Why rafale is a Big Mistake- bharath karnad article in 25th july indian express a must read for people expecting IAF to bring home the trophy with rafale.
As per the article The cost of east rafale is expected to be above 209 million dollars per piece with short maintanence contract!!!!
Thts why it couldnot win a single contract from countries that have more GDP per capita than india like brazil, Canada, Norway, Netherlands, south korea, Singapore.
Uk is getting 5th gen F-35 vertical take off landing version at a much lower price of 165 million dollars per piece !!!!
An additional order of 50 or 60 Su-30 MKI with robust funding and expansion of production line and manpower in R&D, production makes rafale deal superfluous for IAF.
Rafale will add another logistics line for IAf at a prohibitive cost!!! Even the French airforce is cutting down rafale orders for its air force !!! and expects Indians to pick up the bill.
The deal is a financial disaster for IAF and sound the death knell for the indian mil aviation industry with useless order numbers for tejas mk2!!! On the same lines marut was retired with a token order number from IAF.
Arun jaitley taken aback by the cost of deal asked for numbers to be reduced to 80 and IAF accepted in a jiffy, showing that there is no deep strategic need for rafale!!!
the three tier ai force structure advocated by IAF(all of a sudden after 2004 when NDA govt opened up the straight 126 mirage-2000 request by IAF into MMRCA tender fearing corruption allegation!!!)
So there was no need for the three tier air force as late as 2004 and now all of a sudden we need a three tier airforce!!!
Rafale is nothing but a financial disaster waiting to happen to IAf which will drastically reduce IAF squadron strength (because we could induct 5 tejas mk-2 for th ost of each rafale!!!)
There is nothing that rafale can do on its own that can not be done by Tejas mk-2, Su-30 MKI and the future FGFA.
This is why indian weapons need reservation.because ten only proper and timely funding will be delivered to indigenous projects with full service backing . other wise the same Arjun vs T-90 and rafale vs tejas mk-2+Su-30 MKI saga will repeat again and again leading to fading away of any hope for indian mil aviation industry.
The civilians at the top never understand that all the so called deep TOT deals are mere humbug. because no one deliver their cutting edge techniques to the other guy for a few fighters more purchase. It is their IP right and they will never part with it.
Despite the deep TOT for Su-30 MKI we are practically doing all the stuff for tejas mk-1 and mk-2 all by ourselves right from the nose cone to the sorting out the brakes issue.