Though David Cameron and the other leaders of the four country consortium which manufactures the Eurofighter Typhoon (UK, Germany, Spain and Italy) have all been somewhat whiny about the selection of the French (Dassault) Rafale for the 126 aircraft Indian MMRCA deal it seems highly unlikely that the Typhoon can make a comeback.
The life-time cost of the contract is evaluated at about $20 billion with an initial contract value of about $10-12 billion. The ToI reports that the Rafale deal was evaluated as being $5 billion (about 25%) cheaper than the Eurofighter. Though the evaluation probably considers a total of about 189 aircraft (126 +63 in phase 2) it still represents a life-cycle cost difference of some $26 million per aircraft and not just the $4-5 million lower initial acquisition cost per aircraft (bid-price). It seems almost impossible for the Eurofighter to match this difference. The first 18 aircraft have to be delivered in “fly-away” condition from mid-2015 onwards. The next 108 aircraft will have to be delivered from HAL in India at about 6 per year initially going up to 20 per year.
Exclusive negotiations between Dassault and the Indian Ministry of Defence start next week.
It was the “substantially higher cost” of acquiring and operating the Eurofighter Typhoon that led to its ejection from the almost $20 billion MMRCA (medium multi-role combat aircraft) project to supply 126 fighters to IAF.
The k2p blog 