Typhoon or Rafale: DAC meet to decide on next combat jet

The mother of all defence deals is back in the headlines again. India’s Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) would meet today to decide on the future of the contract for 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft (M-MRCA). All eyes are on Eurofighter Typhoon and Dassault Rafale as to who would get go-ahead for the mega-deal. Both the short-listed companies are lobbying hard for the $10.4 billion deal. Recently German Ambassador to India Thomas Matussek described India as an “anchor of stability” in the region and said that was why Germany was giving it the best technology it possesses. Germany is a part of the four-nation consortium that builds the Eurofighter Typhoon. The other three countries are United Kingdom, Spain and Italy.[caption id=“attachment_101269” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“A Typhoon Eurofighter lands at the Farnborough Airshow on 20 July 2010 in Farnborough, England. Dan Kitwood/Getty Images”]  [/caption] Asked whether the ties between India and Germany would be affected if the Eurofighter does not get shortlisted, he said, “We don’t take this hypothesis. We will work very very hard to show that our product is a very good product. So we are not talking about Plan B. We are concentrating on Plan A.” On 27 April, India shortlisted the two European companies for procuring 126 M-MRCA deal for the Indian Air Force in which six companies were participating. The next day, US said it was “deeply disappointed” at losing out in the bid for India’s multi-billion dollar fighter deal contract but was “respectful” of the procurement process. In a statement, Ambassador Timothy Roemer , said he had been assured at the highest levels in the Indian government that the procurement process for the fighters “has been and will be transparent and fair”. “The US Embassy in New Delhi was informed on Wednesday that two aircrafts offered by the US government through the foreign military sales process were not selected for procurement by the Indian ministry of defence,” the statement said. “We are reviewing the documents received from the Government of India and are respectful of the procurement process. We are, however, deeply disappointed by this news,” Roemer said. He was commenting on the rejection of Boeing’s F-18 and Lockheed-Martin’s F-16 fighters by India. Roemer said he was “extremely confident” that the Boeing F-18IN and Lockheed-Martin F-16IN would provide the Indian Air Force an “unbeatable platform with proven technologies at a competitive price”. Under the offsets clause in the Defence Procurement Procedure, foreign vendors bagging deals worth over Rs 300 crore have to reinvest at least 30 percent of the contract amount into Indian defence, civilian aerospace or the homeland security sectors. In the M-MRCA competition, companies have to invest 50 percent of the worth of the deal into the Indian defence sector only.