After a long delay and gap, India is looking to induct 36 Rafale from France starting September 2019 to arrest the downfall in the number of combat aircraft squadrons of the force.
New Delhi: Unperturbed by the Congress’s allegations of corruption in the Rafale deal, a high-level Indian Air Force team will be visiting France next week to oversee the manufacturing of the 36 planes ordered by it and evaluate the flight test and training of its pilots by the French aircraft manufacturer Dassault Aviation.
"A senior-level team led by Deputy Chief of Air Staff Air Marshal Raghunath Nambiar would be in France from September 15 to 22 and will supervise the ongoing training and flight test evaluation of the Indian planes there. They would also be inspecting the weapon systems that are to be integrated with the Indian planes including the SCALP and METEOR missiles," government sources told MyNation.
After a long delay and gap, India is looking to induct 36 Rafale from France starting September 2019 to arrest the downfall in the number of combat aircraft squadrons of the force. Against the recommended and authorised strength of 42 squadrons — to be prepared for the eventuality of a two-front war — the Air Force has got only 31 and that number is also likely to go down further if new fighter aircraft are not procured quickly, as around 11 squadrons of MiG-21 and MiG-27 are to be phased out in the next four to five years.
The Air Force has also defended the acquisition and transparency involved in the project as recently, Air Marshal Nambiar made it clear that the Narendra Modi government had acquired the planes at a price 40% less than what the Congress had negotiated for and also rejected the charges of any kind of favouritism in the allocation of offset contracts to Indian private vendors.
Congress president Rahul Gandhi and his party have been making allegations about the Rafale deal saying that the Modi government’s 36 Rafale plane deal in 2016 was a “scam” and that the planes are overpriced by at least Rs 1,000 crore per aircraft.
Air Force has said that the allegations about the lack of transparency in the deal are unsubstantiated as the entire negotiation process was done by Air Force officers who have ensured complete transparency.
The 36 planes acquired under a Rs 60,000 crore deal by the Modi government are expected to start arriving in September 2019 while the entire fleet would be delivered by the year 2021-22.
The Air Force is in favour of buying more Rafale aircraft to arrest the number of its dwindling fighter plane strength.
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