France to deliver 35 Rafales by 2021-end, a solo fighter will join in Jan 2022

Given the reliability of strategic ally France, the Indian Air Force (IAF) and the Indian Navy have evinced keen interest in Rafale platform due to its weight to power ratio and maritime strike capabilities.

Published on: Jul 27, 2021, 14:52:28 IST

By Shishir Gupta, Hindustan Times, New Delhi

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France will have delivered a total of 35 omni-role Rafale fighters by end-2021 to India with a last fighter making a solo journey to soon to be activated Hashimara air base in north Bengal in January 2022. Already 26 fighters have been delivered with 24 landed in India and remaining two kept for IAF pilot and technician training in France.

A fully loaded Rafale fighter with Hammer, SCALP and Meteor air-to-air missile and munitions.

Given the reliability of strategic ally France, the Indian Air Force (IAF) and the Indian Navy have evinced keen interest in Rafale platform due to its weight to power ratio and maritime strike capabilities. Apparently, the IAF leadership wants to acquire another 36 Rafales in future and the Navy is looking at Rafale-M as a fighter option onboard INS Vikrant (Indigenous aircraft carrier-1), to be commissioned next year.

The induction of Rafale into western and eastern theatre has force multiplied Indian war making capabilities as the French fighter is armed with the longest range air-to-air Meteor missile in the sub-continent, Hammer air to ground smart munition and long range SCALP air to ground weapon. The Hammer missile, which has been acquired by India under emergency purchases, can be released at a height of mere 500 feet to hit a high altitude target more than 70 km away. The missile hugs the terrain and then climbs to a height of over 4000 metres before striking the target from a top down action. The Indian Rafales carry specially modified Hammer missiles due to high altitude targets, mountainous terrain and Chinese recently acquired Russian S-400 air defence systems. In fact, the French have offered to jointly develop Hammer and Meteor missiles with India with extended range and heavier payload.

While the French Rafale deliveries are slightly ahead of time, all eyes are on the activation of the Hashimara air base, which will house the second squadron of Rafale fighters with the first squadron being home based in Ambala. The presence of Rafale in India’s eastern sector will add teeth to its military response in the sector with both Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh being a defence priority.

The positioning of Hashimara is such that it covers the Chumbi Valley, Sikkim and the sensitive Siliguri corridor. While both Ambala and Hashimara are home bases of Rafale, the fighters with nuclear capability will be flying all over India and its littoral territories.

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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