical information that is displayed on the pilot’s helmet visor. This
allows the pilot to cue a missile on to an enemy fighter by simply looking at
it.
The Rafale has had a troubled history with this
technology. As far back as 2011 some Rafale models were tested with
unidentified versions of the HMD. However, till date no HMD has been integrated
with the Rafale in French service. This is a particularly glaring omission
given that HMDs are considered the sine qua non of modern fighters. Also, $1.9
billion seems far too much money for the purchase and integration of a mere
helmet which by no stretch of the imagination can cost almost 50% of the plane
itself. This leads one to conclude that there may be several technologies being
developed for the Rafale.
The most logical options for this include other
major sub-systems that the Rafale currently lacks. The obvious technology
choice will be an infrared search and track (IRST) system that allows the plane
to carry out a completely passive search of the airspace, checking for the heat
exhaust of opposing fighters or missiles. In the modern battlefield, thick with
jamming across the electromagnetic spectrum, something as simple as an infrared
tracker makes all the difference between life and death.
The other obvious target for improvement in the
Rafale is the radar. The current radar of the Rafale—the RBE2—only has a
one-way data link to its long-range air-to-air missile, the Meteor. This is a
huge disadvantage that effectively squanders the range advantage of the Meteor.
What would happen in combat is that the Rafale will fire a Meteor from a great
distance at a target; in the case of fighters like the Eurofighter Typhoon and
Gripen, which have a two-way data link to the Meteor, they can immediately
break off the attack and retreat to a safe place. The missile then acts as eyes
at the back of the proverbial head-allowing the pilot to see his target through
the missile’s own radar. This is not the case with the Rafale as it will have
to continue trailing the Meteors it fires right up to the point of impact to
ensure the target is actually destroyed.
If it is in fact these three critical
technologies that are being modified to make the Rafale India-specific, then it
will be money well spent depending, of course, on who owns the intellectual
property rights to these improvements. If this ends up being another case of
subsidizing the improvement of other people’s technology at the expense of the
Indian taxpayer, then it is safe to conclude that the deal was badly
negotiated.
Adding to the apprehension is the defence
ministry’s curious usage of the term “offset” as opposed to “industrial
participation”. “Offset” implies India may not own the technologies it pays to
develop and will receive unrelated contracts. On the other hand, “industrial
participation” would have implied that the commercial benefits of the
technologies could have been exploited in the short to medium term.
Realistically speaking, all three technologies are extremely complex, rendering
indigenization impossible in the short to medium term. By the time such
technologies are transferred, their market viability would be at an end.
It must, however, be noted that the total offset
stipulated by the defence ministry stands at 50% or around $4.5 billion,
leaving another $2.7 billion unaccounted for. Sadly, Dassault’s choice of local
industrial partners does not inspire confidence. In the past, the normal
practice has been for companies to pay their “local partner” a fraction of the
cost of the offset to simply claim that they had received orders, inflating
bills, or double and triple invoicing.
Clearly, greater transparency is required since
much of the deal does not add up. The most basic steps must include clarity on
the India-specific technologies, their ownership and their industrial viability
plan, and the institution of annual third-party audits to ensure that
Dassault’s local partners are in fact receiving and executing orders for the
full value of the $4.5 billion offset. Till then we can only cross our fingers
and hope that this is not a case of history repeating itself.
Abhijit Iyer-Mitra is senior fellow at the Institute of Peace and
Conflict Studies.
Comments are welcome at theirview@livemint.com
Original post livemint.com
Rafale has an improved radar RBE2 AA and it has IRST!
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