Updates about Rafale and LCA Tejas

Updates about Rafale and LCA Tejas

   Some Recent updates about both the LCA Tejas and the Rafale aka medium and Light fighter, as the  Rafale and LCA almost missed it's induction date, the Ministry plans for some alternate solutions to fulfill the Requirements.  recently some information's floated in the media's about the cost escalation of Rafale and missed deadlines of Tejas's Final operational clearance which is the reason of the delay.

   The two factors mainly  the Rafale is offset clause and more weapon integration, at first the Offset clause, earlier in the MMRCA competition, the Supplier will invest 50% of deal value in India, in both Public and private sectors, as earlier projected some six to eight billion dollars will be invested back into Indian Companies by french firms once the contract and Settlements finalized, but India formally scraps the MRRCA tender by early this year and Defense Minster confirms the same in Parliament, as a new announcement in Paris made by Prime minister about direct acquisition of  some 36 Rafale.

    But the same also need bunch of bureaucracy  clearance before making final contract, for both Indian and French delegations in Talks to finalize the contract and about the Offset clause, to Full new procurement plan the French agreed to invest only 30% deal value in India, as India wants it should be 50% , so both of them in negotiations  for the Offset clause, so it's clear it took more than a month to clear the negotiations, whether it's 30% or 50% or somewhere between 30-50%.

    The second most negotiation is the Weapon integration, The IAF insists the deal to use the Indian made Astra BVR missiles into the Rafale Aircraft, and also raised about firing the Air to ground missile Brahmos, for that French asked more money since it's need a small hardware and computer changes including algorithm to support foreign weapons into the Rafale since the Rafale's computer and Radar will designed to coupled with French and European weapons, not the Indian and Russian Standard weapons. so for that French asked more money to for the structural and algorithm changes, but here India Contract negotiation committee negotiating about the cost escalation.

    By coming LCA, there were several critical issues, as meant the radar nose cone and flight refuel probe delay from the European companies,which makes the LCA program takes one more deadline and  pushed it to next year for Final operational clearance, there is no clear information who is delaying, either the HAL or the supplier, also till the HAL doesn't delivered the ordered IOC standard Aircraft to the IAF, there is a Assembling problem is also raised, earlier some reports mentioned due to lack of capacity of HAL, Government plans to scrap the HAL from LCA project and plans to handover the project to some Private Companies, but the news is not verified.

   another issue is the lack of Internal Electronic countermeasure, the Defense Minister reported that the missing Internal ECM suites in the Tejas, which saves the fighter from threats,  but due to the small size fighter, in the early days such systems are huge in size, So it's hard to house inside the light aircraft, but now it's available in Tiny size, but this will be added only in the Mark 2 version of Tejas, Defense Minister told in Parliament.

    Another is the Maintenance and logistics nightmare, HAL fails to answer the questions raised by IAF about the maintenance of Tejas fighter, IAF found lack of spare and engineers to resolve problems after deploying the Fighters under the IAF, every fighters Needed to be checked before making the sortie for the Base need huge number of Ground support crew's, 

    as these Two major problems in Both Rafale and Tejas, It looks like their is no sign of good news this year,