Golden_ArrowThe FC-1 is a unique project where the engine has been decoupled from the other items. Like mid-air refueling it is believed that PAF will get mid-air engine fitting.
Golden_ArrowFrance ready to give Mirage “marketing rights” to India
Girja Shankar Kaura
Tribune News ServiceNew Delhi, May 4
France is ready to grant India “marketing rights” for the Mirage-2000-5 fighter aircraft, which have been put on offer to the Indian Air Force (IAF) besides the transfer of technology being offered for the production of aircraft here.Ambassador of France to India, Dominique Girard, said here that Paris was ready to discuss with New Delhi the granting of exclusive marketing rights for the Mirage-2000-5 for the entire region if the fighter aircraft was selected for the purchase by the IAF. He said that the offer for transfer of technology had already been put forward during talks with the Indian officials and that the French officials were ready to discuss even this new offer.
Talking to The Tribune during a function to launch Euro News in India, the French Ambassador was categorical that the issue of granting of “marketing rights” to India for the entire region could be discussed during further deliberations with the Dassault officials.
Feeling the heat following the sudden offer of the F-16 and F-A18 fighter aircraft from the US, the French Ambassador pointed out that the Mirage deal would be beneficial for India in many ways. Not only would the US not agree for transfer of technology but there could be spare parts problems in the future also. More importantly he said that the US would in no condition grant marketing rights to India, which France was ready to discuss.
Besides IAF pilots were already used to the Mirage aircraft and the Mirage-2000-5 was only an advanced version of the same aircraft. Not wanting to say much about the US offers, the French Ambassador said that the aircraft on offer were “old ladies” 😮 :dev2: in comparison to Mirage and at a much higher price.
He also said that as of now the French administration had not spoken to the Indian Government but he did not rule out the possibility if there was similar pressure on New Delhi from Washington. The IAF was looking at purchasing as many as 126 multi-role combat aircraft and had sought a request for proposal from various aircraft manufacturers.
Incidentally, in a bid to bag the lucrative deal from India, US defence officials had held marathon discussions with the top Indian Air Force officials and submitted detailed technical parameters of the two fighters, the F-16 Fighting Falcons manufactured by Lockheed Martin and Boeing’s twin engined upgraded F-18 Super Hornets. It had also brought in the F-115es (Strike Eagle) aircrafts at the Aero India show at Bangalore to show case the technology.
The other aircraft, besides the F-16s, F-18s and the Mirage, which the IAF was looking at were the Grippen from Sweden and MiG-29s from Russia, which again were on the Indian inventory.
Defence Experts here said that the adding of the US aircrafts would only add to its inventory. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence had also recently commented on the IAF inventory saying that it already had 26 different types of aircraft, which require different types of infrastructure to operate.
The committee felt that there was need to check the large inventory and acquire as far as possible similar type of aircraft as have been already in service with the air force.
Golden_ArrowI agree with Arthur. The marginal cost savings between upgradation and new purchase is perhaps not worth the loss in airframe life. You can bet that if there are issues CAG will have a thing or two to say about that. :diablo: :dev2:
Golden_ArrowRip,
Remember what I said about the F-16s and the baby’s chaddy?
Looks like Pakistanis too are coming to the same conclusion:
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/encounter/encounter.htm#2
Our defence policy is firmly embedded to the bedrock of our possession of nuclear weapons. The purchase of the F-16s suggests that the nuclear option is perhaps not available any more.
Golden_ArrowAnd the F-16 is equally capable of turning a bunch of Fulcrums and Mirages into scrap metal. Come on, is everyone on this board a slave to their own prejudices? A contest between any combination of these three aircraft is most likely to come down to pilot skill and/or situational advantage.
Actually, more important than that is the following:
1. What AEW and C4I systems are in place and are they datalinked
2. What numbers are there
3. What GBAD are there on each side
4. What specific specs does each strike/defense formation carry
You can have an F-16 piloted by a Baron Manfred von Richthofen clone but he is toast if he has one wingman and faces 12 point defense fighters with BVRAAMs and datalink.
If you look at 1971, when IAF had closed the technology gap with the PAF, over the duration of the war, the losses per sortie of the IAF was equal to that of the PAF. But in the end, if you can conduct more offensive sorties, you give your army a good chance to win.
Golden_ArrowThat would ne a potent asset indeed.
Golden_ArrowAnkush, Don’t take it seriously. It’s meant for comic relief and nothing else. Like I said, the fear thing was on display in 1999. 🙂
Golden_ArrowIndia, Russia to sign defence secrecy agreement
Vladimir Radyuhin
MOSCOW: : India and Russia have reached a broad agreement on an Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) pact to protect their defence secrets.
“The text has been drafted and accepted,” the Defence Secretary, Ajay Vikram Singh, said on Tuesday.
He is leading an inter-agency delegation of the Defence Ministry, the armed forces and research and development officials to discuss some outstanding issues in the agreement.
The absence of an IPR accord threatened to become a major irritant in bilateral relations. Last November, Russia’s Defence Minister, Sergei Ivanov, accused India of dragging its feet over the pact and warned of stopping transfer of cutting-edge defence technologies unless the agreement was signed early.
“Now that we are moving from the buyer-seller relationship to joint development and production of weapon systems, it becomes important to properly protect the high-end defence technologies against any leakage,” Mr. Singh told the Indian media. He cited the Brahmos anti-ship missile as an example of jointly developed technologies, and said more such projects were on the anvil. Though all recent defence deals contained IPR provisions, Russia wanted the Indian Government, rather than the defence companies, to provide IPR guarantees, the Defence Secretary said.
During the visit of the President, Vladimir Putin, to India in December 2004, the two sides undertook to sign the agreement within four months, but the timeframe has been extended to six months.
Sticky issue
It has been agreed that the accord will apply only to new deals, and will not have a retrospective effect. However, it will define principles for procuring spares for and upgrading the Soviet-made hardware still in service of the Indian armed forces. This is understood to be a sticky issue. Russia, which has been objecting to India buying spares and modernisation technologies from third countries, would like the accord to ban India from turning to other suppliers when the original Russian manufacturers can provide support.
India agrees to give preference to Russian suppliers, but on condition that they make deliveries within reasonable time and price. India also suggests that Russia sort out the IPR issue with former Soviet countries, which claim they have as much right to make Soviet-era weapons and spares as Russia has.
Besides the delegation-level talks on the agreement, the Defence Secretary had a 100-minute meeting with Mr. Ivanov to discuss his proposal for rationalising the structure of Indo-Russian Inter-Government Commission on Defence Cooperation. India proposed more frequent meetings of the IGC sub-groups on specific subjects.
Mr. Singh also proposed that military-to-military cooperation be intensified through more joint exercises and by enlarging their scope to cover all three services. Later this year, India and Russia would stage joint naval and paratrooper war games.
http://www.hindu.com/2005/04/27/stories/2005042703521400.htm
Golden_ArrowSens,
The reliability of Pakistani missiles is in doubt because they require constant external help for upkeep. There is little evidence that Pakistan has the ability to build a small enough n-warhead to fit into the their Chinese-sourced missiles like the Shaheen-I and II. They probably have a warhead for the Ghauri, which North korea made just to fit a big, crude fission warhead. but the Ghauri has been having issues since the N.Korea link was cutoff due to US pressure.
For an aircraft based n-platform, do you think a Mirage-III has a better chance of pentrating enemy air defenses or an F-16?
Golden_ArrowAAS,
I’ll give documentable proof for everything I listed. Once I do that, I expect you to eat crow for the nonsense you posted in Post# 190. That is if you have any jurrat. 🙂
Golden_ArrowBTW, in case you wonder how all the above money can be used by Pakistan for defence – the simple answer is that Pakistan uses every bit of free cash for weapons.
In 2003, Pakistan spent 68% of its budget between debt servicing and defence (excluding nuclear programs) (Source World Bank)
Of the US aid, $350 million per year goes directly for mil support. Of the other $350 million, it largely pays down the remaining Pakistani debt to the US (freeing up cash). The $1.3 billiion for rent goes directly to the Pakistani military. The rest of the baksheesh too is in the form of debt payments, again freeing up cash. AFAIK, the only part of the US assistance to Pakistan that is mandated non-military is a $20 mil/year USAID grant for improving rural schools in Pakistan.
Given the fact that Pakistan’s development expenditure has remained largely unchanged since 2001 and that the debt burden has also reduced in the same timeframe, it is a simple deduction that all the above funds have gone towards Pak military expenditure. Unless of course some of it has been diverted towards the purchase of kothis by the PA Crore Commanders or towards some DHA projects. 😉
Golden_ArrowAAS,
Let me give you some hints:
1. US Aid in the form of grants is $700 mil per year.
2. US pays Pak approx $1.3 billion a year as rent for using bases. This is not counted under aid. The US also pays an unknown amount for the use of Pak law enforcement facilities, airports, Port Qasim and some selected land border entry points for the CIA and FBI teams residing in Pakistan. This money is secret because US intel budget is classified.
3. US has written off $1.5 billion in debt to Pak since 2002
4. US cast the crucial vote in the World Bank to give Pakistan concessional loans following 9/11. The loans are already worth more than $3 billion and this is outside of the PRSP facility. The World bank has also just decided to giove Pak $3 Billion for the next 3 years for infrastructure development.
5. US persuaded Japan, UK and other big lenders to defer $12 billion of Pakistan’s debt to a 36 year loan with negligible interest rate. This reduced Pakistan’s debt servicing by a huge amount (40-50%), thereby freeing up cash for other purposes. Before 9/11, Pakistan was on the verge of loan default, with debt servicing sometimes at 40-45% of the budget allocation. But reducing the debt burden improved Pakistan’s credit ratings, enabling easier flow of foreign investment.
In short, the US is keeping the Pak economy afloat. They are not doing it so that Pakistan can buy French planes.
BTW, the $10 billion estimate you refer to is from a CENTCOM press release, not Congress, which was withdrawn. That is the price a nation pays for supporting terorrism.
If you’d like I can email you all the US govt released documents, testimony, press reports etc. that detail the split up as I have described above.
Golden_ArrowLets assume russia goes ahead with the sale 100 odd …. Could they do so at the pace they anticipate without Russian help?
Absoultely. Just read the reports of the MoUs signed during DefExpo 2004 and AeroIndia 2005. BTW, India is paying Russians top dollar for almost evey current purchase. The days of cheap sales are over.
For example, with missiles – MBDA is willing to offer anything. For aircrafts the market is wide open. You need to remove your blinkers.
Also the key is to understand that good allies don’t use ultimatums but understand each other’s concerns. With Russia, its a matter of the supplier being unhappy because the days of India buying 80-90% of items from them are over. But they are beginning to understand that even 30-40% of the Indian market will be a boon for them going forward, as India’s budget grows. And India will in turn reassure the Russians that it will respect Russia’s IPR concerns. The spares issue blew up because of poor handling by past Indian governments. The agreement this year will take care of that.
BTW, you seem to be sure that Russia will get angry enough at India for not signing IPR agreement with them while you seem equally confident that Russia won’t mind if China breaks its contract on the RD-93 engine and supply to Pakistan. How convenient and how dreamy :rolleyes:
OTOH, since china has replaced India as russia’s top arms customer, russians can no longer afford to ignore their chinese counterparts’ wishes/demands either. Hopefully, this would help to see the difference between ‘what i said’ and ‘what u thought i had said’.
The fact is that China is buying so much from Russia because it has no other choice. The moment EU sanctions end, China will divert a big chunk of its budget to items from EU as well. So will Russia sell to Taiwan then to prevent this? 😮
India has diversified because it has choices. Russia will get used to this as long as India makes sure it takes care of Russian bottomline – IPR and spares procurement and Russia will in turn make sure that India gets spares and good cooperation regularly.
If Russia doesn’t value India, then why did it say that there will not be any deals with Pakistan – as long as India takes care of the IPR and spares? 🙂
Please help me to understand, what brought ‘pak buying mirages’ into this discussion?
Because you brought in the theory that Pakistan is unable to buy from France because of French hopes to get a deal with India for the M2K-5. Pakistan can buy fighters from France and could have for a many years, but the problem is that the US baksheesh cannot be diverted there and Pak has little money out of its own kitty. That is why Pak has to procure planes based on freebies and giveaways from the US or China or dream of UAE/Saudi paying for it. 😮
Golden_ArrowSOC,
You forgot one more thing. India is working double time to give Russia the one thing it is asking for – IPR agreement. After that agreement is signed, India and Russia are slated to sign a slew of contracts worth billions of dollars, ranging from co-development of a next-gen fighter to MTA to the follow up to the BrahMos.
Yet some seem to think that Russia will forsake all this just to allow the sale of 100 odd engines to Pakistan 😮
Golden_ArrowChina has been trying to move itself to the realm of responsible nations. It is highly unlikely that it will publicly break contracts and **** off Russia just to sell a few cheap aircrafts to Pakistan.
Otherwise China will end up encouraging those in Europe who oppose any arms sales to China because of end user limitation issues.
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