Now SAAB Pitches Gripen Fighter To Snare India
After the failed attempt of F21 saga now it is the turn of the Sweden’s SAAB group to snare India in its net. A pre-tender pitch for an order for 114 fighter aircraft the Company has declared that its Gripen E single-engine fighter is on offer for half the price India has paid for the Rafale.
They forget that Rafale is a larger, twin-engined aircraft and therefore in a league above the Gripen but to confuse the issue SAAB is still pitching its single-engine aircraft as a dramatically cheaper solution for the same role. They probably think that IAF does not know much about things that fly.
In an online media briefing, Magnus Skogberg, Gripen Campaign Director for Finland revealed that the price offered for 64 Gripen E fighters is 6.5 Billion Euros, which includes the cost of a sustainment package for a decade as well as transfer of technology to Finland. The weapons package has been offered for an additional 1.5 Billion Euros.
This weapons package is similar in capability to the one India has acquired in the 7.8 Billion Euro deal for 36 Rafale fighters. It includes the Meteor, IRIS-T, KEPD-350 Taurus and the Spear.
The Finland tender also involves the procurement of two Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C) aircraft along with 64 fighters. SAAB has offered two GlobalEye platforms at an additional 1 Billion Euros.
India paid an estimated price of 216.7 Million Euros (Rs 1,820.9 Crore) apiece for the Rafale in the 2016. Without the weapons package, the cost was approximately 194.4 Million Euros (Rs 1,633.5 Crore).
The current Gripen price, as disclosed by Skogberg, is 125 Million Euros (Rs 1,050.4 Crore) with the weapons package and 101.6 Million Euros (Rs 853.7 Crore) for the bare aircraft. However the fighter to which Gripen can be compared is the Tejas Mk1A whose contracted price is just Rs 578.3 Crore for the bare aircraft. Also it is our own indigenous fighter and we are soon going to fly even the Mk2 version, a much superior fighter.
In 2012, when French Rafale was declared the winner of India’s after a hard evaluation by the IAF to purchase 126 Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA), the Gripen could not meet the technical requirements of the IAF. From a field of six competing fighters in what was billed as the ‘Mother of all Competitions’, only the Rafale and the Eurofighter were adjudged technically compliant by the IAF. Both the Rafale and the Eurofighter are twin-engined fighters.
The tender got aborted in 2015 reportedly over an impasse in contractual negotiations between Dassault of France and HAL over local manufacturing. However India in 2016 made a stand-alone, emergency purchase of 36 Rafale fighters for 7.8 Billion Euros off the shelf.
However the IAF’s requirement for six additional squadrons of jet persists to increase the Squadron strength. Given present limitations of manufacturing Tejas Mk1A,Tejas Mk2 and the AMCA, acquiring six additional squadrons of another fighter jet through a manufacturing line in India is essential to the IAF’s plans to take its fighter aircraft strength quickly to 45 squadron. Whereas for a two front war IAF must be provided with at least 54 Squadrons.
The Multi-Role Fighter Aircraft (MRFA) programme to acquire 114 foreign jets through transfer of technology under the ambitious Strategic Partnership model has to be seen in this context. The MRFA is poised to be a re-run of the abortive MMRCA with some changes. This time around, SAAB claims to have overcome the deficiencies because of which it was technically relegated a decade earlier.
SAAB is aggressively pitching its economy trump card and seeks to make the MRFA competition about reliability at low cost. “The Gripen offer ensures twice the number of fighters airborne at half the cost,” Skogberg boasted, claiming a winning combination of low price and high serviceability.
What probably be most suitable for India is that, HAL and a private Indian Company must get together to manufacture at least six squadrons of Tejas Mk2 and one squadrons of AMCA by 2030. This will raise the IAF squadron strength to 43 Squadrons ( 15x Sukhoi Squadrons + 6x Tejas Mk1 / Mk1A, 3x Mirage2000, 4x MiG29 + 6x Jaguars + 2x Raffle + 6x Tejas Mk2 and 1x AMCA). To this may be added off the shelf purchase of another two squadron of Rafale and may be 3x Squadrons of SU57 MKI to give an edge against J20s and others.
