By Franz-Stefan Gady
Another week, another delay – the Indian Air Force’s fighter procurement crunch might not be over any time soon.
After last month’s announcement that India’s Tejas Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) program is encountering further delays, with final operational clearance postponed to March 2016 (See: “Surprise: India’s New Fighter Jet Faces More Delays”), the Indian Air Force (IAF) may experience an additional setback in increasing its number of operational combat squadrons.
According to IHS Jane’s Defense Weekly, industry sources state that the purchase of 36 French-made off-the-shelf Rafale fighters could face delays due to hiking costs and IAF demands to “customize” the platforms.
“They said the IAF wanted some avionics and weapon systems in the Rafale ‘modified and reconfigured’ to enable the eventual installation of indigenously developed and commercial-off-the-shelf systems and weapons. This could include India’s 80 km-range Astra beyond-visual-range-air-to-air missile, which is under development,” IHS Jane’s Defense Weekly reports.
Furthermore, Dassault Aviation, the French aircraft manufacturer building the Rafale fighter jets, may be unable to meet an early 2016-2017 delivery schedule of the planes due to pre-existing contracts with Egypt, Quatar and the French Air Force, according to defenseworld.net.
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