India Will Have To Bear Cost Of Rafale Weapons In Addition To Aircraft Price

India apart from the designated price for the 36 Dassault Rafale fighter jets from France will have to bear the cost of weapons that would be integrated to the fighter aircraft.

The cost of the ammunition suite of the Dassault Rafale will be an additional element to the final price of the aircraft being negotiated between India and France, sources in the Anglo-French weapons manufacturer, MBDA told defenseworld.net Friday.

MBDA has already sent its proposal to the Indian Air Force (IAF) that they can furnish the Rafale aircraft with a full weapon suite including Meteor, Mistral and Mica missiles besides laser guided bombs (LGBs).

The cost of these will have to be added to the estimated price of 36 Rafales believed to be between $ 7-9 billion. While the sources refused to divulge the price of the weapons package, they stated the government to government deal being negotiated now will take note of this.

The French weapons manufacturer has earlier sold MICA and Mistral missiles to the Indian armed forces. The latter is being used by the Dhruv ALH for its air to air capability, and as V-SHORAD (Very Short Range Air Defence) by India.

Milan ATGM is being manufactured by the defence public sector unit (DPSU), Bharat Dynamics Ltd (BDL) in collaboration with MBDA.

They also say that the Scorpene submarines, being built in jointly with another French giant DCNS by the Mazagon Docks Ltd (one has already been built) will be equipped with variants of Exocet anti-ship missile. The missiles that the Scorpenes will have include SM39, AM39 and MM40.

The AM39 is for air launch and MM40 is surface-to-surface missile.

They also have air-launched land attack cruise missile, which they want fitted on to the Rafales. However, there are doubts that the IAF and the Indian government will be willing to purchase the full weapon suite on offer from MBDA as the cost factor will come in the way.