JAISWAL
Senior Member
- Joined
- Mar 13, 2010
- Messages
- 1,527
- Likes
- 1,027
Livefist: COLUMN: A Response to Ashley J Tellis’ Assessment Of The MMRCA Down-select
.
Dr. Ashley Tellis, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,has written a commentary forFORCE Magazine, in an attempt to explain in some detail the reasons why two American aircraft – the
Lockheed-Martin F-16IN Super Viper and Boeing
F/A-18E/F Super Hornet – vying for the Indian Air
Force's Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft
(MMRCA) contract worth an estimated Rs. 42,000
crore, failed to make the down-select. While the
piece is a must-read, owing to the plethora of
facts, figures, and new information presented, the
analysisitself falls short on several counts. This
post attempts to refute some of his arguments.
The first, and in some ways, most startling
assertion by Dr. Tellis is that the IAF's decision
"was made entirely on technical grounds", and
that "in retrospect, this may have been exactly the
problem". While there is nothing wrong with this
observation per se, the way in which it is being
said appears to suggest surprise on his part that
political, strategic, or financial concerns were not
allowed to interfere in the decision making
process. Indeed, when seen in the light of his
earlier charge that India "settled for a plane, not a
relationship", it leaves the reader with the
impression that the IAF, backed by the Ministry of
Defence (MoD), made a serious error in not letting
these other factors influence its decision. This
impression is only reinforced by the use of
adjectives like "mechanistic" and "perverse" that
he uses to characterise the IAF and MoD's
adherence to the two-step acquisition process.
Altogether, these comments seem to carry the
subtle (and in many ways, dangerous)
insinuation that it would have been better for all
parties had the process been designed in a way
that would have allowed it to be 'calibrated' to
geopolitical needs and considerations. In fact,
nothing could be farther than the truth. The only
thing keeping the MMRCA competition from being
stymied in charges of impropriety, corruption, or
political rabble-rousing like the tenders for 155
mm artillery and light utility helicopters, is a strict
and almost pig-headed adherence to laid-down
rules and procedures. Dr. Tellis recommendation
is a sure recipe for disaster, as leaving even the
smallest procedural gaps open to exploitation by
vested interests would delay the induction of
these fighters by years if not decades. What this
would do to India's war-fighting capabilities is not
hard to imagine.
The other argument put forth by Dr. Tellis is that
the IAF gave an inordinate amount of importance
to air combat manoeuvering at the expense of
superior sensors, weapons, and assorted
electronics while framing its air staff qualitative
requirements (AQSRs). It was this anachronistic
focus on things that make a difference in close-
range knife-fights, he claims, that led to the
Eurofighter Typhoon and Dassault Rafale making
the short-list, while the F/A-18E/F, the superior
combat system, did not. While it is certainly
possible that the ASRs were framed with a strong
focus on aerodynamic superiority, Dr. Tellis fails
to appreciate the reasons behind such a
requirement. In the last decade, the IAF has been
steadily shifting its attention towards countering
the threat posed by the Chinese People's
Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) and air
defences on India's eastern frontiers, where the
ability of aircraft to operate in hot and high
conditions will be of prime importance. The Kargil
War only served to highlight the importance of
being able to mount high-altitude missions in
mountainous terrain, and also introduced the IAF
to the unique challenges of doing so. So while Dr.
Tellis is probably correct in declaring that
"marginal differences in aerodynamic
performance rarely affect combat outcomes", he
fails to grasp that even the minutest aerodynamic
shortcomings can amplify themselves into
serious operational deficiencies in such
conditions, and no amount of superiority in
sensors or weapons can compensate for these.
Indeed, it is not difficult to see why the F/A-18E/F,
an aircraft designed to operate from aircraft
carriers at sea level, with its well-documented
aerodynamic compromises and relatively high
wing-loading, would be one of the four aircraft
that failed to make the cut in the Leh trials.
Also, while he laments the IAF's preoccupation
with within visual range (WVR) combat, Dr. Tellis
is guilty of a similar error in completely
discounting the ground attack component of
aerial warfare from his analysis. In doing so, he
entirely misses the point of the MMRCA
acquisition, and knocks down a strawman
argument of his own making. If the IAF's current
force structure and future acquisition plans are
studied in conjunction with its increasing focus
on the eastern theatre, it is not hard to reach the
conclusion that the MMRCA will be the primary
strike fighter in its arsenal. In that role, the ability
to attack ground targets with high precision
weaponry and put sophisticated air defence
networks out of action will be of prime
importance. And the Rafale and Typhoon's
superlative passive sensors, data fusion,
defensive aids, and wide range of modern
weaponry, combined with their canard-delta
configuration and high-powered engines would
make these aircraft uniquely suited to take on the
might of China's dense air defence network and
the PLAAF in the thin air of the Himalayas and the
Tibetan plateau. That neither aircraft currently has
radar that comes close to matching the
impressive performance of the Super Hornet's
AN/APG-79 active electronically scanned array
(AESA) radar remains a problem, but the air force
seems fairly confident that these will be available
in good time.
Going further into his analysis, Dr. Tellis proceeds
to question and attack the IAF's ASQRs, in the
process giving fallacious and simplistic examples
of how these requirements were defined too
narrowly. One would think that the IAF, like any
other professional air force, would define its
requirements based on an assessment of how
and where its future conflicts would be fought.
However, Dr. Tellis only alleges, though in a
roundabout way cloaked in elaborate arguments
and sophisticated language, that the IAF pulled
these requirements out of a hat without fully
understanding their implications as far as modern
air combat went. Such matters can (and indeed
should) be debated in military circles that have
access to all the relevant information. But coming
from a civilian analyst who was in no way
involved with the procurement process, and
professes no special expertise or experience in the
strategic, operational, tactical, and technological
aspects of aerial warfare, the argument merely
comes across as indiscreet and perhaps not fully
thought-out.
Much of this is in direct contradiction to what he
wrote in a comprehensive report [PDF] on the
status of the competition in January 2011. At that
time, Dr. Tellis spared no superlative in heaping
praise on the air force for its handling of the trials.
He noted that "the IAF has bent backwards to be
both scrupulously transparent and extraordinarily
neutral throughout this process" and the reports
it submitted to the MoD were "comprehensive"
and "impartial to the point of appearing
disinterested". In the concluding paragraph, he
wrote: "No matter which way India leans in the
MMRCA contest, keeping the IAF's interests
consistently front and center will ensure that its
ultimate choice will be the right one. A selection
process that is transparent, speedy, and focused
on the right metrics will not only strengthen the
IAF's combat capabilities, but it will also earn the
respect of all the competing vendors and their
national patrons. Some of them will be
disappointed by India's final choice, but those,
alas, are the rules of the game." The process was
everything Dr. Tellis would have liked it to be –
transparent, speedy, focused on the right
metrics, and most importantly, driven entirely by
the IAF's requirements and interests. The
professionalism displayed by the IAF had also
come in for much acclaim from Lockheed-Martin
and Boeing more than once; their statements after
thedown-select have been just as complaisant
and agreeable. The reason why he would choose
to essentially go back on his own counsel and
vilify the air force in so public a manner,
therefore, remains a mystery.
.
Dr. Ashley Tellis, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,has written a commentary forFORCE Magazine, in an attempt to explain in some detail the reasons why two American aircraft – the
Lockheed-Martin F-16IN Super Viper and Boeing
F/A-18E/F Super Hornet – vying for the Indian Air
Force's Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft
(MMRCA) contract worth an estimated Rs. 42,000
crore, failed to make the down-select. While the
piece is a must-read, owing to the plethora of
facts, figures, and new information presented, the
analysisitself falls short on several counts. This
post attempts to refute some of his arguments.
The first, and in some ways, most startling
assertion by Dr. Tellis is that the IAF's decision
"was made entirely on technical grounds", and
that "in retrospect, this may have been exactly the
problem". While there is nothing wrong with this
observation per se, the way in which it is being
said appears to suggest surprise on his part that
political, strategic, or financial concerns were not
allowed to interfere in the decision making
process. Indeed, when seen in the light of his
earlier charge that India "settled for a plane, not a
relationship", it leaves the reader with the
impression that the IAF, backed by the Ministry of
Defence (MoD), made a serious error in not letting
these other factors influence its decision. This
impression is only reinforced by the use of
adjectives like "mechanistic" and "perverse" that
he uses to characterise the IAF and MoD's
adherence to the two-step acquisition process.
Altogether, these comments seem to carry the
subtle (and in many ways, dangerous)
insinuation that it would have been better for all
parties had the process been designed in a way
that would have allowed it to be 'calibrated' to
geopolitical needs and considerations. In fact,
nothing could be farther than the truth. The only
thing keeping the MMRCA competition from being
stymied in charges of impropriety, corruption, or
political rabble-rousing like the tenders for 155
mm artillery and light utility helicopters, is a strict
and almost pig-headed adherence to laid-down
rules and procedures. Dr. Tellis recommendation
is a sure recipe for disaster, as leaving even the
smallest procedural gaps open to exploitation by
vested interests would delay the induction of
these fighters by years if not decades. What this
would do to India's war-fighting capabilities is not
hard to imagine.
The other argument put forth by Dr. Tellis is that
the IAF gave an inordinate amount of importance
to air combat manoeuvering at the expense of
superior sensors, weapons, and assorted
electronics while framing its air staff qualitative
requirements (AQSRs). It was this anachronistic
focus on things that make a difference in close-
range knife-fights, he claims, that led to the
Eurofighter Typhoon and Dassault Rafale making
the short-list, while the F/A-18E/F, the superior
combat system, did not. While it is certainly
possible that the ASRs were framed with a strong
focus on aerodynamic superiority, Dr. Tellis fails
to appreciate the reasons behind such a
requirement. In the last decade, the IAF has been
steadily shifting its attention towards countering
the threat posed by the Chinese People's
Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) and air
defences on India's eastern frontiers, where the
ability of aircraft to operate in hot and high
conditions will be of prime importance. The Kargil
War only served to highlight the importance of
being able to mount high-altitude missions in
mountainous terrain, and also introduced the IAF
to the unique challenges of doing so. So while Dr.
Tellis is probably correct in declaring that
"marginal differences in aerodynamic
performance rarely affect combat outcomes", he
fails to grasp that even the minutest aerodynamic
shortcomings can amplify themselves into
serious operational deficiencies in such
conditions, and no amount of superiority in
sensors or weapons can compensate for these.
Indeed, it is not difficult to see why the F/A-18E/F,
an aircraft designed to operate from aircraft
carriers at sea level, with its well-documented
aerodynamic compromises and relatively high
wing-loading, would be one of the four aircraft
that failed to make the cut in the Leh trials.
Also, while he laments the IAF's preoccupation
with within visual range (WVR) combat, Dr. Tellis
is guilty of a similar error in completely
discounting the ground attack component of
aerial warfare from his analysis. In doing so, he
entirely misses the point of the MMRCA
acquisition, and knocks down a strawman
argument of his own making. If the IAF's current
force structure and future acquisition plans are
studied in conjunction with its increasing focus
on the eastern theatre, it is not hard to reach the
conclusion that the MMRCA will be the primary
strike fighter in its arsenal. In that role, the ability
to attack ground targets with high precision
weaponry and put sophisticated air defence
networks out of action will be of prime
importance. And the Rafale and Typhoon's
superlative passive sensors, data fusion,
defensive aids, and wide range of modern
weaponry, combined with their canard-delta
configuration and high-powered engines would
make these aircraft uniquely suited to take on the
might of China's dense air defence network and
the PLAAF in the thin air of the Himalayas and the
Tibetan plateau. That neither aircraft currently has
radar that comes close to matching the
impressive performance of the Super Hornet's
AN/APG-79 active electronically scanned array
(AESA) radar remains a problem, but the air force
seems fairly confident that these will be available
in good time.
Going further into his analysis, Dr. Tellis proceeds
to question and attack the IAF's ASQRs, in the
process giving fallacious and simplistic examples
of how these requirements were defined too
narrowly. One would think that the IAF, like any
other professional air force, would define its
requirements based on an assessment of how
and where its future conflicts would be fought.
However, Dr. Tellis only alleges, though in a
roundabout way cloaked in elaborate arguments
and sophisticated language, that the IAF pulled
these requirements out of a hat without fully
understanding their implications as far as modern
air combat went. Such matters can (and indeed
should) be debated in military circles that have
access to all the relevant information. But coming
from a civilian analyst who was in no way
involved with the procurement process, and
professes no special expertise or experience in the
strategic, operational, tactical, and technological
aspects of aerial warfare, the argument merely
comes across as indiscreet and perhaps not fully
thought-out.
Much of this is in direct contradiction to what he
wrote in a comprehensive report [PDF] on the
status of the competition in January 2011. At that
time, Dr. Tellis spared no superlative in heaping
praise on the air force for its handling of the trials.
He noted that "the IAF has bent backwards to be
both scrupulously transparent and extraordinarily
neutral throughout this process" and the reports
it submitted to the MoD were "comprehensive"
and "impartial to the point of appearing
disinterested". In the concluding paragraph, he
wrote: "No matter which way India leans in the
MMRCA contest, keeping the IAF's interests
consistently front and center will ensure that its
ultimate choice will be the right one. A selection
process that is transparent, speedy, and focused
on the right metrics will not only strengthen the
IAF's combat capabilities, but it will also earn the
respect of all the competing vendors and their
national patrons. Some of them will be
disappointed by India's final choice, but those,
alas, are the rules of the game." The process was
everything Dr. Tellis would have liked it to be –
transparent, speedy, focused on the right
metrics, and most importantly, driven entirely by
the IAF's requirements and interests. The
professionalism displayed by the IAF had also
come in for much acclaim from Lockheed-Martin
and Boeing more than once; their statements after
thedown-select have been just as complaisant
and agreeable. The reason why he would choose
to essentially go back on his own counsel and
vilify the air force in so public a manner,
therefore, remains a mystery.
