Rafale-M once inducted, will ensure full fighter strength on both aircraft carriers
The Rafale-M fighter jets, 26 of which were contracted last week, once inducted from the second quarter of 2028 onwards, will enable the Indian Navy to field both its aircraft carriers with the full complement of their fighters. However, the jet as well as the flight deck of the carrier would need slight modifications for the Rafale-M to be able to fit on the lifts and for optimal performance.
'The lifts would need some modifications for the Rafale-M to fit in and as the Indian carriers use a ski-jump, the overall system would also need some changes,' a source said.
On the aircraft, the wing pylons of Rafale need to be taken off, which takes a few minutes, before they can be moved on the lift, another source said. The lifts on board a carrier are used to move the jets and equipment between the hanger below and the flight deck above.
The consolidation of the capital allocation in the defence budget done two years back, doing away with service-specific capital allocation, also came handy in prioritising the payments for the Rafale deal, that was earlier planned to be concluded in the previous fiscal.
The delivery of these aircraft would begin in the second quarter of 2028 and be completed by the end of 2030, with the crew undergoing training in France and India.
Inter-governmental deal
On April 28, India and France concluded an Inter-Governmental Agreement for the procurement of 26 Rafale-Marine jets – 22 single-seater and four twin-seater — for the Indian Navy. The agreement includes training, simulator, associated equipment, weapons and performance-based logistics (PBL) for five years costing nearly ₹64,000 crore. The cost of the deal was not officially mentioned. The deal also includes additional equipment for the existing 36 Rafale fleet of the Indian Air Force, which, officials said, includes some support and maintenance equipment. Rafale-M would be capable of operating from both the carriers – INS Vikramaditya and INS Vikrant.
The country's first indigenous carrier INS Vikrant, measuring 262 metres long and 62 metres wide, can operate an air wing of 30 aircraft comprising MiG-29K fighter jets and, in the future, Rafale-Ms, Kamov-31 early warning helicopters, MH-60R multi-role helicopters and indigenous Advanced Light Helicopters (ALH). Both the carriers use the STOBAR (short take-off but arrested recovery) method to launch and recover aircraft for which it is equipped with a ski- jump to launch aircraft, and three 'arrester wires' for their recovery.
The Navy and Defence Ministry were keen to conclude the deal in the 2024-25 financial year. Funds were earmarked in the capital budget. However, as the deal got delayed it would have meant that unspent money would be returned to the Finance Ministry.
Capital utilisation
To avoid that and to optimise the capital utilisation, the Union government cleared and concluded another mega-deal that was in the pipeline but was to be concluded early fiscal year 2025-26: the deal for 156 Light Combat Helicopters (LCH) with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) at a cost of ₹62,700 deal was advanced and concluded on March 28, 2025. 'The doing away of the service-specific capital allocation has been beneficial in better managing the procurement cycles,' one of the sources cited above observed.
The Rafale is a multi-role aircraft capable of undertaking air defence, escort, maritime strike, strike against shore targets, reconnaissance and buddy refuelling missions. The Navy had procured 45 MIG-29K jets from Russia along with INS Vikramaditya. Around 40 jets are available now but their serviceability rates have been not been up to the mark, which leaves a gap in fighter strength in case both carriers are deployed simultaneously.
In the case of the IAF Rafales, the contract had stipulated that its manufacturer Dassault Aviation be part of the performance-based logistics to ensure 75% availability rate of the fleet.
The Indian Navy aircraft carriers with its full complement of fighter aircraft have the ability to exercise sea control and strike enemy units at extended ranges while remaining well outside enemy weapon ranges, a Navy source observed, adding 'The Rafale will also effectively provide the Navy with an ability to effect operations on land through shore strikes.'
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Indian Express
18 minutes ago
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Decode Politics: ‘Bharat Mata', ‘Mother India', ‘Vande Mataram': As another row erupts, what lies beneath
IN THE SPACE of a week, Kerala has seen two rows break out over a portrait of 'Bharat Mata'. First, the LDF state government relocated its World Environment Day celebrations from the Raj Bhavan, claiming that the photo of Bharat Mata on display at the event was 'one used by the RSS'. But, days later, Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar paid tributes to the same image during Goa Day celebrations at the Raj Bhavan. Objecting to the use of the image at Raj Bhavan, CPI leader and Agriculture Minister P Prasad said, 'A seat of a constitutional body should not be using this.' Arlekar, who recently took over as Governor after a long period of fractious relationship between the LDF government and Raj Bhavan, hit back, saying, 'Whatever be the pressure from whichever quarters, there will be no compromise whatsoever on Bharat Mata.' State BJP leader N Hari also attacked the LDF, claiming 'they are afraid to say Bharat Mata… due to vote bank politics'. While the symbolic icon of Bharat Mata, or Mother India, has often been depicted in art, there is no official version of the portrayal. The image used at the Kerala Raj Bhavan, for instance, depicted Bharat Mata holding a saffron flag in front of a relief map of India. The Left objected to this. Another image, used by the CPI for a local party event in the middle of the row incidentally, showed Bharat Mata carrying the Tricolour. As the BJP celebrated the Left's use of the image, the party hastily withdrew the same. In the history of modern Indian art, Bharat Mata has adorned the canvas of only two artists of repute. The first was the product of the Bengal Renaissance, Abanindranath Tagore, who first visualised the Indian nation as the Mother. The second was the modernist M F Husain, whose painting of Bharat Mata was banned and trashed – and he was forced to spend his last years outside his country. The imagery first appeared in the works of artists and writers in Bengal, much before it was used elsewhere in the context of India's national movement for Independence. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay's 1882 novel Anand Math contained the hymn to the motherland Vande Mataram, which became the mantra of the freedom movement, and the official song of India after Independence. The novel depicts the three faces of Bharat Mata as Goddesses Jagaddhatri, Kali and Durga. Two decades later, in 1905, after partition of Bengal under Lord Curzon, Abanindranath painted his iconic Bharat Mata, a woman in saffron robes, with a serene face and halo around her head, beads and scriptures in her hands. The revolutionary Aurobindo Ghose wrote in a letter to his wife Mrinalini Devi in August that same year: 'I look upon my country as the Mother. I adore her, I worship Her as the Mother. What would a son do if a demon sat on his mother's breast and started sucking her blood?' Mother India retained her symbolic force through the national movement, even though the metaphor often changed with the speaker who employed it. In The Discovery of India, written by him in jail in the 1940s, Jawaharlal Nehru recounted his experience when people greeted him with slogans of 'Bharat Mata ki Jai'. 'Who was this Bharat Mata, Mother India, whose victory they wanted?… Mother India was essentially these millions of people, and victory to her meant victory to these people,' he wrote. The first major enunciation of the Mother India concept came in the writings of Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya. 'The foundation of our nationalism is Bharat Mata,' he wrote. 'Remove Mata, Bharat will be reduced to just a piece of land.' 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Fifteen years after the Partition of Bengal, in August 1920, Aurobindo underlined the limits of the slogan and sought a greater mantra: 'We used the Mantra Bande Mataram with all our heart and soul… (but) the cry of the Mantra began to sink and as it rang feebly, the strength began to fade out of the country… A greater Mantra than Bande Mataram has to come.' The first two paragraphs of Bankim's Vande Mataram were adopted as the national song after Independence. The government did not retain the verses that mentioned either 'sapt koti', or the eulogies to the Goddesses Durga and Lakshmi. The obvious reference to Bengali nationhood was removed. Almost up to Independence, few underlined the religious overtones of the slogan, and it remained an essential mantra of an occupied country, a rallying call for its people. It found little resistance from other communities until 1947, when during the Partition riots, 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' was perceived as a communal slogan, the same as 'Allah-o-Akbar'. But, barring some isolated voices against Vande Matram, Mother India remained a largely benign concept that did not attract controversy. During the Ram Janmabhoomi movement of the late 1980s, however, 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' was used for communal mobilisation. Now Bharat Mata was an aggressive image, carrying swords and other weapons, and sometimes riding a tiger. The Anna Hazare movement of 2011, one of the biggest mass mobilisations of recent decades, which shook the Central government and paved the way for the emergence ultimately of Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party, used the image of Bharat Mata as the rallying point for an anti-corruption crusade. More recently, in February 2023, the Indian Council for Historical Research, an autonomous body under the Ministry of Education, faced 'objections' over a photo of Bharat Mata in its office, alongside pictures of President Droupadi Murmu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In early 2016, after allegedly anti-India slogans were raised at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, leading to a sedition case against its then students' union president Kanhaiya Kumar, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said that youth should be taught to chant 'Bharat Mata ki Jai'. AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi shot back, saying he would not chant 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' even if a knife were put to his throat, prompting the Shiv Sena to tell Owaisi to 'go to Pakistan'. RSS general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale then referred to Owaisi as 'anti-national' and a 'traitor'. Later, in March 2016, AIMIM MLA Waris Pathan was suspended from the Maharashtra Assembly for refusing to say 'Bharat Mata ki Jai', even as he said he was willing to chant 'Jai Hind'. At the time, the BJP, Congress, Shiv Sena and NCP together backed a resolution to suspend Pathan for the remainder of the Budget Session. However, weeks after the controversy, BJP veteran L K Advani called the row over the slogan 'meaningless', while Bhagwat said nobody should be 'forced' to say 'Bharat Mata ki Jai'. In 2020, in the aftermath of the Delhi riots, former PM Manmohan Singh said the slogan was 'being misused to construct a militant and purely emotional idea of India that excludes millions of residents and citizens' while speaking at the launch of a book titled 'Who is Bharat Mata'.
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Make-in-India Rafale fuselage: A strategic move forward
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Mirage 2000 performed exceedingly well in the 1999 Kargil conflict, which took place over some of the highest terrain in the world. Easy maintenance and a very high sortie rate made the Mirage 2000 one of the most efficient fighters of the IAF. Later Mirage was the chosen platform for the Balakot Strike, and took active part in Operation Sindoor. Rafale, the Winner of MMRCA Competition IAF needed additional medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA). The aircraft in the fray for this Indian tender were Lockheed Martin F-16C/D, Mikoyan MiG-35, Saab JAS 39 Gripen, Dassault Rafale, Eurofighter Typhoon, and the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. The 126 aircraft were to fill the gap between the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) and the in-service Sukhoi Su-30MKI air superiority fighter. On 27 April 2011, after an intensive and detailed technical evaluation by the IAF, two fighters, the Typhoon and Rafale, cleared technical evaluation. 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Subsequently, the HAMMER (highly agile modular munition extended range) glide bomb was bought. The Indian Rafale is a modified version of the F3R standard. The two squadrons are located at two different air bases. Both these airbases have infrastructure and capacity for an additional squadron each. French has already tested the F4 variant with upgraded radar, improved HMDS, OSF (long-range optoelectronics system) will add IRST for detecting and identifying airborne stealth targets at long range. It will be more effective in network-centric warfare, with more data exchange and satellite communication capacity. Make-in-India Rafale Win-Win for India, France Indian Navy has just ordered 26 Rafale-M, French Air and Space Force and Navy have combined orders for 286. Other operators with confirmed orders are IAF (36) Croatia (12), Egypt (54), Qatar (36), UAE (50), Indonesia (42), and Serbia (12). More orders are on the way. The current production rate is 25 aircraft a year. It will take nearly 10 years to meet existing orders. France desperately needs another production in India will be for all global customers. India's capability to make global class aero-structures has been proven with cabins of Apache AH-64, Sikorsky S-92 helicopter and Lockheed Martin C-130J Super Hercules aircraft. India also makes Lockheed Martin F-16 wings. India makes the entire indigenous Light Combat Aircraft (LCA). Making the Rafale fuselage in India will work out much cheaper for France. Induct 114 Rafale: Best Way Ahead Traditionally India and France have been enjoying an exceptionally warm relationship, which is the fruit of deep affinities and the unwavering trust between the two countries since India's independence. France is considered as the most reliable Western 'friend'. France has never imposed any sanctions or tried to arm-twist India. IAF regularly carries out Garuda series of air exercises with the French Air Force since 2003. The latest 'Garuda VII' was held at Jodhpur in November 2022. French air and Space Force (FASF) also participated in IAF multilateral exercise 'Tarang Shakti' in August-September 24. IAF is already down to 30 fighter squadrons' vis-à-vis the authorised 42. India has a two-front war threat. IAF urgently needs more fighter squadrons. The Request for Proposal (RfP) for 114 new 'Make-in-India' is still to be sent out. A full-fledged selection process could take 6-8 years. Rafale is a tried and tested aircraft. India has already paid for one time India specific enhancements. We have spare capacity at existing IAF Rafale bases to take more squadrons. There is 95 per cent commonality between the IAF and Navy Rafale. Most recent aircraft deals have all been G2G. Rafale has already been a winner of a contest in which similar competing aircraft were involved. India already has a large variety of fighter fleets. Multiple fleets are a logistical nightmare. To save time, it would be prudent to acquire 114 Rafale 4.5 generation aircraft. Initially, India would mostly make the fuselage airframe. As we go along, more sub-parts and components will be manufactured. If India chooses to make 114 Rafale for IAF, the order numbers along with the Navy would go up to 140. India could thus insist on making the entire aircraft in India. India could also tie-up with France's Safran for India's fighter aero-engine development. It will make better economic sense for IAF also to choose Rafale and acquire the latest variant F4 in a G2G deal and make it in India in larger numbers to amortise costs. The writer is former Director General, Centre for Air Power Studies. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost's views.
