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Showing posts with label eurofighter typhoon. Show all posts

The "mother" could well become the "granny" of all defence deals in the years ahead. India is likely to go in for another 63 fighters after delivery of the first 126 MMRCA (medium multi-role combat aircraft) if the "timelines" for its other fighter development projects are not met, say top defence officials.

When the MMRCA selection process was initiated by the defence ministry in mid-2007, the overall project cost was pegged at Rs 42,000 crore, or $10.4 billion for 126 fighters. But it will zoom well beyond $20 billion, if India eventually decides to opt for 189 jets since inflation is also being factored in. Even with 126 jets, this is the biggest such fighter contract going around the world as of now.

This comes even as MoD is all set to open the commercial bids of the two jets left in the MMRCA fray -French Rafale and Eurofighter Typhoon -"within a week or two". Eurofighter Typhoon is backed by the UK, Germany, Spain and Italy,

MoD has already rejected "any scope for comeback" by the other four jets, including the American F/A-18s and F-16s, ejected out of the MMRCA race in April on technical grounds after gruelling field trials.

"We are looking for only 126 fighters. The first 18 jets will come from abroad, while the rest 108 will be manufactured by Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd after transfer of technology (ToT) from end-2016 or early-2017 onwards," said a senior MoD official on Monday.

"But yes, if the timelines for the Tejas LCA (light combat aircraft) and the stealth Indo-Russian FGFA (fifth-generation fighter aircraft) projects are not met, we will go for more MMRCA to retain IAF's combat edge," he added.

Apart from progressively inducting 272 Sukhoi-30MKIs contracted from Russia for around $12 billion, IAF is slated to induct the first lot of 120 indigenous Tejas from end-2013 onwards. India also hopes to begin inducting 250 to 300 FGFA from 2020 onwards under the joint project with Russia, which rough calculations show will eventually cost India around $35 billion in the decades ahead.

But that is in the future. The request for proposal (RFP) for the ongoing MMRCA competition, issued in August 2007, did have the standard clause of India reserving the option to go in for 50% more fighters, over and above the initial 126, in the coming years.

This, however, is the first time that top defence officials have directly linked the progress in the LCA and FGFA projects to the possibility of exceeding the MMRCA acquisition beyond the first 126 jets.

"Commercial bids of Eurofighter and Rafale will soon be opened, with the reports of the Technical Oversight Committee (TOC) and Technical Offsets Evaluation Committee (TOEC) virtually complete now," said another official.

But it will not be "a cut-and-dried" affair to determine the lowest bidder (L-1). "Calculation of L-1 will take around a month due to the huge amounts of mathematical and data verification of the lifecycle costs of operating the jets over a 40-year period, with 6,000 hours of flying, as well as cost of ToT," he added.

Final commercial negotiations with the L-1 vendor will then begin before the contract is ready for signing by December or January. IAF, on its part, wants deliveries of the 126 fighters to begin from December, 2014, onwards to stem its fast-eroding combat edge. Plans have already been firmed up to base the first MMRCA squadron at Ambala, with subsequent squadrons coming up both in the western and eastern theatres.

Britain’s frontline fighter jet Eurofighter Typhoon, shortlisted for India’s $10.4-billion combat jets tender, whacked the Indian Air Force (IAF) warhorse Sukhoi in one-on-one dog fights during bilateral air war games, if Britain’s air chief is to be believed.

‘Well, they lost,’ was Stephen Dalton’s response when IANS asked how the Russia-developed India-manufactured Su-30MKI air superiority jets performed against the Royal Air Force’s (RAF) Typhoons when they matched their wits during the joint exercises in recent years.

However, he was quick to add that the two aircraft are different in technologies, and that Typhoons are next generation, and hence there is no comparison.

Dalton was interacting with IANS at the recently held Royal International Air Tattoo military air show at the RAF base here.

The two aircraft were pitted against each other during ‘Indradhanush’ exercises in 2007 at Waddington in Britain and in 2010 at Kalaikunda in India.

Interestingly, the IAF had claimed in 2007 that Sukhoi’s performance against Typhoon had convinced the RAF of its superiority. ‘The RAF pilots were candid in their admission of the Su-30 MKI’s observed superior manoeuvring in the air, just as they had studied, prepared and anticipated,’ an Indian defence ministry release had said during the July 2007 Indradhanush.

The coalition troops flying sorties over Libya are learning that sometimes practical situation are quite different from theory. They have been plagued by questions about equipment as well as availability of staff.

Taking the case of RAF, first and foremost their spanking new aircraft Eurofighter Typhoon turned out to be the real downer in the whole operation. It is clear that these aircrafts have limited to no ground attack capability. RAF has total 8 pilots who are trained on the Typhoon to carry out ground attack mission, unfortunately most of them are trainers and instructors, thus when they were called for active duty the training mission for Eurofighter had to be closed down.

Second problem with Euro-fighter Typhoons initial operation was the inability of the pilots to self-designate the targets. Thus they were sent in combination with Tornadoes to help them with the targets.

Before the start of the Libyan operation UK was in the course of phasing away the Tornadoes and getting Typhoons to replace them, unfortunately the Libyan mission came at a time when they did not have enough aircrafts or crew to fly Typhoons thus they are still dependent on tornadoes.

Next hard lesson deals with the Combat Istar(intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance) concept, with a layering of—and cross-cueing between—dedicated intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and Combat Istar assets and capabilities achieving a synergy that is greater than the sum of their parts.

This kind of effectiveness is achieved by using three different equipment's namely E-3D Sentry, Sentinel R1 and Nimrod R1. Shockingly only E-3D is supposed to be the part of any future UK weapon armory.

Nimrods were retired and they were basically asked to delay the retirement to aid in the Libyan campaign and the chosen successor of Nimrod is neither ready nor RAF has enough crew to man them. At the present moment they are under training in USA. The first RC-135W Rivet Joint aircraft called AirSeekers will be manned by a joint team of US and UK operatives. These aircraft's may come into service only in 2014 thus Nimrods which were retiring this March were asked to postpone that date until enough replacement could be found.

To further complicate the scenario the coalition government’s Strategic Defense and Security Review of 2010 opted to retire the RAF’s Astor (airborne stand-off radar) platform, Sentinel R1 (comprising five Raytheon-modified Bombardier Global Express business jets and associated systems) once operations in Afghanistan end. Funny thing is that nobody knows what is its replacement. Some people believe the new UAV "Scavenger" will have all the features required to full fill the role of Sentinel but the problem is that this UAV is not ready and it may take few years to get it operational.

So RAF despite all the bluster and bravado is seriously troubled organisation with no clear policy and each department pulling in different directions. Libyan campaign has just played the role of catalyst to highlight the prevailing situation and the confusion.