India Getting Closer to France

Only Eurofighter and Rafale are left in the Indian MMRCA evaluation. Who will win? Who knows, but in the battle-proven aspect, Rafale is clearly in the lead with one tour of duty in Afghanistan and now doing all kind of missions in Libya. The Eurofighter has dropped a few bombs in Libya, but RAF mostly let the Tornado do the mud-moving and leave the Eurofighter to do the top-cover. The Eurofighter is not yet fully ready for air-to-ground missions.

The first part of the MMRCA evaluation was about fulfilling the Indian Air Force technical requirements. To get the best aircraft possible. The second part of the evaluation is about economy and industrial cooperation.

Technically the Rafale may be in lead, but what about the cooperation between French and Indian industries?

France has sold a number of aircraft to India over the years.

Besides the Russian aircraft (Su-30 MKI, Mig-29 and Mig-21), the main fighter aircraft in the Indian Air Force is the 51 x Mirage 2000H, which will now be updated to Mirage 2000-5 standard.

India has approved a $2.4-billion proposal from French defence groups to upgrade its fleet of 51 ageing Mirage fighter jets, a military source said on Thursday.

"The defence secretary has agreed to the proposal put forward by French defence majors Dassault and Thales and (European group) MBDA for the Mirage-2000 retrofit," the source in the Indian Air Force (IAF) told AFP.

The upgrade is expected to include advanced navigation systems, mission computers, electronic warfare systems and radars.

The deal was signed in 2010, but put on hold since France also made some business with Pakistan and were almost on the way to sign a contract to deliver avionics to PAF JF-17. France however decided that the Indian contract, including the chance of selling Rafale, was worth more than the deal with Pakistan.

Note: One very interesting aspect of the Pakistan deal was that the Rafale was out of the MMRCA evaluation for a while, but when France started cooperating with Pakistan they were back in again...

Russia may be the main partner in the Su-30 MKI deal, but there are a number of companies delivering western avionics to the aircraft, many of them French.

- SAGEM Sigma-95 integrated global positioning system and ring laser gyroscope inertial navigation system.

- Thales Topsight-I Helmet Mounted Sight is used in Indian Mig-29. A modified version will be integrated in Su-30 MKI by Indian manufacturer SAMTEL and HAL. Thales did also deliver the displays in the SU-30 MKI, but now they are delivered by SAMTEL in cooperation with Thales.

France do have some ongoing business with India. We will soon know if this will be enough to win phase two of the evaluation.

The Rafale has one other big advantage over the Eurofighter and that is the Rafale-M naval version which could come as a bonus for the Indian navys new carriers. This is however a requirement that is not included in the original specification used during phase one. But both Eurofighter and Gripen are looking into developing a naval version of their aircraft.

This review of the Rafale by a British pilot is worth reading.

Baltic Watch

The Swedish defence policy has during the last years focused on international operations. The national defence capability to stop invasion of Sweden has been demobilized and a lot of hardware has either been scrapped or sold on the second hand market.

Instead of being a neutral country between NATO Norway and Denmark and the Warszawa pact Russian Baltic states, Poland, East Germany, Sweden has moved closer and closer to NATO. First only as an observer taking part in NATO PfP exercises, but nowadays more NATO compatible then most NATO countries.

As of now the Swedish Air Force is part of the NATO United Protector mission against Libya. But there are still Air Force activities in the Baltic region.

The Swedish Air Force has been involved in the NATO PfP exercise BALTOPS. COMAO - Composite Air Operations has been trained together with units from other NATO countries and led by NATO E-3 AWACS.

In the Baltic states, NATO is responsible for the QRA - Quick Readiness Alert to guard the air space. As of now the French Air Force has replaced the previous JG 71 Jagdgeschwader Richthofen old F-4 Phantoms with their Mirage 2000. An interesting fact is that when Germany replaced the Czech Republic Gripen fighters in with their new Eurofighter Typhoons in 2009 they had serious problems with the availability of the Eurofighter. They had to repelace the Eurofighters with F-4 Phantoms after only a week of operations. Since Germany are still using the F-4 for QRA missions in the Baltic states there must still be technical problems with their Eurofighters. The German F-4 pilots use the nickname "Der Wunderwaffe" for the Eurofighters.

During the German session in the Baltic region there was time for a joint exercise with the Swedish and the Lithuanian Air Forces. This was the first time that the Swedish Air Force took part in NATO QRA training exercises, see the film below.

This training was going to be used live very soon. On July 14 Swedish Gripen fighters together with the French Mirage intercepted a Russian Il-20 "Coot" over the Baltic Sea. The Russian air craft was just watching the BALTOPS training, but the Swedes took the possibility to train together with the French aircraft.

Sweden is part of NATO operations in Afghanistan and in Libya, and now the Swedish Air Force take more or less official part in NATO QRA. When will the Swedish politicians officially acknowledge full Swedish NATO membership?