"The mother of all defence deals!"

I am referring of course to the planned acquisition of about 126 Multi Role Fighters by the good old IAF. The Aero-India show is in full swing, airplanes are floating around and so is the money. Its going to be a HUGE deal, think at least $17-20 Million for a lighter version and above $40Million for a heavy version of MRFs.

Add to that the planned acquisition of AWACS, Missile defence systems, UAV systems, and other assorted goodies, its going to be an early Christmas for defence contractors in Bang-a-lore!

The real question is of course, what should India buy. Should it be the awesomely maneuverable yet not so modernly equipped Mig 29s, or the impeccably cool and unnecessarily heavy Sukhoi 37s? Or maybe the battle proven and superbly equipped, but comparatively sluggish to handle F16s and F18s? Eurofighters, though shouting its head off to glory, is not yet battle proven. So unless we have an awesome deal on that, I dont think its going to happen. As for the other smaller players, there is the issue of Technology transfer and lifecycle cost.

We have been flying the Russian makes for a while now. They are good, reliable, super fast, agile, and extremely maneuverable aircraft. But at the same time, their avionics capabilities are a wee bit limited. That's not to say that putting excessive amount of computer screens displaying a helluva lot of info is the sure shot way of winning a dog fight, or even striking a bogey. But still, avionics go a long way in first strike missions. Awesome avionics capabilities should be on the radar of IAF anyway, if they want to survive in a net-centric battlefield.

The American makes are new to us, though rather sluggish compared to the Russian makes, they do come equipped with all sorts of gadgets that you could imagine. The most important part though, is that the avionics research in the US is a "very" current and active field. Being an IT based country, we sure want a piece of that pie. Under these circumstances scratching the self proclaimed Big Brother's back is not such a bad idea.

And Big Brother does need a back scratching, though bustling with economic prosperity in the defence sector, a deal of 126 Fighters could totally put the US defence industry in a vertical ascent mode. Not to say it will bring the fighter building arms of Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and a host of other suppliers out of the red.

But the key to the whole deal is going to lie in the following set of words: "Technology Transfer". Who is willing to give us the licence to manufacture the fighters in India, and a guarantee that all spare parts will be available even in the event of war. Well, Big Brother is reluctant to jump on that bandwagon. US is secretive about its defence program, it does not like to give out plans, and definitely likes to keep the final card under its control. If they do give us the green of tech transf. it will be HISTORY! A new chapter for Indian Aerospace industry. Well face it, Russia is not doing that well, and US is pouring bucket loads of money through proper channels in India. Plus we already have the licences for the Russian makes. The only question that remains is: do we want to go ahead and grab the Americans at the cost of upsetting Russia?

One final though, maybe we could just stick with the Russian makes, pressure them into selling us complete tech rights, and develop our own avionics and mission systems suite??


But then again, the threat to the nation is not current,