By Ankit Panda
New Delhi is holding out for favorable pricing and guarantees that Dassault will invest in the country.
India’s order of 36 off-the-shelf Dassault Rafale fighters, announced in March during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s summit with French President Francois Hollande, is reportedly hitting more than a few roadblocks. Reuters reports that Indian government officials have been struggling to come to a set of final sale terms with the fighter’s manufacturer, Dassault Aviation. These new problems threaten to delay the delivery date of these fighters and their incorporation into the Indian Air Force (IAF).
News of the delay comes shortly after the Indian defense ministry formally announced that the country’s original request for proposal (RFP) for 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) had been scrapped. The March announcement between Modi and Hollande was seen as a stopgap agreement that would satisfy both Dassault, which wanted to close a sale on the Rafale without acquiescing to Indian demands to manufacture a number of fighters in India, and the IAF, which needed modern multi-role fighters to bolster its existing fleet of mostly aging aircraft.
Read the full story at The Diplomat