Days after the Indian Air Force leadership went on the record to declare India’s 2016 Rafale deal a far better arrangement than the one under negotiation by a previous government — the heart of a political storm gripping the election-bound country — things went further today. Making its defence of the Rafale deal official, in the only way the military can, a formal presentation today led by an IAF Air Marshal put forth a 10-point list of reasons why 2016 deal was cleaner, better and more economical than any earlier one.
Here’s a slide from the presentation made a short while ago on Wednesday:
Interestingly, the Indian Air Force has chosen also to comment on another fiery issue — the fact that India’s state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) was ‘ejected’ from the Rafale proceedings in 2016, while it was intended to be a manufacturing partner during earlier negotiations. The IAF has for the first time officially confirmed the well known rift between Dassault and HAL that notoriously stalled the M-MRCA in its final leg. Terming them ‘irresolvable differences’, the IAF will likely have only fed the political fire that’s burning.
The Indian Air Force’s staunch and well-defined defence of the Rafale comes a day after a civil society grouping of two former Union ministers of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and well-known lawyer Prashant Bhushan accused the government of firing off the shoulders of the Indian Air Force, and that ‘brave men and women in uniform’ had been enlisted to defend the Rafale deal.
While the Shourie/@PBhusan1/@YashwantSinha press conference on the Rafale today offered no real new information/data, one new element was their take on the @IAF_MCC's emphatic defence last week of the Rafale: pic.twitter.com/B8F6UEzxgr
— Shiv Aroor (@ShivAroor) September 11, 2018
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