It's a battle-royale in the making. Rattled by the aggressive marketing of its fighter jets by the US, Europe came out with full guns blazing in the lucrative Indian arms battleground on Thursday.
The prize, after all, is the gigantic Rs 42,000-crore ($10.4-billion) project to supply 126 multi-role combat aircraft (MRCA) to IAF, which will be one of the largest defence deals in the world, as also the most fiercely contested among armament giants.
Over the last couple of years, the US government has put its considerable weight behind its aviation majors, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, in hawking their F/A-18 Super Hornets and F-16 Falcons to India. On Thursday, it was the turn of Germany, UK, Spain and Italy to jointly unleash their strong sales pitch for the "awesome" Eurofighter Typhoon fighter for the "mother of all defence deals".
"Typhoon is the most modern and capable fighter in the world today. The project is about giving substance to the strategic partnership between India and the European Union," declared German ambassador Bernd Muetzelburg, promising the full support of all four governments.
Bernhrad Gerwert, CEO of EADS (consortium of British, German, Spanish and Italian companies) military air systems, in turn, added: "As part of our industrial cooperation offer, we invite India to become a member of the successful Eurofighter company."
Europe's wooing of India comes in the face of its growing strategic embrace with US, which has seen Indian armed forces shed their long-standing distrust of America as a reliable long-term defence supplier. In a bid to grab the project, US is even promising spin-offs from its futuristic fifth-generation fighter programmes like the F-35 'Lightning-II' project.
Amid all this talk of "strategic partnership" with the US on one side and Europe on the other, the low-profile Sweden is positioning its Gripen fighter as "the independent choice" for India.
Yet another European nation, France, too, is hard-selling its Rafale multi-role fighter, banking upon IAF's good experience with French Mirage-2000s inducted in the mid-1980s.
Then, there is of course Russia, the long-standing largest defence supplier to India, with its MiG-35 jets. India and Russia have already agreed to a joint project for a fifth-generation fighter, with a lethal mix of stealth, beyond-visual range combat capabilities, super-manoeuvrability and supersonic cruising ability.
But that is in the future. The buzz now is for the MRCA contract, with the deadline for submission of commercial and technical bids to the Indian defence ministry ending on Monday.
Boeing, on its part, submitted its 7,000-page proposal to the US embassy on Thursday for forwarding to MoD. "We are offering India the most advanced and proven multi-role combat fighter in production today," said CEO of Boeing Integrated Defence Systems, Jim Albaugh.
India certainly has some hard choices to make. But apart from seeking best value for money, India is sure to factor in its geo-political considerations while finally choosing the winner. It will, however, take two to three years for the torturous technical evaluations, fields trials, commercial negotiations and the like to be completed.
Consequently, the first lot of the new fighters — 18 jets will be bought off-the-shelf, while the rest will be manufactured in India under transfer of technology (ToT) — are likely to arrive in India only by 2012 or so.
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