3 Rafale fighters to land in India on March 31, UAE to give mid-air refuelling

The India-French strategic ties have deepened further with Paris providing New Delhi with the latest technology through the joint development route.

Updated on: Mar 29, 2021, 16:44:53 IST

By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

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Three Rafale fighter jets are flying from France to India on Wednesday evening with key ally United Arab Emirates (UAE) Air Force’s Airbus 330 multi-role transport tankers providing mid-air refuelling over the Gulf of Oman. The Rafale fighters will join the Golden Arrows Squadron in Ambala, taking the squadron strength to 14.

The three fighters will take off from Merignac airbase in Bordeaux at 7am on March 31 and are expected to land in Gujarat around 7pm.

According to sources in Dassault Aviation, manufacturers of Rafale, the three fighters will take off from Merignac airbase in Bordeaux at 7am on March 31 and are expected to land in Gujarat around 7pm. The next batch of nine aircraft will take off next month, out of which five will be inducted at Hashimara airbase in north Bengal. The Rafale fighter is equipped with top of the line smart weapon systems and is designed for optimum damage to the adversary.

Also read | Quad, France and UAE join hands in 2 naval exercises to dominate Indo-Pacific

While the Indian Air Force (IAF) will get its two squadrons of Rafale fighters as per the 2021 delivery schedule, the Modi government is interested in the joint development of French Safran military aircraft engines in India under the Aatmanirbhar Bharat mission. Although the Rafale is powered with two M88-3 Safran engines with a thrust of 73 Kilo Newton, the national security planners want Safran engines of higher thrust (90 -100 KN) to power Defence Research and Development Organisation’s (DRDO’s) advanced multi-role combat aircraft (AMCA). AMCA will have two engines and will be equipped with state-of-the-art weaponry. DRDO's Tejas project is at present powered by GE-404 engines. All the military manufacturing will be concluded under government to government route with no room for any agent or middle-man.

Also read | Pak went back on its F-16 promise to US. How India fixed the gaps with Rafale

The India-French strategic ties have deepened further with Paris providing New Delhi with the latest technology through the joint development route. The India specific Rafales not only have the best weapons package available but this will continue to be upgraded from time to time.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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