ldev wrote:OK no package deal if you must. But a deal for the supply of a Thales radar for the Tejas? They bid for the Tejas radar contract and at least as of October 2017, a full year before Elta was awarded the contract there is an excerpt from a news report:
That was the point of your entire argument - a package deal.
But since you would like to pivot away from that and change the goalposts, I will play along!
ldev wrote:In the meantime in the one year between Thales having an AESA radar suitable for the Tejas and the award of the contract MBDA wrote 5 letters to the IAF saying that HAL must choose any European radar which had been approved by the 6 nation consortium for the Tejas if the IAF wanted the Meteor missile integrated with the Tejas.
So HAL should be obligated to Thales because they wrote five letters? Is that honestly your line of reasoning?
You highlighted the paucity of smartness in our procurement system, but you forgot the cardinal rule of procurement - tendering. HAL had to put out a tender....that is how the system works ldev. Is the basic nuts & bolts of procurement. Put out a tender, do a technical downselect and then select L1. That is the A-B-C of procurement. To circumvent that process will invite charges of nepotism and corruption - what RaGa accused NaMo of doing in the fake Rafale scam. No PSU will want to touch that scenario with a ten foot pole.
The very same MBDA that wrote five or how many ever letters to the IAF Chief, HAL and everyone else highlighting all the security concerns they had with integrating the Meteor onto the Tejas (fitted with an Elta AESAR) will gladly do the integration of that very Meteor missile when the Tejas is fitted with the Uttam AESA. In South Korea, MBDA has agreed to integrate the Meteor with the KF-X which is set to have an AESAR from Hanwha Systems. See below and once again, please take note of the source of the link...
South Korea to integrate MBDA's Meteor missile onto KF-X fighter aircrafthttps://www.mbda-systems.com/press-rele ... -aircraft/22 Nov 2019
Éric Béranger, CEO of MBDA, said: “We’re very pleased to mark this next and important step in our partnership with KAI and the Korean Defence Acquisition Program Administration. South Korea is a strategic market for MBDA, and we’re proud that Meteor will be providing KF-X with the world’s most potent air-to-air capability.”
Tendering allows the GOI to state that a competition was held among all the OEMs who responded to the tender and the OEM that met all the requirements of the tender - at the least expensive price - was the one who won the contract. Do you even *
remember* Bofors? That same procurement system was used to select the GE F414 for the Tejas Mk2 which was in competition with the EJ200 from Eurojet.
Why would the IAF spend $2 million euros for each Meteor missile, when they can get the same capability for way cheaper with the Astra Mk2 and SFDR? When that happens, watch how MBDA will come offering all sorts of goodies for Meteor integration with Tejas.
MBDA is not even interested in integrating Meteor on our upgraded Mirage 2000s. They cited the reason of it being too expensive to do. At the end of the day, MBDA is a for profit organization and they will make business decisions which will give them the greatest return but at the same time, protect their intellectual property. The concerns they raised in their numerous letters were valid concerns to them. Yet this same concern does not exist with South Korea and neither will it exist when the Uttam is installed on the Tejas.
ldev wrote:And yet inspite of Thales having demonstrated a perfectly workable AESA radar with the Tejas and MBDA having expressed its inability to integrate with a non European radar on multiple occasions to the IAF, on October 26, 2018, HAL signed an agreement with Elta for the Elta 2052 radars thereby ruling out the Meteor for the Tejas.
Think why MBDA does not want to integrate the Meteor with the Elta on the Tejas and why they will integrate that same missile on a South Korean fighter. Think about that and you will get your answer and it has nothing to do with a dysfunctional procurement policy at the MoD.
ldev wrote:It is my understanding that the current Rafale deal includes integrating Brahmos NG and the Astra with the RBE-2AA. If that is indeed the case then it could also have been negotiated with Thales to integrate the Astra and the Brahmos NG with the Thales radar on the Tejas had it been chosen.
Same as above ---> if MBDA is willing to install BrahMos NG and Astra with the RBE-2AA on the Rafale, what is the issue with doing the same on the Tejas with an Elta radar? Who is the root cause of the issue? MoD? HAL? IAF? or Elta? India or her procurement system is not the issue here. Because if it was, as you allege, why would Thales agree to install BrahMos and Astra on the Rafale?
ldev wrote:The only reason IMO that Elta 2052 was chosen was pricing because the Elta 2052 was already being priced out with upgrading the Jaguars. This is a perfect example of being penny wise and pound foolish. How much more expensive would the Thales have been. Double the price? Even if the Thales radar had cost Euro 15 million more per unit for integration, IMO it would have been more than worth it for the benefit of having the Meteor without losing the ability to integrate Astra, Asraam and Brahmos NG. A total of 80 Rafale and 216 Meteor equipped Tejas would have made the IAF formidable without even considering the SU-30 upgrades. There would have been no need for any further MMRCA.
IMO, HAL the IAF and the MOD babus who were dealing with Dassault were completely out of sync and out of touch with each other and the result is a dysfunctional procurement policy.
Let us take your scenario of the Thales AESAR being double the price of her Elta counterpart to its logical conclusion.
Please explain how the MoD Babu in charge of overseeing the procurement would approve such a scenario? The DPP 2016 does not permit that and he knows that really well. What reasoning will he write on the file?
And without his approval that file will not move. You expect him to know anything about Meteor? Last month he was in charge of grain imports and working out of the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers' Welfare. As part of babu rotation, he then gets transferred to the Ministry of Defence. To him, rice grain and Meteor missile are the same damn thing - a commodity - that has to follow the procurement process. That is what he is trained to do during his civil service tenure. He does not know the inner workings of Elta AESAR and Thales AESAR, but he is in charge and he is not going to risk his pension or his job to please the IAF. That Babu will not approve acquisition of an AESAR that is more expensive than its counterpart that
took part in the tender and
met the stipulations of that tender.
Next year, as part of babu rotation, he may get transferred to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare where he may be in charge of condom acquisition for Family Planning Clinics. Grain = Commodity, Thales AESAR = Commodity, Condom = Commodity...you get the idea?
So what can the IAF do, if they want to see the Meteor end up as an option on the Tejas? Develop Uttam and then MBDA will likely be open to the idea of Tejas-Meteor integration. But will the IAF go down that path, once Astra Mk2 and SFDR come on board? Will the IAF spend their precious CAPEX on 100 Meteors for the Tejas, when they can get 175 Astra Mk2 and/or SFDR for the same price?
