India may follow the Rafale route to buy a limited number of F-35 fighter planes in a limited government-to-government deal, according to a report.
The report comes days after US President Donald Trump said at a press conference with Prime Minister Narendra Modi that the
United States would sell F-35 warplanes to India to among other military equipment. Even though Trump sounded upbeat about the deal, Indian officials downplayed it.
The Economic Times has now reported that the Narendra Modi government may buy a limited number of F-35s as a stopgap measure to manage the acute shortage of fighter planes in the Indian Air Force (IAF). The deal, if it goes through, will be similar to the one with France’s Dassault for 36 Rafale warplanes in 2016.
The IAF is currently facing a historic shortage of fighter planes. Against the sanctioned strength of 43 squadrons,
there are currently just 31 squadrons in service. The effective strength is just 29 as two squadrons of MiG-21 aircraft are minimally operated over safety concerns.
India is unlikely to make F-35 as the mainstay of the IAF or procure it in bulk.
Instead, any purchase of F-35 will likely be to manage the acute shortage of aircraft at the moment, according to ET.
The newspaper reported that the F-35 deal will not be a replacement for the indigenous fighter plane under Advanced Multirole Combat Aircraft (AMCA) programme.
However, the government is not going to wait for the AMCA to be realised as AMCAs, if everything goes right, are not expected to enter the service before 2036. However, the timeline is almost certain to get delayed as the track record of Indian manufacturing is very poor.
There may be some additional conditions on F-35s.
The ET reported that the United States will want to keep a watch on fighter planes to ensure that personnel from other nations, such as Russia, do not access them. Moreover, the United States is against the integration of F-35s with Russian S-400 air defence system.
As of now, it is not known if India is indeed buying F-35. In the only official response so far,
Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said that the process to acquire F-35s has not yet started and talks are “at the state of proposal” at the moment.
“There is a process by which platforms are acquired. You are well aware of that process. There is in most cases a request for proposals that is floated. There are responses to those. They are evaluated. I don’t think with regard to the acquisition of an advanced aviation platform by India, that process has started as yet. So this is currently something that’s at the stage of proposal, but I don’t think the formal process in this regard has started as yet,” said Misri.
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India may follow Rafale model to buy F-35 fighter planes in limited govt-to-govt deal: Report
