French firm Dassault has won a multi-billion dollar contract to provide 126 fighter jets to the Indian military, a government source in New Delhi told AFP on Tuesday. Dassault will sell its Rafale multi-role jet to India after beating the Eurofighter consortium to secure the long-awaited contract, which is estimated to be worth $12 billion. “You can take it as confirmed that Dassault has got the deal. Since there were only two companies and it has come out as the lowest bidder,” the government source told AFP. The French government also confirmed Dassault’s victory. “We have won the contract,” French Minister of State for Foreign Trade Pierre Lellouche told France’s BFM radio, while adding that “a certain number of things remain to be finalised.” Dassault Aviation shares soared more than 20 percent on the Paris Stock Exchange after the news broke. The huge contract to supply war planes to fast-developing India has been fiercely fought over for four years. India in April pulled a surprise by cutting out US bidders Boeing and Lockheed Martin — much to Washington’s disappointment — as well as dropping Sweden’s Saab AB and the Russian makers of the MiG 35 from the race. Dassault’s rival, Eurofighter, which had pitted its Typhoon aircraft against the Rafale, is a consortium of Britain’s BAE Systems, Italy’s Finmeccanica and the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS).
This is going to cause a big pressure on Pakistan's defense or national budget…
Pakistan knew about this, it's not something new. India is planning this for over 10 years. I'm sure PAF has a long term plan.
Pakistan already has 3 squadron of Jf-17 in service, Pakistan is expected to get another 200+ including block 2 and block 3 version of Jf-17. navel version of FC-1/JF-17 is going through testing phase and should be available for production by beginning of 2013.
Also, Pakistan should start receiving the first batch of FC-20 by 2014-2015 (depend on circumstances and budget).
By 2018 PAF should have …
200+ JF-17 (Block1, Block2, Block3)
100+ F-16
36-60 FC-20
Most likely all of the F-7 & Mirage III/V will be gone, retired by 2018.
It will be interesting to see how Russia will react to this deal. I this will definitely bring Pakistan-Russia close but I don't think Russia really has anything that PAF wants.
Comments are closed.