By
Sandeep Ghosh
IAF chief N.A.K. Browne
has stated that negotiations are on for the Rafale deal and are ironing out the
the details by march/april and hopefuly will be signing the deal by the end of
the year. From the stories that are floating in the public sphere there seems
to be a few issues.
Cost: Dassult seems to have bidded the rafale
costs based on winning contracts in Brazil, UAE, qatar etc driving it's unit
cost down. With only IAF in the kitty, it seems that Dassault wont be able to
keep the commitment on the costs.
HAL manufacturing and
the Reliance angle: There are rumors of
aparently HAL's inability to absorb the Rafale's manufacturing technology, and
dassaults insistence of letting Reliance being allowed to integrate
sub-systems. Dassualts end objective seems to ship A/c's in ckd's and
assembling them in HAL and reliance factories. Whereas HAL's insistence is to
get all the blueprints, tooling and fixtures for manufacturing Rafale's.
I am aware of HAL's
proficiency in manufacturing Russian as well as british aircrafts and see no
reason for which Rafale's technology would be a debacle for HAL. The reason
for hesitation of dassault apart from loss of revenue due to HAL's
manufacturing could be in a very separate project.
Snecma-Kaveri project
if successful has the potential completely replace the M88 Snecma
engine on the Rafale, which would definitely lead to a huge loss in
revenue, and bring huge advantage to India fielding same engine on LCA,
AMCA and Rafale. Maybe this one of the major reasons why
dassualt doesn't want HAL to take the lead in the Rafale project.
Food for thought:
comparison of Kaveri and M88 in current configurations
M88-2 Snecma
|
GTRE-GTX35VS-Kaveri
|
|
specs
|
||
Length
|
139.3"
|
137.4"
|
Diameter
|
35.4"
|
35.8"
|
Dry Weight
|
1977 lbs
|
2724 lb
|
compressor
|
3 stage LP, 6 Stage HP
|
3 stage LP, 6 Stage HP
|
Combustors
|
Annular
|
Annular
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Turbine
|
1 S HP, 1 S LP
|
1 S HP, 1 S LP
|
Dry Thrust
|
50kN
|
52kN
|
Wet Thrust
|
75kN
|
81kN
|
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