|
"By mid-December we should have a very
good sense of who has been selected," the
Air Chief told newsmen Nov 18 here without naming
the two competing aircraft - Eurofighter Typhoon
and Dasault Rafale - whose commercial bids were
opened Nov 4 in New Delhi.
Of the original six bidders, the Ministry of
Defence (MoD) is considering only two short-listed
aircraft, European consortium EADS Cassidian's
Eurofighter and French Dassault's Rafale. The
tender is for 126 aircraft, with an option for
another 63 aircraft, and the deal includes an
initial support package, training, spares, spare
engines, Transfer of technology (ToT) and an offset
investment to the tune of 50 percent back in India
to set up production infrastructure or in unrelated
but mutually-agreed defence projects. The initial
cost could be anywhere between $ 13 to 20 billion,
depending upon the number of aircraft.
"In another four weeks, we should be able
to wrap-up the deal as a lot of work is going
on and we are calculating hard," Air Chief
Marshal Browne said on the margins of a conference
on aviation medicine.
Four other contending aircraft which got disqualified
in the competition were the US Lockheed Martin
F 16, Boeing's F/A-18, Russia's MiG 35, and Sweden's
Saab Gripen.
The Air Chief declined comment on cost escalations
during the four years of trials and the weakening
of the Indian Rupee. But authoritative sources
have told India
Strategic that a revised benchmark
was considered and adopted a few weeks before
the tender was opened Nov 4. Initially, in August
2007, this estimate was put at Rs 42,000 crores
(appox $ 10 billion then) for 126 aircraft.
Both Rafale and Eurofighter need new orders to
make the aircraft more competitive for their home
and global markets, and also to get investment
to perfect some of the technologies that are still
not yet with them.
"I can't tell anything till the time we
finish that work, as there are a lot of complicated
calculations and figures that need to be checked,"
Air Chief Marshal Browne said.
Under the Indian system, the Indian Air Force
is supposed only to make a technical evaluation,
and shortlist its choice of aircraft without assigning
any grade like Number 1 or Number 2. To the Ministry
of Defence, which has to make the final selection
on the basis of financial demands of the competing
vendors - in this case two - both are equal in
terms of technical competence. It is only how
much money who wants that matters now, and the
lower bidder, designated L-1 in the MoD jargon,
will win the deal.
|
