The Defence Acquisition Council, headed by defence minister Rajnath Singh, is expected to pave the final way for the acquisition of 26 Rafale-Maritime strike aircraft soon. Picked over Boeing’s F/A-18 Super Hornet, these fighters are manufactured by Dassault Aviation and will be purchased for India’s aircraft carrier INS Vikrant.
Priced at an estimated €6 billion, Rafale-Ms are important for India’s ongoing naval modernisation and enhancing strike capabilities. It should be noted that India has another aircraft carrier, the INS Vikramaditya, which is customised to fly ageing Mig-29s. With the Migs to be upgraded most likely by an Indian company, the acquisition of fighters for INS Vikrant is absolutely crucial.
The DAC is also brainstorming on approving the construction of at least half a dozen more stealth frigates and has recently cleared three additional Kalvari class submarines. Navy modernisation is also set to get a boost from 31 MQ-9B predator drones from the US.
These DAC clearances are given keeping in mind the tilting balance of power toward China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy and its aggressive activities in the Indian Ocean region.
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Convoluted procurement and indigenised content
Under negotiation for a year, the Rafale-M deal has been delayed due to a few factors. The most basic is cost, which India has understandably been trying to keep as low as possible.
Another factor has been the Indian preference for integrating at least two types of indigenous equipment on the aircraft. The first is an indigenously built radar system and the second an indigenously built missile system. India prefers its Rafale-Ms with Uttam, an Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar indigenously developed by the Electronics Research and Development Establishment (LRDE), a subordinate laboratory of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). The original Rafale-M comes with an AESA radar developed by Thales. It is also the only European combat aircraft to use an electronic scanning radar. AESA brings superior detection and tracking range along with high resolution and also allows very low altitude flying above uncharted terrain in auto-pilot coupled nodes in bind conditions.
The DRDO has been developing its own version of Uttam. The AESA radar’s basic design had only 784 TR (transmit and receive) modules. In later course corrections, the advanced designs were upgraded to 968 TR modules, which would ensure better resolution and power consumption. These advanced Uttam radars are also being developed for India’s Tejas Mk1 fighter.
It is possible that DRDO develops an even more advanced version of Uttam with an even higher TR module in future. The bottom line is, with a rapidly evolving design and plans to be integrated with most other indigenously designed aircraft, it makes sense for India to push for integrating the Uttam AESA radars with Rafale-Ms instead of the ones developed by Thales.
However, as was evident in the last one year, the integration was proving to be more expensive and caused delays in the project as well. Therefore, the Indian side seems to have dropped that specification from the final discussions.
The second demand by the Indian side has been to integrate the Rafale-Ms with Astra missiles. These fall in the category of Beyond Visual Range (BVR) air-to-air missiles and have been indigenously designed by DRDO.
The story of the development of the Astra missiles has been fascinating to say the least. Considered technologically and economically superior to their western counterparts, Astra Mk 1,2, and 3 show India’s successful run with potent missiles and their state-of-the-art technology. India was, for decades, dependent on Soviet and Russian missiles.
At first, the basic BVRMs, Astra Mk-1, had a solid fuel rocket engine, which was upgraded to a better range with Astra Mk-2 solid fuel engine with a dual pulse. The latter has been instrumental in expanding the range of these missiles.
However, DRDO’s research team topped its game with the development of Astra Mk-3 with a phenomenal range of 350 km with a solid fuel ducted ramjet (SFDR) propulsion engine.
This has enabled the Astra missile to intercept aerial threats over a far greater distance at supersonic speed. This technology advancement also reflects the concomitant advancement in communication systems that are now completely digitalised. For instance, DRDO has installed a network centric software defined radio system in Astras, which has made its target locking and destruction more lethal and precise. Such a software-defined network allows for the missile to be launched from a different aircraft and tracking to be carried out by another one.
Therefore, it is natural that India would want these indigenously developed, advanced Astra missiles to be installed with the Rafale-Ms as well.
The good news is, Rafale-Ms are to be installed with Astras. The bad news is, the radar system will continue to be from Thales.
Gaping gaps
Despite the phenomenal progress, the most vulnerable situation for India right now is achieving self-reliance in jet engine technology. We still lack a world-class jet engine with a 100 kN thrust. We have, though, taken a leap forward for aero-engine capabilities. India has a roadmap to develop the Kaveri-2 engine with a 90-95 kN thrust. This would also be a potential substitute for the current GE F404 engines for platforms like the Tejas Mk1.
However, for now, the golden dream of attaining self-reliance in these niche technologies has an arduous pathway with many a lag and a snag. A story for another day.
But it is not all domestic. Internationally, there is a situation of supply chain delays as well. France is the second-largest weapons exporter in the world. New Delhi imports 33 per cent of its weapons from Paris. Traditional supplier Russia is a, relatively speaking, diminishing actor in India’s defence procurement, with an edge of only 3 per cent more than France.
Considering that India has not placed a fresh important order with Russia in the aftermath of the Ukraine war, Paris’ share of New Delhi’s imports will keep rising in the next few years.
In such a scenario, it is important to highlight how the French defence industries are coping with delayed deliveries due to disruptions in supply chains.
In the case of Dassault, for example, it has delivery schedules to meet in several parts of the world. As a result of persistent supply chain problems, there has been a backlog of more than 200 Dassault aircraft to be exported as well as delivered for domestic use.
It may be noted that the Rafale jet was originally developed to replace seven different types of combat aircraft for the French military. While extremely successful both at home and abroad, Dassault Aviation remains heavily dependent on supply chains that are not totally immune to global disruptions. Already being used by air forces of Egypt, Qatar, Croatia, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, Greece and India, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has also pushed up defence modernisation drive, making the traditional European companies, earlier only focussed on exports, cater to surging domestic demands as well. The drive to raise the defence equipment across all NATO countries to ensure interoperability and standard has surged as the Soviet era weapons held by central and East European countries have been donated to Ukraine against Russia.
Delivering NATO-standard weapons has resulted in an unprecedented strain on US defence manufacturers that cannot keep pace. It has created a boon and a bane situation for European manufactures that can step up for closing capability gaps.
However, maintaining pressing domestic requirements along with expanding international orders is not an easy feat to achieve, especially when all major defence manufacturers across the Western spectrum are facing similar supply chain delays and certification issues.
It is true that the overall situation has now improved due to the French government’s strategy to promote military exports. However, the impact of global ambivalence is seen and felt in military industrial complex circles and it is here to stay.
Swasti Rao is an Associate Fellow, Europe and Eurasia Center, at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses. She tweets @swasrao. Views are personal.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)