By Franz-Stefan Gady
New Delhi will, however, issue a new Request for Proposal (RFP) for the purchase of 90 fighter jets very soon.
It is official now: The Indian government has cancelled its $12 billion program to purchase 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA), according to Defense News.
“The RFP issued earlier for procurement of 126 Medium Multi Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) has been withdrawn. In this multi-vendor procurement case, the Rafale aircraft met all the performance characteristics stipulated in the Request for Proposal (RFP) during the evaluation conducted by Indian Air Force,” a July 30 press release circulated by the Indian Ministry of Defense stated.
The statement provided no additional reasons for the program’s cancellation, although the announcement comes as no surprise to observers. Pricing differences as well as the inability to come to a mutually satisfactory arrangement over the question of technological transfers, as well doubts over India’s ability to build the plane locally, were the likely main causes for the withdrawal of the RFP.
As I reported back in June (See: “India to Buy Only 36 Rafale Jets”), the price tag for $20 billion MMRCA project went up 2.7 times from the original cost proposal, according to Indian press reports.
Read the full story at The Diplomat