Rafale contract signature to be delayed due to absence of HAL licence production plan.
NEW DELHI — Negotiations to build Rafale fighter jets for the Indian Air Force won’t be complete for at least nine months, following news that the state-owned company tapped to build the jets in India has missed a deadline for filing its license production evaluation report.
Sources in the Indian Defence Ministry said Defence Minister A.K. Antony had directed the bureaucrats to finalize the contract to build Rafales within the next three months, but it cannot be done because state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL) has yet to submit the license production plan, delaying negotiations by another six months.
where to the advantages they each have over the other in sales?
Can anyone compare the sales prospects of Tejas and FA-50 in terms of each aircraft’s qualities? Perhaps a theoretical debate if India has no interest in selling Tejas abroad…
South Africa interested in resuscitating A400M deal?
“Denel, the state-owned arms company, was renegotiating the country’s purchase of Airbus A400M carriers after the collapse of an earlier contract for the aircraft, which were intended to play a crucial role in SA’s contribution to peacekeeping efforts in Africa, Denel Saab Aerostructures CEO Ismail Dockrat said yesterday.
The Ministry of Defence cancelled a $5.3bn contract with Airbus in 2009 to buy eight A400M heavy-lift aircraft, saying that the order had become unaffordable because of the recession.
What a pathetically ran programme. The people in charge must be held responsible for the delay and fired. Yes people may argue it has given us a lot of technologies and all, but with this much time on most other countries the results yielded would have been considerably more.
Reasonable comments to me.
Obsolete by the time it enters service and the AMCA is going to be another comedy show.
Don’t see why Tejas should be obsolete by the time it enters service. The inability of the management of this project to manage the project is obvious to those of us not inured to the Indian government way of doing things. Years of easily avoidable delay to FOC, yes. Obselete at FOC, no.
AMCA promises to be a disaster in the sense that unless lessons are learnt from the Tejas project (which does not promise to be the case), there are no grounds to think that similar chaos will not ensue.
Sell it to the Mahindra’s or Tata’s and see them turn it around easy.
I suspect that any serious industrial concern operating in the real world (that’s a place where if you don’t have half decent project management, you don’t survive long) would have run the Tejas programme far, far more professionally. If you want to get results, you need to operate through structures, cultures and people capable of getting results.
NEW DELHI: The wait for procuring 126 combat aircraft for the Indian Air Force (IAF) is set to get longer as Defence Minister A K Antony has decided to review the process to determine the lowest bidder in the deal bagged by French Rafale after defeating European Eurofighter.
Surely it’s too late now to review the selection process and scrap the result.
How are things looking on the weight/payload front now? Last thing I remember was that the Grizzly was massively overweight with a severely restricted payload.
Me too
Neither am I for that matter 🙂 I take fifth gen. fighters to be the F-22, F-35, J-20 and PAK-FA with the 4.5’ers being the Gripen, Eurofighter Typhoon and the Rafale.
Ditto.
I took that from the context of Minister Dobritoiu’s quote, you provided.
Understood. I don’t think the minister meant what he is reported to have said. I think he meant 4th generation. Perhaps he is not too familiar with what is considered 4th generation and what is considered 5th generation.
I think cost would be the most important consideration. Would we consider the Gripen a fifth generation fighter? 4.5, yes, but to say it is generation 5 is a bit of a stretch.
I have not heard of Gripen A/C or F-16 being described as 5th generation. There are no used 5th generation fighters for sale, only new ones.
They could look like this…
If cost is the most important consideration –
“Minister of Defense Corneliu Dobritoiu … admitted that Romania could buy F-16s from the Portuguese or the Dutch, arguing that Romania’s strategic goal should be getting the fifth generation jets ‘at minimal costs”.
– did Romania consider buying / leasing Gripens? If not, I can see that being the next step once a cost for F-16’s is calculated.
If all the reductions are done all the future messages about the RNLAF in this forum can be found in the “small airforces” topic 😡
anyway, it is not confirmed only speculations!!
It has been clear for some years now that committing to F-35 at an early stage in its development was VERY risky (a) in terms of receiving the goods when expected and (b) at the price expected. I continue to think that F-35 is likely to damage the overall defence capacity of the partner nations which have chosen it. (Norway excepted – the country has no national debt and can afford to throw money away on F-16 life extension because of (a) and (b) to pay unexpectedly high prices).
1] Diverterless Supersonic Inlet
2] You were fortunate to miss out on JSLLL4/ aka Ocean Boy/ aka PhilTheBelowed/ aka Thornado/ aka God knows what, arguments that
JF-17 is the next best thing since Ancher beer because of……–> yep, DSI
Thanks. Had a look at the JF-17 thread you mention. Trying read indeed.
Any CGI or model pics available of the Gripen NG with the infamous DSI and other mods ?
2 questions, please:
What is DSI?
Why is it infamous?
Not something to read if you are a dyed in the wool F35 fan: a scathing assessment of the F35 program. Is this guy biased or is he injecting some reality into appraising the program and the F35?
All the professional people in Switzerland that have expressed their opinion has said that Gripen is the preferred choice, since it is the only choice that meets the requirements, including the budgetary ones.
I get the feeling that there is something of a parallel with the Brazil situation: the air force was reported to prefer Gripen since it had the lowest cost of the 3 contenders. My impression is the the air force supported its choice because
(a) the budget to purchase it would be more likely to get approval
(b) it would cost less to operate, soaking up less of the air force’s budget (leaving the air force more funds to spend on other procurements/activities)