Should India spend Rs 1000cr on a single fighter jet?

Sohel Sanghani
03 January 2014, 02:30 AM IST

Yep, you read that right. India is close to signing a $20-25 billion deal to acquire 126 new fighter jets. That's around Rs 900-1000 crore apiece for a 4th generation jet, when the world is moving on to 5th generation stealth jets and unmanned drones. So how did we get here?

A modern multirole fighter jet is expected to perform two primary functions: air-to-air combat, and air-to-ground strike. The former consists of attacking enemy aircraft and defending your own airspace. The latter consists of attacking enemy air defenses, and supporting your own ground forces in battle. The Indian Air Force (IAF) has generally been good at air-to-air, but the experience at Kargil revealed some serious shortcomings in its air-to-ground effort. Only the Mirage 2000, a French multirole aircraft, was able to perform well after some urgent modifications were carried out with Israeli help.

It thus seemed like a good idea to purchase more Mirage aircraft expeditiously and upgrade the ones already in service. That was in 1999. Today, in 2014, the Mirage is out of production, and after a competitive but sluggish shortlisting process, India is on the verge of signing a deal to acquire its successor, the Dassault Rafale. Along with the Eurofighter Typhoon, it was judged to be the most capable of the six contenders in the tender, and happened to be the cheaper of the two finalists (which happened to be the two most expensive aircraft in the competition).

However, in the meantime, both the IAF, and the threats it faces, have evolved. India's spearhead today is the excellent Sukhoi Su-30MKI - which can fly faster, farther, carry a larger payload (of weapons and fuel), and has a more powerful radar than the Rafale (though both are expected to upgrade to newer AESA units in due course). And very recently, India's own Light Combat Aircraft, the Tejas, has displayed acceptable performance. Between them, the Su-30 and Tejas could cover many of the missions that the Rafale is meant to undertake.

But the real problem is cost. One Rafale costs more than two Sukhois, or more than five Tejas jets. In fact total development costs of the Tejas are just $1.5 billion, or about the same as 9 Rafales! Capability wise, the Rafale is a little worse than the Sukhoi in air-to-air combat and a little better than it in air-to-ground strike roles. In terms of ownership costs, traditionally a problem with Russian products, the Rafale is hardly better. By some estimates, it costs around Rs 10 lac ($16000) per flight hour. The average Indian fighter pilot flies 200-250 hours in a year, which is necessary for training etc. That's Rs 20 crore per Rafale pilot per year, at the very least. To put that in perspective, that's what Kejriwal spent to win Delhi!

And going by previous experience with ToT arrangements, rarely is the outcome consistent with the letter and intent of the agreed deal. At best, India will be able to produce some parts and spares of the Rafale independently (this will likely exclude complex engine and radar assemblies), but we will not learn how to design these from scratch.

It is thus very unfortunate that an urgent and legitimate need for a good strike aircraft, addressed through a competitive and transparent tender process, has resulted in a situation where the IAF will pay 5th gen money for a 4th gen platform, and receive the last of these aircraft at a time when they are about to be obsolescent. Don't get me wrong, the Rafale is a good jet, and it beat the others in the contest fair and square. The real issue is the acquisition timeline that has dragged on for over 13 years. What made sense in 1999 just doesn't make sense in 2014. The technology of war evolves fast. Either the tender should have been modified to include newer contenders, or it should have been framed such that aircraft costs played a more meaningful role in the end result. What we've done is akin to taking our own sweet time (over a decade!) and picking a Mercedes and an Audi from a lineup that includes a Maruti and a Hyundai, and then coyly choosing the cheaper of the two. We'd still be stuck with an expensive, if lovely, car.

For an ambitious and developing India, there's better ways to spend one lakh twenty thousand crore rupees (or $20 billion). High-speed rail, or world-class highways could be one option. Buying out a foreign aerospace company (Dassault's market cap today is $15 billion), or at the very least recruiting the same scientists, engineers and designers that may be laid off if we don't splurge on foreign weapons (from BAE, EADS, Dassault etc), and putting them to work on indigenous projects, could be another.

With India tumbling to sub 5% growth, and with dwindling foreign reserves that translate to an export cover of barely 8 months, a fancy new jet is hardly the need of the hour.