Team Herald
NEW DELHI: The Meteor-beyond-visual-range missiles India is getting as part of the Rafale combat aircraft deal signed by the Modi government will re-establish its aerial supremacy over Pakistan and China, the defence ministry sources said.
They point out that the Meteor missile was not part of the Rafale deal done by the previous UPA government, but the Indian Air Force got it included as part of the weapons package.
Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman refrained from any mention of the Meteor missiles while replying to a series of questions on the Rafale medium multi-role combat aircraft deal, except to tell Samajwadi member Sukhram Singh Yadav not to compare the cost of 36 Rafale with the UPA’s contract for 126 aircraft as “the deliverables are significantly different” and the Modi government rather ensured a “better price.” Meteor missiles are that “deliverables” that she didn’t spell out for the security reasons.
In a written reply to the BJP’s Om Prakash Mathur, she said the government went for procuring 36 Rafale aircraft through government-to-government route to meet the “critical operational necessity” of the Indian Air Force and an inter-governmental agreement was signed on September 23 last year.
She denied any irregularities in the deal in reply to another question by Neeraj Shekhar (Samajwadi Party) and told K T S Tulsi, a nominated member and former additional solicitor general, that the agreement was signed with the approval of the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), skipping his query whether the CCS was consulted before or after the announcement of the purchase by Prime Minister Modi in France in 2015. Pakistan was deterred from using its fighter plane fleet during the Kargil war since the Indian side had two beyond-visual-range missiles — French S530D and Russian RVV AE missile. Former Pak Air Commodore Kaiser Taufel had admitted this in his blog that “the over-arching consideration was the BVR missile capability of the IAF fighters which impinged unfavourably on the mission success probability.”
The defence ministry source said that situation changed after Pakistan secured AIM120-C5 beyond-visual-range missiles with capability of taking out enemy planes at 100 km that were fitted on their F-16s. “But with the Meteor coming in now, we can again say that we would be able to completely dominate in terms of air-to-air battle with aerial adversaries,” they said.
They said even China does not have any proven air-to-air missiles that can be launched from any of their fighter planes. “One good thing about Meteor is that it has not yet been integrated with any American-origin aircraft and the Pakistani F-16s and the Chinese-origin JF-17s cannot get them in times to come as well. The possibility of the Chinese integrating them is also ruled out.” The IAF expects 36 Rafale planes contracted with France in 2016 to arrive in the country by early 2019. It has plans to deploy one squadron each of Rafale on the China and Pakistan fronts in Hashmira and Ambala respectively
