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| Dassault Rafale (MMRCA) |
The buzz of Aero India 2013 has commenced even though the event will be unveiled only on 6th February, the debate on aerospace issues in the defence media in India and abroad is on with full vigour. An issue worth considering is how the Aero India 2013 fulfill the larger mission of the Indian Air Force (IAF). A review of the IAF doctrine would provide a good perspective. In Part I we examine the combat fighter capability mission of the IAF and Aero India 2013.
The IAF has published a revised doctrine which has been released in September 2012 for larger public debate. The Doctrine is fairly comprehensive and outlines vision and mission of the IAF and the manner of its achievement. The doctrine envisages air power as the, “total ability of a nation to assert its will through the medium of air,” and increasingly includes both civil and military aviation as also integration of the space medium. In this sense it would also be important to integrate the capability of the aero industry in the country to provide the IAF the necessary tools to complete its mission. Research and Development are also an important addendum of the, “total ability,” of the air force to complete the assigned objective. The Doctrine has considered these issues though more could have been included.
The R & D and the aero industry capacity in the nation should be able to provide the IAF the tools to accomplish the vision and mission. This is where Aero India 2013 will pitch in.
The IAF vision is, “To acquire strategic reach and capabilities across the spectrum of conflict that serve the ends of military diplomacy, nation building and enable force projection within India’s strategic area of influence”. Towards this end flexibility and full spectrum capability determines the IAF mission.
Do the IAF acquisitions over the years provide it full spectrum capability, strategic reach, force projection and flexibility which seem to be the operative words in its vision and mission? The IAF has MiG-21, MiG-23, MiG-27, MiG-29, Jaguar, Mirage and Su-30 MKI aircraft as part of the fighter fleet. Quite obviously the MiG series has outlived utility and is on the way out, particularly the MiG 21 while the MiG 29, Jaguar and Mirage are under various stages of life extension upgrade.
The Su 30 MKI is the mainstay of the IAF and will be supplemented by the Rafale Medium, Multi Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) by 2015 or so and the Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA) by 2020. Under the current capability spectrum the IAF fighter inventory is not adequate hopefully as the newer generation fighters join the fleet this gap will be made up.
Will Aero India 2013 provide the direction to fulfillment of the combat fighter capability of the IAF for 2020? The ability of the Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) in particular and the integrating and manufacturing structures that it evolves will be important and need to be examined in detail. The Su 30 MKI is being integrated by the HAL in the country, its plans for integration of the MMRCA and later the FGFA will need some consideration. The Ministry of Defence has already clarified that HAL will be the principal integrator for the MMRCA. The plan of HAL to assemble 108 state of the art fighters for which it does not have the basic structures in place would have to be evolved to give a degree of confidence that the target of fielding these 4.5 generation fighters will be met. Dassault is now preparing a detailed project report on the transfer of technology (ToT) to HAL. Dassault had proposed to distribute a major portion of the work to its joint venture with Reliance Industries however it appears that this proposal is now turned down. HAL’s detailed proposal will need evaluation.
In the larger world of aerospace, integrating the air and space medium will be the next stage of exploitation by the IAF. The necessity is for evolution of an aerospace doctrine rather than an aerial one alone. The IAF while having initiated deliberations on such a doctrine seems to be still far away from enabling the same. More over space is a joint medium thus its exploitation will have to be considered jointly. In days to come a joint aerospace doctrine would be envisaged and the Aero India could manifest itself into Aero Space India.
This Article first appeared on Security Risks and is reposted here under a Creative Commons license.