Trade deal sorted, India & US move on to pending defence pacts—P-8I aircraft first, engines next

Defence Acquisition Council likely to take up P-8I procurement, cleared in 2019, in third week this month. Proposed joint production of GE F414-INS6 engine also on agenda.

Indian Navy’s P-8I aircraft. The procurement of additional aircraft is on agenda | Photo: By special arrangement

New Delhi: With tensions thawing with the announcement of a proposed trade deal and cutting down of tariffs, India and the US are moving ahead with pending defence pacts that have been waiting for several years.

The first to go will be India’s planned procurement of six additional maritime surveillance and anti-submarine warfare aircraft P-8I, manufactured by American firm Boeing.

Sources in the defence establishment said a meeting of the Defence Acquisition Council (DAC), the top procurement body within the Union Defence Ministry, will take up the procurement in the third week of this month. The deal will be signed in the new fiscal, they added.

While the Indian Navy already operates 12 P-8Is, it is seeking another six. Way back in 2019, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh had approved the Navy’s plan to procure six more aircraft under the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) route, which is the American government-to-government track.

Following this, India had written to the US seeking the aircraft, and the US State Department in May 2021 cleared the procurement valued at $2.42 billion.

However, the deal was never inked because of the high cost involved and got further muddied with India-US tensions after Donald Trump took over as US President last January.

Despite the friction, officials from both sides continued the negotiations.

Last September, officials from the US Department of Defence and Boeing were in India for detailed discussions on the subject.

Sources said the other defence deal with the US that would be sped up is the proposed joint production of the GE F414-INS6 engine in India.

The engines would power the Tejas Mk2 and also the first tranche of India’s 5^th generation fighter, Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA).

The deal will come with 80% technology transfer. However, sources in the know explained that the technology transfer is related to production and not the design and development elements.

For the latter, India will tie up with French firm Safran and will together design, develop and produce a new 120KN thrust engine that will power the second tranche of the AMCA.

Incidentally, India already has 10 F414 engines that Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) had bought earlier as part of its production plan, which has been delayed due to certain design and certification issues.

The Tejas Mk2 will be an advanced 4.5-generation single-engine multirole combat aircraft that is being developed by the Aeronautical Development Agency and HAL. It is meant to replace India’s Mirage 2000, Jaguar, and MiG-29 fighter fleet and is expected to go into production from 2031-32.

The fighter will come with a longer fuselage, close-coupled canards for improved manoeuvrability, and a more powerful GE F414-INS6 engine producing 98 kN of thrust, compared to the Tejas and Tejas Mk1A versions.

(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)