AspisPentagon pressure pushes IAI out of India deal
The deal was expected to be worth $12 billion.
Merav Ankori5 Jul 09 16:36
Indian website “Little About” reports that the Pentagon has forced Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd. (IAI) (TASE: ARSP.B1) to withdraw from a $12 billion Indian Ministry of Defense tender for 126 multi-role combat aircraft (MRCA) for the Indian Air Force. IAI was due to collaborate with Sweden’s Saab AB (OMX: SAAB), manufacturer of the JAS-39 Gripen jet fighter.According to “Little About”, Saab asked the IAI to jointly develop an advanced model, which would compete for the deal. The Israeli Ministry of Defense ordered IAI to back out of the deal after the Pentagon expressed concern that American technology, used by Israel, would be integrated into the Gripen offered to the Indians.
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The Pentagon and the Ministry of Defense were in talks for 18 months before the decision was taken a few months ago that IAI would withdraw from the tender.
Although the issue of technology was the official reason that the US gave, however, according to “Little About”, Israeli officials said it was more likely that the Americans were concerned that if the IAI competed for the deal with Saab it would force the US companies to lower their prices. Both Boeing Company (NYSE: BA) and Lockheed Martin Inc. (NYSE: LMC) are competing in the tender.
IAI declined to comment on the report.
Three years ago there was a similar situation. IAI was participating in a $2 billion South Korean AWACS tender. IAI was offering its AWACS Gulfstream G550 platform, while Boeing was offering its Boeing 737 platform, which cost $700 million more. After two years of hard bargaining, IAI lost the tender to Boeing, due to restrictions the US technological and commercial restrictions, which meant that IAI could not meet the Korean’s stipulated terms for the tender.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news – http://www.globes-online.com – on July 5, 2009
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2009
http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/DocView.asp?did=1000477819&fid=1725
Damn, i am sorry for the Swedish. Just comes to show what it means to rely on someone else in matters of weapons… With the evaluation so close, SAAB is now too late to react and come with a credible proposal to the Indians. The Americans “burnt” them.
AspisPictures from recent greek-polish excercize in Greece.
(photos by Vangelis Antonakis)
5 Polish F16 B52+ came to Souda AB, Crete, from 31 TAB Polish Squadron, POZNAN, from June 15 to June 26.
The aim of the excercize was the improvement of interoperational military procedures, increase of mutual cooperation and application of NATO procedures during excercizes. Air to air and air to ground missions were included.
HAF partecipated with F16 B52+ from 340 and 343 Squadrons, of 115 CW.
This is the first time polish fighters came to Greece for excercize.
(Info from HAF press release)
Interestingly, one photo shows a HAF F16 with Iris-T instead of the “regular” AIM-9.
AspisThe IAF is one of the few air forces that is likely to face a robust A-A threat – F-16s to the West, ‘Flankers’ to the East and North.
As such A-A capability is vital, and ensuring the highest possible exchange rate is equally important. Super Hornet won’t provide that, and nor will F-16IN.
Typhoon and Rafale may be expensive, but dead aircrew (or losing the war) can cost far more!
Yes, but the Pakistani F16s are relatively few and of older blocks than the F16IN.
Plus, IAF has Sukhois and Mig29s.
Add to that the incoming PAK-FA and air to air should not be a problem for them.
On the contrary, the Mirage2000 if not upgraded (who can blame them for not wanting to pay 40 mln $ per plane…), will have to be retired around 2020.
A good multirole, cheap and in large numbers is what IAF IMHO seeks now. Besides, 126 aircrafts need a lot of money for ammunition.
Add that they are in honeymoon period with USA and LM or Boeing will get the contract with the Swedes coming close, but not close enough (politics). The Russians will “eat again” with PAK Fa, they have already good part of the indian pie, too risky to go russian again.
Better save money for more PAK FAs. This will keep at bay anyone in A2A in the medium term future.
Just my 5 eurocent prediction.
AspisI enjoyed all the articles from http://livefist.blogspot.com.
It gives a quick summary of what the factors that come into play are. And the more i read, the more i think that the winner will be american. My bet in on F16.
Probably India would get the Gripen if it was a US company to offer it. The Swedes are handicaped because of their inability to give any political offsets in this deal and for 126 aircrafts, unless you ‘re Switzerland, you do have to look to politics too.
Rafale, Eurofighter, will be out because of price and probably because they ‘re too much for what IAF was looking for.
The Russians will be out because India would rely too much on Russia and it’s like buying the russian F16, so , if it’s a problem looking that the F16 is at its dawn of its career, technically the same goes for Mig.
India was looking towards the M2000-5, well, the F16 and Gripen are the logical choices for that league.
F16 will probably win, but i wish to the Gripen to do the surprise.
AspisUPDATE 1-Greece agrees French helicopter deal-senior source
07.02.09, 08:55 AM EDTATHENS, July 2 (Reuters) – Greece struck a 400 million euros ($564 million) deal with France to buy 15 Super Puma search-and-rescue helicopters, which are made by EADS, a senior Greek defence ministry official said on Thursday.
‘The government has decided to buy 15 Super Puma ( PMMAF.PK – news – people ) helicopters for 400 million euros after talks with France,’ the official, who declined to be named, told Reuters.
Article ControlsThe deal was clinched at the end of June, the official said.
Greece and France started talks on the Super Puma helicopters as well as over six Fremm-type frigates earlier this year.
‘Talks to buy the frigates are ongoing,’ the official said.
Simmering tensions with neighbouring Turkey have kept Greece’s defence budget high.
AFAIK, from the greek press, the contract isn’t signed yet, but it was decided in the KYSEA meeting and the details were agreed with the french.
freely translated:
Gripen NG (proposed) for Greece
Gripen International is re-adjusting her strategy in Greece and instead of the current C/D version of JAS-39 Gripen, she is going to concentrate all her effort in the promotion of Gripen NG, which has much greater capabilities than the C/D. This, under the assumption, that the decision for the new aircraft order, won’t be taken in 2009.
So, we see, that just like LM that re-adjusted in many points her promotion strategy for F16 and F35, the swedish company follows the same path, which can be seen as natural evolution, since apparently, the decision for the new order may not be taken within 2009.
So, the Swedes estimate, that there is time for the Gripen NG.
Another interesting and encouraging element for the swedish candidacy, are the results of the simulation comparing the Gripen NG and the F35.
According to the results, the Gripen NG has the advantage in many points of the service envelope and the overall flight envelope compared to the F35. The simulation was ordered to independent company, that was supposed to compare the 2 aircrafts. For now this program remains confidential.
It is reminded, that the selection of the F35 instead of Gripen is under “heavy fire” in Norway, while the Netherlands have suspended the selection procedure of the F35, until more information is available.
http://www.defencenet.gr/defence/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8180&Itemid=49
AspisThe airline’s Birmingham-based UK representative, Ahmed Chowdhury, said he believed there was a large market for the Athens service among the Greek community in the West Midlands, and within a 100-mile catchment area of the airport.
The connection to Jeddah would also be attractive to Birmingham’s Muslim community as the Saudi Arabian city was the gateway to Mecca, which Muslims are required to visit once in their lifetime.
This explains why the “hellenic” and registering in Greece.
1) the greek students living in UK as well as the greek cypriot community, will use it regularly , probably also thinking they are “greek”. Same goes for British tourists in summer (bonus).
2) Greece is geographically located very well for whoever wants to service middle eastern countries. And since the President is Jordanian, it’s easy to see why Middle East is also a priority for them and having Greece as “base”, they are in the middle of their road between northern europe and ME.
AspisBesides…..I think I’d rather go to Athens than Tehran :rolleyes::D.
Wherever you want to go with that airline, i think you are brave. I ‘d rather do Birmingham-Athens by train than flying with them after what i found. 😀
AspisFunny… I hadn’t heard of it before… And i think i just found out why.
It seems that it’s greek based (registered), but not greek. The “Hellenic” part seems only used as marketing trick.
According to this:
http://www.gnews.gr/Reportage/hellenic
This company is the ex “Air Universal”. It first tried to register in Cyprus, but was denied license.
Later it registered in Greece, but the flight license was revoked, after the technical branch of Olympic airlines refused to do the light and heavy maintenance. At the end the heavy maintanance was agreed to be done by KLM.
The President and owner of Hellenic Imperial is a Jordanian businessman, Talal Abureyal.
In any case, 26 parlament members of Greece had in 2007 submitted question in the parliament, about whether it was safe company or not, based on the fact that the minister of transportation in 2007 had revoked the license for “not complying with national and european legislation”.
http://www.gnews.gr/Reportage/hellenic
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Then there is this 2008 article:
http://news.kathimerini.gr/4dcgi/_w_articles_economyepix_2_09/11/2008_291453
According to which, the license was revoked for the 2nd time in 2008, after being denounced to the greek civil aviation authority and to EASA.
As the article says, “it’s a company that since the first moment raised suspicion and unanswered questions, because it was keeping for large periods of time, her 4 B747 grounded. But the paradoxes started with the arrival of her first aircraft, while it was still flying with the insignia of Air Universal, a company based in Sierra Leone.
The cost of keeping the aircrafts grounded in El. Venizelos airport was huge, while her flight work was intermittent. The official webpage says that the aim of the company is to do programmed and charter flights, cargo transportation in Europe, Middle Eastm Mediterranean but also accross the atlantic destinations. However, during her existance, is only doing a few charter flights.
Information refer that the flight license was revoked after iregularities observed in flight safety, violation of working hours of personnel and trainning problems. The responsibles of HIA are confident that the license blockade will be lifted soon, while the attribute the license revocation to irregularities that don’t have anything to do with the company’s operations, but with the companies with which they have been called to cooperate with. As a matter of fact they claim that they have the most experienced flight and ground crews, since the majority of them comes from Olympic Airlines. “EASA wanted to ring a bell to some others and proceeded to the unscheduled control and to the decision of revoking our license”, is what a company member said.
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Then there is this March 2009 article:
http://archive.enet.gr/online/online_text/c=110,dt=27.03.2009,id=60761300
From greek registered airlines, EASA has put in high risk list , Hellas Jet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellas_Jet) and Hellenic Imperial Airlines.
EASA initially activated SAFA (Safety Audit of Foreign Airlines) for the 2 above mentioned airlines and in the final high risk list that issued, HIA ranks 4th and Hellas Jet ranks 8th.
———————————————————–
Now apparently they finally got green light to commence flights? I don’t know. :confused:
I only know one thing. The only 2 greek companies that i would take if i wanted to go to Athens, are Aegean and Olympic (resurrected and probably will be better than before).
The rest… better not. They aren’t even greek really… And if it depended on me, they would not used “hellenic” on their commercial name.
Air Universal (now HIA), was banned from EU flights in 2004:
Safety worries have also led to the banning of Star Air and Air Universal from Sierra Leone and Central Air Express from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
So you change name, and you become “greek” and start over! Isn’t that wonderful?
Thank God the cypriot Helios —> AJet, took so heavy bad pubblicity in Cyprus and Greece that closed for good.
AspisMorocco? With the F-16 deal and the upgrade* of the Mirage F-1 fleet has spent about 3 billion $, can´t see why they could need those Mirages.
*anyone knows something about the upgrade? any prototype?
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AspisSo, the Blegium gov would have stopped the inquiry, Dasault would be as innocent as a newborn ? 😀
Of course… The whole question is to know how to do what you have to do without being caught… Isn’t it always like that?! Unfortunately for Dassault, Belgium isn’t France.
AspisLife is like a box of chocolates, especially if it includes a few “hidden” euro notes, tickets to go to a lap-dancing club in Place Pigalle, all the blueprints for a fighter jet that you are trying to sell and a generous offer of industrial offsets.
Well, the tickets to lap dancing club and indirectly the notes in the chocholate box should be considered as “routine”.
When there is a sale, every company tries to make a lobbying party in the client’s country. A bit like in politics. In politics lobbyists are those who usually get funded in their electoral campaign, then they repay the favour to their “supporter”, so that he will fund their next campaign too. Of course you can’t prove anything about that, so lobbies officially don’t exist for that reason.
In aircraft (weapons in general) sales, you still need to find lobbyists, in the client’s goverment, in his local defence industry, in his army, etc. Everybody does it. So people start speaking well about your product. And they don’t do that because they are kind at heart and fond of your product… :diablo:
This is a recent article from defencenet.
http://www.defencenet.gr/defence/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8048&Itemid=40
What it practically says, is that in Paris Air Show, LM invited for “supper” the greek delegation of the Bureau of Arms Procurements who were in Paris. The head of the Bureau himself, didn’t attend, but others did.
The article says, that for whoever such things seem strange, they aren’t. Characteristically, it says that LM gives every year, some scholarships to children of HAF officers. (Because LM has at heart the education of greek children, in particular of pilots).
Of course there is no proof of that other than this article, so it can’t be happening. 😀 Isn’t it wonderful not having proof?
You can also be free to believe that only LM does so, while the others are little angels, unaware of evil LM and prepared to play fair and lose to LM but with their honour and integrity high. 😀 😀 😀
And lobbies in politics only exist, because the parliaments are full of good hearted people, who without any personal gain, try to pass a certain line. And they all lived happily ever after. 😀
AspisAspis, this ain’t a view through night vision goggles, what you have posted is a typical FLIR imagery. Night vision goggles deliver following images:
I know it’s not from NVG. As i said, it’s LANTIRN. But the principle is the same. You get a 2 coloured vision.
AspisHow nice of the Chineses chief designer to “confirm” that his missile is surperior to the French one.. :rolleyes:
Who could possibly ask for a more reliable source than that?
Ahaha! True. Well, considering that the French have been making their own missiles (of all kind) for some decades now, and that the Meteor’s seeker is largely based on the MICA, it does sounds a bit improbable that the chinese have already surpassed the french in missile technology. Not impossible, but improbable.
Unless the chinese designer speaks about range strictly.
AspisI guess that it all ends up of how much you want to spend since quality cost.
Unfortunately here in the US the commercial always tell you that you can get a 5 foot sub for 4.99 $ they never tell you how it taste.The operational report for the Mirage 2000 have been impressed especially in Indian service.
If I were Argentina I would buy those Mirage 2000-9 now
Yes, the whole concept in paying more for the Mirage, is to get something that isn’t F16 and does some things the F16 doesn’t (use of SCALP-EG, AM-39, MICA IR) and not depending 100% on US supplies. 30 mln for 2000-5 is a good price. In greek fora there have been quite a lot people, who suggest that we should jump in and take them. And i agree with that. But alas, there is no such govermental plan or interest.
Technically, it’s much more convenient to buy the various arabian 2000-5/9 than to upgrade your old M2000. Also the -9 and -5mk2 are advanced enough to be able to justify their second hand price.
Aspisask to the UAE or to the greeks, about diponibilities and cost of maintaining squadrons differences between F16 and Mk2! :D:D
The problem with the Mirage is this… The French come and tell you that maintenance of the Mirage cost cheaper than the F16. This may be true, if you have equal numbers. But in practice, what happens is. You buy the Mirage, which initially costs more than the F16. Then you have to buy french missiles, which usually cost x3 or x4 the cost the american one that the F16 mounts. Then, they charge much at spares. What happens eventually, is that the next time you need to buy , you think of all that and think “hmmm, F16s come cheaper”, so you buy more F16s. At the end, you end up with much more F16s than Mirage and the whole “cheaper maintenance” argument collapses, because due to scale economy, you get even cheaper prices in F16 spare parts and ammunition and you also manage to distribute attrition over more aircrafts in the F16 fleet. So, it has been written for instance, that, purely economically speaking, if you have an F16 and a Mirage capable of arriving to an interception point at the same time, it’s better to send the F16…
Quality wise, the M2000 has proven better. Most F16s after 3000h had to go through structural reinforcement. The M2000 never had such problems.
The tumbstone in the Mirage, is the upgrade cost. To us, in around 2000, it was 28 mln per aircraft. Now i read here that now for the Indians it is 40-50 mln (!). Probably because the M2000-5 is now completely out of production, while in our case, it was still in it.
So, poor Indians, pay 40 mln for an upgrade??? It’s outrageous. In comparison, the latest info for the LM upgrade proposal to Greece, is ranging from 10 to 13 mln per plane (+-1 mln, i didn’t check again the article), according to which block it is and to which block you want to bring it to after the upgrade.
So it is easy to understand why people hesitate to upgrade M2000s… With 40 mln that they ask from the Indians, IAF can buy brand new F16 B52+ (fly away), with full airframe life ahead of it.
The availabilities of the Mirage, all comes down to planning and what tasks you want them for. I don’t know what they are in HAF’s case, but i haven’t heard about them anything in particular (contraty to A-7s). But this is all about money you are willing to spend. If you buy their regular spares, they will maintain their availability. If not… In our cases, i presume the availability is not much different than the F16s, for the simple fact that Tanagra is the closest AB to Athens (so, you can’t let your AB that defends your capital become useless) and because the Mk2-5 have a strategical role for us (with the SCALP-EG), so they must be ready to quickly launch the missiles in case of crisis and then take over to A2A tasks. The non upgraded M2000 should be in worse shape, but again, since they are supposed to do TASMO, i wouldn’t expect them to be any worse than say the F16B30, which are of the same era. But i also expect that F16s are doing more of the daily job in interceptions/shadowing than the Mirage, in order to avoid Dassault to sweep clean the defence budget.
Of course one may understand, why traditional Dassault customers, are now hesitant to keep on with the tradition and happily order the Rafale. The M2000 was if you think about it, a decent exporter and still they ask 28-50 mln per upgrade. What will happen when time to upgrade the Rafale comes?
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