French were milking Australia with their overpriced Baraccuda SSN. The order was huge and uncle Sam usurped France with AUKUS. The UAE rafale order is just band aid to the wound doesn't going to heal.
Even at this point of time our babus are not active to take advantage. The French themselves ( literally begging for additional orders of rafales ) fearing uncle Sam may pressurise us to go for their 114 F21.
The French are not foolish. They know well about our apprehensions of an American combat aircraft. the F-21 is more of a carrot hanging for the US to stop needling us as we focus on other equipment from them. Macron knows that we won't buy combat jets from the US, especially not with the kind of damage control that has been happening since Biden-Harris ran afoul with PM Modi. He also knows that we are wary about being ditched about Quad. While Japan will quietly lick its wounds as it is a US partner, we will be left with oru pants down and we don't want that.
This 114 deal may get canceled and be redirected to Tejas Mk2. If at all we buy those 114 jets, there is a 90% chance that they will be Rafales. Even with Tejas Mk2, we can still go for the Barracuda nuclear submarines. That would be a game-changer. In fact, that would reinstate French confidence to completely vector away from the US and give Macron the weapons to
justify to the EU Parliament of having an independent European foreign policy, distinct from Uncle Sam.
If I were leading this decision, I would:
1) keep the tender drama for public consumption, while continuing to focus on 114 Tejas Mk2s.
2) Make Safran the engine development and design partner for AMCA and TEDBF fighters.
3) Scrap the P75I in favor of the Barracuda class and hand over the contract to the Naval Group.
4) Formalize 2+2 with France along the same line as US, Japan, Russia & Australia.
This would:
a) strengthen the domestic aerospace sector
b) give France the confidence for future co-development of advanced military technologies & make it a reliable partner
