India is clearly a key player in shaping the future of Chinese power, globally and in the Pacific. At the same time, the significant 2nd and 3rd world fighter market will be dominated by exports from China, Russia, India or Brazil. Neither the US nor Europe is planning a lower cost export fighter. Indian leadership when they saw the Chinese role out of the J-20 understood its impact on global markets. This is an advanced aircraft which will have implications for upgrades for customers of Chinese fighter aircraft.
The Bush and Obama Administrations have seen the Indian fighter contract as a cornerstone of building military relationships as part of the curtailment of China. The elimination of the US aircraft has been largely interpreted by US commentators as due to the inability of the US to transfer advanced technology to India, the US lost. This is at best a generous interpretation.
These are 40 year old air frames; and the uncertain technology transfer process surrounding the US offerings certainly raised questions in the Indian minds about the ability moving forward to upgrade its new franchise combat aircraft. Either Eurofighter or Rafale promise a much newer airframe, with upgrade paths. And a merging of India with European combat aircraft expertise could provide a significant boost to exports into the 2nd and 3rd world. And this puts the Europeans dead center into the question of the evolution of Chinese military capabilities. They will be part of the effort to constrain China, whether they want to or not.
I would concur with the view that the uncertainties about transfer of technology and sovereignity aspects were part of the problem, but would say that the key factor in the US loss was the obsolescing nature of the products offered. Forty year old airframes stretched to the limits of their upgradeabilty potential had little chance to compete with the state-of-the-art aerodynamic designs of Eurofighter Typhoon and Rafale. In a market where the potential threat scenario going forward is very serious, the Indian Air Force chose, after an extensive and thorough assessment, the most advanced platforms. Given the nature of the potential future threat and given the non aligned status of India any other choice would have been unwise. By the time the MMRCA fighter enters service both Typhoon and Rafale will be able to offer the latest generation of AESA radars and advanced long range air-to-air missiles (Meteor). I guess which type will finally be selected may boil down mainly to price and offset arrangements. It looks like Typhoon has scored higher than Rafale. This should not come as a surprise given the superior supersonic and engine performance of Typhoon and a bigger AESA radar associated with a higher volume coverage.
Read this due to a web site called stumbleupon. This isn’t not blog post I would regularly read, but I liked your spin on it. T