India is Paying $288 Million Per Fighter For New Rafales: They Are Already a Generation Behind

On April 28 French Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu signed contract valued at $7.5 billion for the sale of 26 Rafale M carrier based fighter aircraft to the Indian Defence Ministry, marking the largest export deal in history between the two countries. The Rafale M is a carrier based variant of the land based fighter already operated by the Indian Air Force, which originally planned to procure 126 of the aircraft before cutting its order to just 36. At approximately $288 million per fighter including the costs of spare parts, armaments and equipment, the Rafale M fighters are some of the most costly combat aircraft ever exported, with the cost thought t have been a primary factor leading the Indian Navy to reduce its planned procurements from 57 carrier based fighters to just 26. The Rafale is a fourth generation fighter class that first entered service in 2001, and although the latest variants benefit from heavily modernised avionics and weaponry their performances still suffer from wide ranging limitations compared to modern fifth generation fighters such as the American F-35C or Chinese FC-31. With the United States placing extensive restrictions on how its carrier based F-18E/F and F-35C fighters can be operated, while Russia’s own carrier based fighter industry has stagnated significantly, the Rafale M was able to gain orders despite its significant shortcomings due to a lack of significant competition.

The Indian Navy is expected to begin receiving Rafale M fighters in 2029, and to see deliveries completed in 2031. The Rafale M is not only a generation behind Chinese and American fifth generation carrier based fighters, but also has significant disadvantages when compared to both countries’ advanced fourth generation carrier based fighters the J-15B and the F-18E/F Block III. These include use of significantly weaker engines, carriage of a much smaller radar, lack of a dedicated electronic warfare variant for support, and the lack of folding wings which makes onboard storage significantly more challenging. The Chinese J-15B’s own radar is well over twice as large as that carried by the Rafale M, while its weapons carrying capacity and range are over 50 percent longer. The Rafale M’s standing is set to further diminish in the early-mid 2030s as China and the United States begin to introduce their first sixth generation fighters into service, which will leave the new French supplied jets effectively obsolete by comparison within approximately half a decade of their delivery.

Both China and the United States are set to deploy sixth generation fighters from their own aircraft carriers, with both countries deploying carriers with advanced electromagnetic propulsion systems allowing their aircraft to take off with significantly greater weights. While the limitations of India’s much smaller aircraft carriers previously imposed major constraints for its naval aviation capabilities, the allocation of tremendous funding to procuring a fighter which is very far from cutting edge is expected to further seriously limit the country’s naval ambitions. Critics of the Rafale deal have argued that funding would best be allocated either to the country’s own troubled fifth generation fighter development efforts, to procuring a carrier based variant of the Russian Su-57 fifth generation fighter, or to developing more advanced variants of the existing Tejas fourth generation carrier based fighter. The major cut to 54 percent of planned Rafale M procurements represents a compromise between these funding priorities, with the possibility remaining that the Navy will consider the Su-57 should the fighter first satisfy the Air Force’s requirement. The limited number of Rafale M fighters procured means that the aircraft are likely to operate as part of combined air wings with Tejas or MiG-29K carrier based fighters that are currently already in service.