India to buy 110 fighter jets from the US; could be the biggest defence deal in recent years
India is going to increase its sky power tremendously in the midst of a concerns over many issues from neighboring countries such as China and Pakistan. India is going to buy 110 fighter planes from the US. It is believed that this is the world’s biggest defence deal in recent years.
The Air Force has today released RFI (Request for Information) or the initial tender worth billions of dollars. The deal will be with the government’s Make in India initiative. Officials said that with the intention of bringing state-of-the-art defence technology in the recent strategic partnership model, in collaboration with Indian company, foreign aircraft manufacturers will create a combat aircraft.
In the event of the deal, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Saab and Dassault are expected to join other military aircraft manufacturer companies. The Air Force is pushing for speeding up the procurement process of the aircraft, referring to the falling capacity of its combat aircraft fleet to eliminate some old planes.
This will be the first major deal for the fighters after the government canceled the purchase process of 126 Medium Multi-Role Fighter Aircraft (MMRCA) for the Air Force five years ago. Instead, the NDA government had signed a deal of 7.87 billion euros (about Rs 59,000 crore) with the French government to purchase 36 Rafael Double-engine fighter planes in September 2016.
Assuming the sources, the Air Force had earlier decided to replace MiG-21, MiG-27, which would be retiring in the next four to five years. In this process, countries such as America, Sweden, Russia can join.
From the beginning of 2019, the IAF will start getting two squadrons. According to the government response in Parliament, the Indian Air Force will get 32 Fighter Squadron and 39 Helicopter units by 2020. Significantly, the 10 squadrons, including MiG-21 and MiG-27, are retiring till 2024.
