Eurofighter to offer renewed bid for IAF order soon

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BERLIN: European aerospace consortium Eurofighter GmbH will re-submit its bid proposal this month for hard-selling 126 of its advanced fourth generation fighters Typhoon to the Indian Air Force (IAF), a top consortium official said on Wednesday.

Eurofighter completed the field evaluation trials of the medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) in April.

"We are re-submitting our bid to the Indian government for the IAF order later this month as the flight trials of the supersonic strike fighter have been completed in two phases, beginning in February," Eurofighter chief executive Enzo Casolini said here.

The consortium is one of the six contenders for the prestigious IAF order, estimated to be about $10 billion.

"We are offering a better proposal as the early one made in April 2008 expired 24 months later and in accordance with the provisions in the global tender for the MMRCA order," Casolini said at the 100th Berlin international air show on the outskirts of the German capital.

The tender mandates the winning bidder to deliver 18 fighters to IAF in ready-to-fly condition and licence the Indian defence behemoth Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) to manufacture the remaining 118 jets with technology transfer.

The IAF plans to replace its ageing Russian-made MiG-21 fleet with the MMRCA in phases over a decade.

The US-based Lockheed Martin F-16s and Boeing's F/A-18IN Super Hornet, French D'Assault's Rafale, Swiss SAAB's Gripen and Russian MiG-35 are the other five bidders for the MMRCA order.

"We had demonstrated Typhoon's outstanding operational capabilities during the flight trials when experienced IAF test pilots flew two of them under specific Indian conditions starting in Bangalore Feb 22," Casolini recalled.

The IAF has formed two teams of two test pilots each for flight trials. In the first phase, the technical evaluation was completed in early 2009 after the six vendors responded to its request for proposals (RFP) in 2008.

The fortnight trials included flying the twin-engine Typhoons at Jaisalmer in Rajasthan and Leh in Jammu & Kashmir to demonstrate its desert and high altitude capabilities in early March.

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