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The Cabinet Committee on security (CCS), the
country's apex security decision making body headed
by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, gave its nod
to the deal under which the European firm MBDA
will supply 450 MICA interception and aerial combat
missiles.
IAF has 51 Mirage aircraft acquired from France
beginning 1985, and the Government cleared a $
2.4 deal in July 2011 with the French firms Dassault
and Thales to modernize them with newer generation
avionics, Electronic Warfare (EW) suites, and
advanced beyond visual range (BVR) capability.
The weapons package was separate, and has been
cleared now.
 MBDA
Group's India Country Head Loic Piedevache told
India Strategic that the deal involved
30 per cent offsets and that the company would
fulfill its commitments as worked out with the
Indian Government. "We have been in India
for about 30 years, supplying missiles for IAF’s
Jaguar and Mirage aircraft as well as for the
Navy and India is important to us".
Piedevache indicated that a formal agreement
with the company should be signed shortly but
that the programme implementation would be in
accordance with the delivery schedule of the upgraded
Mirage aircraft.
The first batch of two aircraft to be upgraded
was sent in December to the Dassault facility
at Istres in France where they have already been
opened up for body strengthening and refitting.
A complement of IAF and HAL engineers and technicians
is now there for training under French supervision.
Two more aircraft would be overhauled and upgraded
at HAL Bangalore by Dassault and Thales, and after
that, Indian engineers and technicians would take
over but there would be French teams to assist
them.
The aircraft upgrade programme also has a 30
per cent offset clause with the package involving
ToT to India’s aeronautics major, HAL.
HAL is importing tools and required equipment
under a $ 600 million deal – included in
the package – and it would take some 10 years
to virtually remanufacture the remaining 47 aircraft.
It would have been cheaper, and faster in time,
to get that done in France but the Government
rightly has asked for ToT and training of Indian
personnel so that it is easy to maintain the aircraft
at home in future.
The Mirages, being upgraded to Mirage-2005 standard,
should serve the IAF till around 2035. All of
them would be capable of nuclear strike if there
is a threat.
Notably, Rafale is one of the two finalists in
the IAF’s MMRCA contest, the result for for
which should be declared within this fiscal ending
March 2012 although the word is that it should
be around January-end as IAF’s big New Year
gift.
Piedevache explained that MICA (Missile d’interception
et de combat aérien) or Interception and
Aerial Combat Missile, is available in two configurations.
MICA RF has an active radar homing seeker and
MICA IR has an imaging infra red homing seeker.
It is both Within Visual Range (WVR) and Beyond
Visual Range (BVR) all-weather air-to-air missile
and can be fired at multiple hostile aircraft
in fire-and-forget mode. The French Air Force
uses MICA on both its Mirage 2000 and Rafale aircraft.
The MICA deal involves a small component of training
benches, support systems and data link software
to direct the missile even after launch.
MICA can be configured to attack hostile aircraft
from vertical launchers from ground and ships
as a Surface to Air (SAM) variant but for India,
the deal involves only air-to-air missiles.
Notably, MBDA is also working with India’s
Defence Research and Development Organisation
(DRDO) to finalise a programme for Short Range
anti-aircraft and anti-missile system but that
programme is yet to be finalized. MBDA could provide
significant technology inputs.
MBDA is owned by BAE Systems (37.5 per cent),
EADS (37.5 per cent), and Finmeccanica (25 per
cent).
Interestingly, EADS owns 36 per cent each in
Dassault and the European consortium Eurofighter
while the Dubai government has a 3.5 per cent
stake in EADS. But EADS has very little control
over Dassault while in the case of Eurofighter,
it has a significant manufacturing share.
It may be recalled that India had ordered the
Mirages shortly after Pakistan obtained F 16s,
C3I computers, warships and Harpoon anti-shipping
missiles from the US in 1982. That was also the
first time that any hi-tech defence system was
inducted in the Indian subcontinent. The first
lot of Mirages was delivered to India mid-1985.
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