Those are assembly lines, a role devolved exclusively to HAL as per contract, so no TaTa there.
Anyway, TaTa or others proposal if any at all may have been much less attractive ,did not suit Dassault, or they did not even bother , having other plan with Saab or else.Yet again non of the local actors had any more experience in producing composite wings , and were probably much less willing to make the necessary investments.

Assembly lines aside, which component of which weapon system has Reliance built to date? What expertise does it have with regard to composites let alone composite wings?

In the end it was Dassault decision ,Dassault liability to make it function, it conformed to ToT and offset, it was sanctioned by the government.So not totally sure where this debate is leading us and what this is supposed to demonstrate if anything.
ToT is more effective on open minded than on those who thinks that with their experience they know better and are reluctant to adapt their process or invest in pricey equipment, thinking their own will have to do.

This debate is leading up to the simple fact that Reliance was selected over half a dozen companies (that would have provided Dassault professionalism, experience and a proven track record), because of its political connections and because it would give Dassault more room to cook the books when it came to offsets (unlike Tata & Co. that would have pressed for genuine workshare).

And still no, offset percent on contract value is not the customer funding local economy, it is the supplier agreeing to sell its product and re-invest its revenues in local economy, so the money is out of suppliers pocket, while, the customer enjoy the product he bought.

Lol. You make offsets sound like a special favour the company is doing to the customer, not something that its legally obligated to do under the terms of the contract, which it bid for in an open contest and which it financed by hiking up the cost to the customer. Ignoring the fact that offsets are pretty standard practice in most arms sales in the world (apart from the Middle East).

Your are confusing producing parts for fighter plane with building a fighter plane.

Reliance has core competencies in neither. Or anything else even remotely related.

Besides as made plainly obvious by the HAL projected cost , HAL labor intensive process , notably on composite parts was not adequate. So no for that domain it appear there was no local manufacturing experience of relevance.
No not all money was to come from Indian gov, there was offsets to the MMRCA, hence a big part , 30% as I recall, of money earned by Dassault that was to be re-invested locally. Best used where you can expect some benefit out of it. Hence a partnership to, build locally rafale’s wing with a local industrial offer unique opportunities to conform with ToT, indian made and offset requirements, with the prospect of establishing a long term alternate supply source you have some control over.

The offsets were not be financed by Dassault. Or by its local partner. The funding was coming solely from the Indian state, with Dassault only directing where its spent locally.

Not that Reliance is not totally new to the defense domain. Its Reliance defense limited branch , notably partnering on maintenance of airframes amongst other things.

Do tell. What exactly have they achieved so far?

If a local industry come to you with the budget and will to expand its operations into the aerospace domain high end composites parts, while you assessed there are no local equivalent.

‘Come to you with the budget and will’?? And what.. they fell in love? Are you saying there was no other company in India that was better suited to co-produce a fighter jet than Reliance?

Then you can indeed look into a partnership. Whether that industry is primarily oil, car, fish or whatever,since in any case you would start from scratch. Hence this is more a matter of money than readily available experience.
If such partner happens to have experience in fiber and textile manufacture this is an additional boni It may be convenient for certain to portray this partnership as an attempt to, substitute entirely HAL ,or what not, but I have not seen any evidence of that. From a pure technological and business aspect , Reliance , since that’s who we are talking is as good ,possibly better, candidate as any for providing composite parts. Considering it’s willingness to invest , the readiness for a joint venture ,and the fact that contact with Dassault existed earlier, It would have been poor judgment to ignore their offer.

‘Experience in fiber and textile’ = ‘experience in composites’ = ‘ideal contender to built fighter jets’. :confused:

Money was (supposed to be) coming from the Indian govt’s coffers. Hardly excludes all the other companies that had genuine engineering and manufacturing experience.

I do not totally share your analysis. If HAL was indeed the only player worth ,there would be no point to single it out as non-negotiable prime contractor, it would be a natural actor. This only granted them all the latitude to dictate the organizational layout and select process ,against best advises ,as they saw fit for their business without any liabilities.
Imposing contractually state owned primary subcontractor would be ok if it was not assorted with the accountability on the final product, when Dassault had not control whatsoever over their doings.
The last minute makeshift of authorizing Dassault to conduct some quality control out of the HAL blackbox lines, was just that a makeshift for a massive deadlock, with yet an associated additional cost.

If its your case that Dassault was negotiating in good faith and its decisions were based purely on technical-commercial issues, perhaps you could explain why, for the Rafale production, it chose to partner up… with an oil company?

Here the process sounds quiet off, making demands, requiring airframes at FAF price, 50% offset, adding new customization, guarantees etc and then telling in the end that no matter what it should be less than 10 billions. Should have started with what can we get for 10 billions. Would have save time.

They could’ve opened that question to the floor (i.e. all available suppliers). Might have gotten them a better price.

But as usual, lets wait and see. Beside it is not the first time the DM play the tuff loose canon, making big statement to the press. One would have to remember he did similar stunt for MMRCA which led to the PM short cutting him. So now that his PM had worked out a gov to gov agreement guaranteeing airframes at FAF price in flyaway condition, he single handily got the budget to explode by adding new demands .So yes he might be in a tight spot there and implying supplier responsibility as he did for MMRCA to hide dysfunction in the procurement process under his responsabilty.

As I recall, his ‘loose cannon stunt’ enabled him to quite successfully kill off the unaffordable MMRCA deal. Far from ‘short-cutting’ him, the PM merely signed an MoU (not an agreement) for a hugely truncated consolation prize for Hollande. And if Parrikar manages to get the current plan junked, he’ll probably be working in synch with the IAF, which isn’t too enthusiastic about this new deal.

If they might go for retiring F-16’s, why not surplus Gripen C’s? Seems to be what Slovakia may do (but OK, that gives commonality with Czech Republic fighters)?

They’re fewer in number and aren’t available with the variety of upgrade options that the F-16C/Ds offer.. but yes, Gripen Cs should be viable too.

You say India already has the cost effective Tejas. 2+ years since IOC was declared the IAF has a grand total of zero and it is still in the throes of development. It sounds like Tejas Mk2 will not be around for close on a decade (if at all) so I can see a Gripen production facility in India if Mk2 is shelved or cancelled. I can also see a SH line if Rafale remains too expensive. Both companies could provide TOT useful to AMCA. I don’t see F-35 being built in India.

So.. are you saying that because its not been produced in numbers over the last two years, it’ll never be produced in numbers? Also, how many years will it take to set up a Gripen E production facility in India? Never-mind the fact that IOC for the Gripen E is scheduled for 2023. And why forget the Su-30MKI – there’s a squadron a year production that can be extended much further (with high domestic content). And the question will that point will be why Gripen, why not the SH, why not the F-16? Why any of them? Result: long delays.

None of them are going to be built in India. That’s what the now-dead MMRCA was for. In each case, the actual domestic input will at best consist of various degrees of assembly. And in that context, a F-35 FACO line is still very doable. Plus there’s the availability of the B-variant for the IN’s STOBAR carriers.

I think you’ve misunderstood the term “bang for the buck”.

The current and most recent unit cost for the LRIP F-35A is $94.8 million [excluding the engine]. And that’s without any specific national requests. It has gone down from the LRIP 1 prices, as expected, but it’s not close to its target goal.

Try $94.3 million with the engine. Unit recurring flyaway cost for 2016. Well on course to achieve the target goal (<$85 mil by 2019).

In fact, if the plan for the block buy goes ahead, they could probably bring the cost in below $80 mil. The Gripen E will of course beat that figure but not by a huge margin, not with all the performance upgrades planned. The F-35 CPFH estimate was about 28% higher than the F-16C/D (in same weight class as the Gripen E), and that’s from when the oil prices were still sky high (and thanks to the shale revolution they’re unlikely to ever go up that high again).

Why do data have to be transferred to the USA? I don’t understand the need to shift data around in this manner (from country A to USA then from USA to country A) to update mission data files. It would be much simpler to do local updates.

When you’re sending a $100 mil fighter and its crew, into a high threat environment, you want its threat libraries and heuristic algorithms to be as effective as possible. The US has the widest, most intensive sigint/techint collection program in the world. You get access to that through the F-35 one hand while the program gets access to new data detected by your operational aircraft. A symbiotic relationship.

But the idea that the aircraft is crippled if this doesn’t happen on a sortie-by-sortie basis or that the relevant data is conveyed through commercial telecom networks, is beyond absurd.

Addition: let’s imagine that Turkey operates F-35’s. Turkey chooses to strike a neighbouring country. USA does not want that to happen. Is Turkey certain to get the mission data file updates it needs to conduct strikes to which the US government is opposed?

Even if they don’t receive an update on time, Turkish F-35s will still have no problems striking their target. It will have little short term impact. (To stick with the Apple analogy – updating your iPhone/iMac every month instead of every day doesn’t stop it from working properly now does it?)