In what is being seen as a bit of a kick in the teeth for the UK after it has poured aid into the country, India has selected the French jet fighter offering for final negotiations.
The French fighter jet, the Dassault ‘Rafale’ has been given the nod over the Eurofighter Typhoon for the huge Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) £7 billion contract to supply 126 fighter aircraft to India.
In what the Times of India calls ‘…the largest such "open-tender" military aviation deal in the world’, the Rafale was chosen as it was the lowest bidder. This was based on complex mathematical calculations over the unit cost of each proposal.
Speaking in PMQ’s today the UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, did say that this contract had still not been signed and that he would press to get India to change its mind.
This will no doubt be mirrored in the other three countries involved in the Eurofighter project; Germany, Spain and Italy.
The contract will, says the Times of India, take another four to five months to be ‘inked in’ and that the first 18 aircraft would be flown in from France in mid 2015 with the remaining 108 being built over a six year period in India.
Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, has welcomed the Indian decision to choose the Dassault aircraft saying that the selection “goes far beyond the company that makes them, far beyond aerospace — it is a vote of confidence in the entire French economy.”
Rafale
The Rafale programme, says dnaindia.com, had been suffering from a lack of foreign contracts, so this will come as a welcome boost for the company. It also points out that the French jet has been involved in the Afghanistan and Libyan campaigns.
But as the Express points out one of the things that is souring this is that the UK gives India some £280 million a year in aid, far more than France does. And it comes on the heels of Sarkozy’s jibe about UK manufacturing.
But we must remember that decisions such as this must be made on the business requirements of the purchaser, not just because we bunged them a few quid in aid.
Image by Arnaud Gaillard via Wikimedia Commons
UK will receive explicit aid from India in the next 10 years after the collapse of the 1945 world economic order. India has already been doling out huge aid to UK by buying bankrupt UK companies and saving the ass of millions of lazy UK workers. Cameron was in India recently with a begging bowl. Vodafone got more than 2 billion in aid. Jaguar/Land Rover and Tetley were rescued by India. Tatas and Mittals are keeping UK afloat. How shameful of UK to show such ingratitude to India after receiving billions of aid from India.
jinjin lets look at it another way….Tata bought Jaguar LRover just as they were about to bring out new models. Tata struck lucky the new models were a runaway success – nothing to do with Tata , no Indians involved. India's car industry is very advanced isnt it? UK let Tata buy JLR, but India doesnt let foreign companies buy anything in India – they have to protect them as they are unsophisticated. India is still a backward country, it will take 100 years to get even close to UK. India buys Rafale because france helps nuclear industry – no other country has bought this cheap plane. UK gives aid to India but should give it to very poor african countries, not you ungrateful uneducated Indians
I remember discussing this with colleagues when Typhoon and Rafale made the short list. It seemed obvious to me that Rafale would win. It has an AESA radar, real strike capability, a carrier variant and no significant US components (not vulnerable to American sanctions). Typhoon loses on all counts.
I only wish I had had the courage of my convictions and bought some Dassault shares!
Thanks for the insight Fred.
Where is Michael Heseltine when you need him?