Rahul Bedi 
Chandigarh: Air Chief Marshal Amar Preet Singh’s characteristic plain speak has set the record straight on US president Donald Trump’s recent arbitrary declaration that the Indian Air Force would be buying the hugely expensive F-35 Lightening II stealth fighters, as part of the USA’s proliferating material sales to New Delhi worth “many billions of dollars.”
Addressing the India Today conclave in New Delhi over the weekend, ACM Singh bluntly declared that the Indian Air Force (IAF) was not considering acquiring Lockheed Martin’s F-35s, as no formal proposal from the US exists. “We have not looked at it [the F-35],” Singh said. The air chief assumed charge last September.
Elaborating, he went on to stress that acquiring a combat aircraft was not like buying a washing machine or a refrigerator for the home and that it could not be bought simply because it looked good. “We must analyse an aircraft fully, see what the requirements are and what comes along with it, before procuring it, he declared and concluded by adding squarely that the IAF had not given the F-35 ‘any thought’ in its procurement to make good the IAF’s depreciating fighter assets.
The announcement of the F-35 sale to the IAF from Trump came randomly and without warning at a joint press conference with visiting Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Washington on February 13, almost ambushing Indian officials with its audacity. Trump declared that the US would increase military sales to India by ‘many billions of dollars’ and that the US was ‘paving the way to ultimately provide India with F-35 stealth fighters.
Thereafter, a flummoxed foreign secretary Vikram Misri, nervously told reporters in Washington that the F-35 sale to India was only at a ‘proposal stage’, without elaborating further.
Trump’s hukum
“Trump’s hukum (order) on the IAF buying F-35s seems to have panicked the government into silence,” said a senior military officer. But ACM Singh’s outspoken candour, he declared, declining to be named, had put a lid even on Misri’s response by unequivocally dismissing the notion that the fighter sale had even been ‘proposed’.
The air chief went on to state at last week’s conclave that the IAF would evaluate the recommendations of the empowered committee headed by defence secretary R.K. Singh, instituted last December, on ways to boost the IAF’s declining combat squadrons and plug innumerable other operational gaps. The latter included a paucity of mid-air refuellers and airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) platforms, amongst other enduring force multiplier shortcomings the IAF faced.
Defence secretary Singh had presented his report to defence minister Rajnath Singh on March 3, two days after the ACM had reiterated at a seminar in Delhi that the IAF was “very badly off in terms of (fighter) numbers” and that even these numbers which had been promised by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) were slow in coming. Instead of the sanctioned strength of 42.5 combat squadrons, the IAF at present was down to around 30 combat squadrons which were on course to imminently reduce further after two legacy MiG-21’Bis’ squadrons were de-commissioned later this year.
Speaking at the Chanakya Dialogues Conclave late last month, ACM Singh revealed that an internal IAF analysis had estimated that to remain combat ready, the Force needed to induct at least 40 fighters – or two squadrons – annually to replace already retired platforms and others that were superannuating five to 10 years hence. He expressed a preference for indigenous fighters over imports, even those with a “slightly lesser performance” profile and said that the IAFs immediate challenge was to strike a balance between the need to become self-reliant and stay operationally potent simultaneously.
A few weeks earlier at the Bengaluru air show, Aero India, the air chief had severely castigated HAL for interminable delays in meeting the IAFs February 2021 order for 83 upgraded Mk1A ‘Tejas’ Light Combat Aircraft for Rs 48,000 crore. “I am just not confident of HAL” he said and added that “everything (in HAL) was driven by ho jayega (will happen) and karenge (will do).”
HAL and the ACM
To make matters worse for the public sector behemoth, the ACM went on to state that HAL had promised him that 11 MK1As, minus their US-origin GE F404-IN20 turbofan engines, deliveries of which have been delayed would be ready by the February 2025 air show. Not a single Mk1A was, Singh said. “Maza nahi aa raha hai (this is not fun anymore),” he observed.
Given such dire circumstances, the IAF is believed to have prevailed on the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to fast-track the long-deferred procurement, pending for over seven years, of 114 multi-role fighter aircraft (MRFA) by granting Acceptance of Necessity (AoN) to the project and dispatching the follow-on request for proposal (RfP) for it.
Last October, the ACM in his annual presser declared the MRFA was needed yesterday, and industry sources claimed that Defence Secretary Singh’s empowered committee – which included IAF deputy chief of staff Air Marshal Tejinder Singh, Defence Research and Development Organisation head Samir Kamat and secretary of defence production Sanjeev Kumar – had accepted the air chief’s contention.
Seven fighter manufacturers had responded to the IAF’s April 2018 Request for Information for the MRFA, offering eight fighter types. These included France’s Dassault (Rafale), Eurofighter (Typhoon), Sweden’s Saab (Gripen-E), Russia’s United Aircraft Corporation and Sukhoi Corporation (MiG-35 ’Fulcrum’ and Su-35 ‘Flanker-E’, respectively) and the USA’s Boeing and Lockheed Martin (F/A-18E/F and F-15EX ‘Eagle’ II and F-16V with 14 India-specific customisations). Last month Russia added a ninth to this number, by offering its Sukhoi Su-57 stealth fighter, one of which participated in the Bengaluru air show last month.
The MRFA procurement, initiated over a decade ago, envisages importing a squadron of 18 shortlisted fighters in flyaway condition and locally building the remaining 96 platforms via a collaborative venture between the selected manufacturer and a domestic strategic partner (SP) from either the private or public sector, with progressively advanced levels of indigenisation in a deal estimated at over 25 billion. Official sources indicated that MRFA numbers could increase ‘significantly’ beyond 114.
Russia
However, given the US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick threateningly calling upon India to refrain from buying Russian materiel at the India Today Conclave, it’s more than possible that the three Russian fighters on offer may, on the MoD’s prompting, be given short shrift by the IAF. “India has historically bought significant amounts of its military equipment from Russia, and we think that is something that needs to end,” Lutnick proclaimed on March 7. These kinds of things do not create the love and affection that we really, deeply feel towards India and we would like those things to end, he menacingly added.
India has acquired materiel worth over $70 billion from Russia since the mid-1960s and over 60% of Indian military hardware is of Soviet or Russian origin. But over decades all three services, especially the IAF, have faced chronic problems over sourcing spares and components from Moscow for assorted platforms like combat, transport and rotary wing aircraft, main battle tanks, submarines and warships, amongst other equipment.
Alternately, the Typhoon had been rejected earlier by the IAF during trials conducted from 2010 onwards for the IAFs binned Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) contract floated in 2007, as was Gripen-E and the US’s F-18 and the F-16-the precursor to the F-21- on multiple operational capability counts. Moreover, the Gripen-E and the F-21 were single-engine platforms, and though the MRFA Request for Information had not specified any preference for fighters with single or dual power packs, the IAF’s intrinsic preference for the latter remains unstated. And though their manufacturers claimed that their platforms had, since, been equipped with newer and more advanced technologies and weaponry, the IAF, it seems, remains unimpressed.
Hence, the Rafale was favourably placed in the MRFA sweepstakes, due not only to its operational efficiency but more recently by the Indian Navy (IN) also opting for 26 Rafale-M (Maritime) fighters for deployment aboard aircraft carrier INS Vikrant. Dassault had also recently secured clearance to establish a fully self-owned maintenance, repair and overhaul facility near Jewar International Airport in Uttar Pradesh, to support not just the IAFs fleet of some 50 odd Mirage 2000Hs fighters and eventually 62 Rafales, but also 42 Rafales operated by the Indonesian Air Force, thereby enhancing its MRFA acceptability.
Even veteran IAF fighter pilots said once the purchase of 26 Rafale-Ms by the Indian Navy was completed, India’s military would be operating an aggregate of 62 of these French fighters in its inventory. “Adding to these numbers makes eminent commercial, logistical and operational sense,” said a military analyst, the retired Air Marshal V.K. ‘Jimmy’ Bhatia. Besides, acquiring supplementary Rafales under the MRFA purchase, he added would also streamline the IAFs diverse fighter catalogue, which at present features seven different aircraft types, sustaining all of which was not only an enduring logistical challenge but also a hugely expensive affair for the financially overstretched force.