Pravin Sawhney

The Indian Air Force’s critical need for single-engine fighter aircraft can be addressed by putting four issues into perspective: operational urgency; geo-politics; requirement for ‘best technologies’; and contribution to ‘Make in India’ policy.

Speaking at the media interaction on October 5 prior to the Air Force Day, the air force chief, Air Chief Marshal B.S. Dhanoa made it amply clear that procurement of single-engine fighters to arrest the fast dwindling combat strength was his priority. Against the 42 combat squadrons that the Indian Air Force (IAF) needs to fight the two-front war, it officially has 33 squadrons, with another five to six squadrons literally on ventilator support. Thus, while the initial requirement is for 100 aircraft, this number, depending on the timely progress made on the LCA Mark 1A (doubtful), could shoot up to 250 aircraft. Given this huge quantity and limited funds, India would be looking at the best deal which balances its operational, geo-political and indigenisation targets.

On the table are the US’ F-16 Block-70 and the Swedish Gripen-E. In order to meet India’s Defence Procurement Policy-2016’s requirement of the Strategic Partner, US’ Lockheed Martin has signed a joint venture with Tata Advanced Systems Limited (TASL), while Sweden’s Saab has done it with the Adani Group. Both foreign vendors have promised to move their single-engine production line to India in order to add value to ‘Make in India’. And both have offered ‘best technologies’ with the President Saab, Hakan Buskhe telling me, “Gripen-E will be a totally Indian aircraft where even the source codes would be transferred.” While this could be dismissed as rhetoric since no nation would give away its ‘propriety technologies’, Saab does not even own up to 30 per cent of the aircraft’s key technologies — the propulsion system and the ASEA radar. Moreover, Saab’s claim of Gripen-E being 4.5 generation technology also needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. It is either 4^th or 5^th generation. Both aircraft, if you please, are fourth generation aircraft.

A digression at this stage is necessary to understand the geo-politics. The US Trump administration has gone steps ahead than any previous US administration in offering an extraordinary strategic partnership to India. The US wants India to be a partner for ‘a free and open Indo-Pacific region.’ Washington wants to arm and push India deeper into East Asia and the Pacific Region as a balancing power against non-conventional, natural calamities, and conventional threats (read China). The US secretary Rex Tillerson has publicly named China as the ‘power for disorder and predatory economic