rkumar, BlackArcher, halloweene – interesting to read what you say.

It is interesting to learn that there should be an election within a few months in India and that may put pressure on the current administration either to sign a deal ASAP or the opposite – to defer until after the elections.

I assume that having HAL as prime integrator is central to the MMRCA project and that this cannot be changed. halloweene says that Dassault do not reject this arrangement. It is reported that India insists that it wants to contract solely with Dassault, Dassault therefore being responsible for the execution of all that is contracted by India. HAL would be paid by Dassault, wouldn’t they?

If provision were made for Dassault to withold payment to HAL in the event of problems arising in local assembly so that HAL had to take action to recover those funds, that would help mitigate Dassault’s risk if HAL fell short of doing its job according to its contract with Dassault. Since HAL is owned by GOI, GOI would effectively be taking the risk of years of investigation to establish responsibility for shortfalls in local assembly performance.

Might such an arrangement work? I don’t know but if there is an impasse you have to try to find some way of changing things while still observing the basic conditions stipulated for the deal: Dassault to be the sole contractor and HAL to be their subcontractor.

Do the provisions of the MMRCA process allow for another qualifying aircraft to be selected if contract terms cannot be agreed with the selected manufacturer? IIRC the candidates were reduced to 2 since only Rafale and Typhoon ticked all the boxes that needed to be ticked for selection. Rafale was declared the winner because it was calculated it would be the cheaper of the 2 options left.

I imagine that India needs TOT to develop AMCA in a timely manner. How does that come about if MMRCA is dropped and Sukhois are bought instead?

If Dassault does not have confidence in HAL assembly of Rafale, Dassault could walk away from the deal. Failure to get a Rafale deal with India will not break Dassault, nor ruin Rafale’s sales prospects. The issue is contractual regarding local assembly and is not connected to the price or performance of the aircraft itself.

The point has been stated before but its merits a repeat – the model of production, assembly and delivery was spelled out in the RFP issued by the Indian MoD.

If Dassault had a problem with the RFP it shouldn’t have bothered bidding for the contract. But having bid for it and won, it is demonstrating bad faith by attempting renegotiate the terms of the agreement, whatever its motivations may be.

I hope the MoD doesn’t knuckle under and enters a back-channel dialogue with Eurofighter as a fall back in the event that Rafale deal is scrubbed.

It sounds like the winning OEM does not want to risk having to recover assembly problem costs from the subcontractor responsible for assembly. If true, would the losing OEM be prepared to accept a contract on that basis? What would be a bad contract for Dassault would be a bad contract for Eurofighter.

the fact being, India wants Dassault to be fully and solely responsible for the aircraft, yet, they don’t allow Dassault to pick the partners to work with and impose HAL which, apparently, didn’t appear to Dassault representatives to be able to do its job as it is supposed to do

I agree that if the contract is to be with Dassault, Dassault should be able to choose subcontractors best suited to enable the contract to be fulfilled. However a condition of the deal was that HAL assemble 108 aircraft and Dassault were aware of that before submitting their bid. If Dassault now decline to be responsible for the performance of the stipulated subcontractor, that sounds like a change to the proposition they submitted.

I think it would be neater for the Indian government to deal with one contractor rather than have two contractors – one for the 108 kits and one for the assembly thereof. This avoids situations where a problem arises and it is not clear who is responsible/what responsibility to apportion to the different contractors.

The big problem to me is that if Dassault doubts the ability of HAL to do the job or Dassault is not confident that it can resolve with HAL issues concerning assembly that arise (and issues are inevitable), Dassault would be inviting trouble signing the contract.

Several other OEM’s have supplied assembled aircraft and kits for assembly by HAL. Were the contracts for local assembly made with the OEM or with HAL? If they were with the OEM, Dassault’s position looks very awkward.

Well, that’s the word on the street and newspapers. I am just being the messenger.

OK, word is that Silent Eagle is favoured at this point. Any reasons given eg capability/availabilty/cost?

Those sitting on the fence will surely convert to open bids contests like Denmark

Aftermath of the Silent Eagle’s win.

– Denmark : Open bid contest
– Netherlands : Open bid contest
– Canada : Open bid contest.
– Australia : 48 Super Hornets + start considering Silent Hornet options.
– Turkey : Will cut F-35 orders to make funding available for TF-X.

I don’t see how the outcome in South Korea would change anything for those countries.

Take a look at this 2010 graph. The yellow section is the buffer. Now note that the annual buys in the pre-2020 timeline have been delayed so again, there is plenty of room for FMS sales.

Does that chart show production rising from <50 in 2013 to >125 in 2014? Is that a projection or has that been authorised?

I’m curious about 4th generation A,B,C,D. Any idea what they refer to?