In search of a strategy

Questions swirl around purchase of Rafales

In the course of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to France, it was announced that India would buy 36 Rafale warplanes in what is described as a "flyaway" condition. In other words, these two squadrons will be built and completed at Dassault's production lines in France, and handed over in toto to the Indian Air Force; the "Make in India" component of such arrangements, which would involve some of the work being done at Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd, or HAL, has been abandoned. This is supposedly due to the urgency to upgrade the strength of the Indian Air Force. This purchase of 36 aircraft has thrown the procurement process for a medium multi-role combat aircraft, or MMRCA, into a state of acute uncertainty. That process had seemingly concluded with a letter of intent from the government to Dassault indicating it would purchase 126 aircraft, partly made by HAL. Years on, the contract itself remained unsigned - deadlocked, reportedly, on Dassault's unwillingness to take any responsibility for the HAL end of production. Significant increases in cost were also feared. Were the MMRCA process somehow still kept alive, then this purchase would significantly complicate the deal-making, and not to India's advantage.

The question is: what now? Does this government-to-government agreement on 36 Rafales indeed mean the entire multi-year MMRCA process has been abandoned? That abandonment in itself would not be a disaster - although it would perhaps imply that to keep Dassault happy, the Indian Air Force is being given an eighth kind of fighter to fly and maintain, when it already has seven different sorts from multiple countries. Perhaps that is manageable. But if so, why jump to the Rafale, instead of checking if the Eurofighter, say, would be quicker and cheaper?

This further twist in India's quest for an up-to-date jet fighter should be the final wake-up call for India's defence establishment. The absence of coherent planning has meant that the structured acquisition process took excessively long, and India wound up choosing between five extremely different planes, using yardsticks that were often seen to be arbitrary, and with no probabilistic assessment of how those planes would eventually be used. Such an assessment must be embedded in a strategic assessment of India's medium-term threats and power projection plans; and also in a rational evaluation of how technology changes the numbers and capabilities involved. For example, many have pointed out that the urgency attached to buying two squadrons of planes immediately may be based on desired numbers that are outdated; is one modern MMRCA in 2015 exactly equivalent in tactical utility to what one MiG was in, say, 1990? This highlights the absence of something on the lines of a strategic white paper that could guide such thinking - and also inform the decision-making of the Indian private sector, which must eventually take on the role now being played by foreign firms.