A flying lemon

The anger in Washington policy circles when the US fighter planes — the Lockheed-Martin F-16IN and the Boeing F-18 Super Hornet — did not make it to the Indian Air Force’s Medium-range Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) shortlist, was a thing to behold. It was as if an ungrateful India had reneged on a done aircraft deal — just rewards for easing India’s entry

on to the verandah of the five-country nuclear weapons club.
The American incomprehension with the Indian decision is itself incomprehensible. Lockheed and Boeing actually believed they would win with platforms of late 1960s vintage jazzed up with a downgraded Raytheon APG-79 (or even a de-rated “81”) version of the Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) look-down, ground-mapping, radar. The Indian Air Force is not the most advanced but its leadership, despite its flaws, knows when it is being palmed off with yesterday’s goods. Had Washington offered the Joint Strike Fighter, the F-35 Lightning II, the IAF would have jumped at it and the decision would have been hurrahed along by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. In the event, the French Rafale and the EADS (European Aeronautic Defence and Space) Company’s Typhoon Eurofighter progressed even as Lockheed and Boeing were sought to be pacified with two transport aircraft deals — the one for the C-130J making sense, the other for the C-17 not. Russia, likewise, was mollified with collaboration on the Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA).
To my consternated friends in Washington who sought an explanation, I offered an analogy. Some two decades back, the Daimler-Benz car company entered the Indian market with older Mercedes models, convinced the cash-rich yokels would splash good money for anything with the three-cornered star on the bonnet. The outdated cars, by and large, remained unsold and the investment in production jigs and tools in their factory in Pune went waste. The Germans quickly corrected course, offering the newest Mercedes models, available in Dusseldorf, in Delhi.
The sale of Rafale or Eurofighter to India is a lifeline to both the Dassault Company and the French aviation sector generally and the four-country consortium producing, so far unviably, the latter aircraft that an expert acquaintance dismissed as something “Germany doesn’t want, Britain can’t afford, and Spain and Italy neither want nor can afford!” But, leverage-wise, it affords India traction with four European countries instead of just France in case Rafale is taken. But is either of these aircraft genuinely multi-role?
Dr Carlo Kopp, an internationally renowned combat aviation specialist, deems the Typhoon, a non-stealthy, short-range (300 nautical miles) air defence/air dominance fighter optimised for transonic manoeuvres, more a “lemon” than a “demon”. Italian Air Force Chief Gen. Vincenzo Camporini, moreover, declared in 2008 that this plane was incapable of an “attack role in an economically sustainable manner”, in part because EADS has no AESA radar. It hopes to develop one with the infusion of Indian monies if Typhoon is selected. Realistically, India will not get the strike variant until well into the 2020s as the Royal Air Force and the German Luftwaffe, for starters, will have the first lien on it. In short, for over a third of its lifetime, the IAF will have to make do with the more limited air defence version which, in effect, is an avionics-wise souped-up, ergonomically improved, MiG-21! Moreover, to expect timely, coordinated, supply of spares and service support from 20-odd countries (including Croatia!) roped into the Eurofighter programme will be a compounded logistics and maintenance nightmare.
Rafale is a smaller, semi-stealth plane with slightly better un-refuelled range than the Typhoon but, equipped with the RBE-22A AESA radar, can undertake ground attack, including nuclear weapon delivery. Critically, it has finessed the algorithm (patented, incidentally, by an Indian scientist) for more effective fusion of data from numerous on-board and external sensors (such as satellite) better than the Eurofighter. Except, as late as 2009, Rafale was ruled operationally inadequate perhaps because it is less agile in “dogfighting” — a role the IAF brass remains enamoured with long after advanced tactical missiles have made close-quarter aerial battle history. Rafale and Typhoon nevertheless cost a bomb, with the MMRCA eventually coming in at around $20 billion.
The F-16 was rejected because, in part, the Pakistan Air Force flies it. By this reckoning, Pakistan may also access Typhoon and Rafale. EADS is trying desperately to sell the Typhoon to Turkey. If it succeeds, PAF will end up familiarising itself with it, if not actually benefiting from surreptitious transfer of its technologies. Trying to ramp up its defence sales, France has explored the sale of Rafale to Pakistan as has Russia the MiG-35 in order to compete with China for influence in Islamabad (which is not barred by any provision in the FGFA deal with India).
The MMRCA is a rubbish acquisition. The defence ministry followed up the questionable decision with a singular display of lack of negotiating savvy. With the MiG-35 option on the table, India could have played the Europeans off against the Russians to secure the best terms, even if ultimately for Rafale/Typhoon. Instead, there’s the appalling record of defence ministry officials and service officers repeatedly muffing deals, worse, acting as patsies for, or playing footsy with, the supplier states, resulting in treasury-emptying contracts that have fetched the country little in return. Learning from the past, defence minister A.K. Antony had better instruct his negotiators to insist on only phased payments linked to time-bound delivery of aircraft and full transfer of technology (including source codes and flight control laws for all aspects of the aircraft), and on deterrent penalties that automatically kick in at the slightest infringement or violation of clauses deliberately tilted to favour India. Considering Delhi — prior to signing the deal — is in a position to arm-twist almost anything out of the supplier firms using the threat of walking out on the deal, the litmus test of a “successful” MMRCA transaction will be whether, by way of offsets, and notwithstanding the initial problems with absorbing advanced technology, the Indian defence industry has gained top-edge technological-industrial competence across the broad combat aviation front (rather than rights to mere licenced manufacture as in past deals).

Bharat karnad is a professor at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi