MRFA – A competition between F-15 EX & Rafale

MRFA Program

MRFA is going to be Buy Global and Make in India program to procure 114 fighter jets for Indian Air Force. 18 out of 114 fighters will be directly imported from foreign OEM. The next 36 fighter jet will be made in India. The payment for the same will be done partially in Indian currency and foreign currency. This will constitute the 1st order of MRFA containing 54 fighter jets. The next batch of order will consist of 60 fighter jets. The execution and completion of the next 60 fighter jet order will be the responsibility of the Indian firm in JV with the foreign OEM. The payment for this order will be completely made in Indian currency. This will further aid to increase the indigenous components in the fighter jet to 60%.

MRFA Update

There is a new update coming related to Indian Air Force MRFA program, according to which the Air Force will issue RFP in mid of 2023. Earlier we have reported that IAF is studying the responses to the RFI issued in April 2018 and the Air Staff Qualitative Requirements for the current proposal are being finalized prior to seeking Government approval. Once IAF finalize its ASQR, MOD will issue RFP followed by price negotiation. If we are very optimistic the entire process is going to take at least 2 years which takes us to the end of year 2024. Once the deal is signed it might take another 2 years before the selected OEM starts delivering the fighter jet to IAF. Again, this is very optimistic speculation which can further delay. It would be interesting to see if MRFA would be able to take-off successfully in the given timeline.

Two contenders for MRFA

While there is hug list of contenders for the MRFA program, the competition is mainly between two fighter jets which are US F-15 EX and French Rafale. The later has an upper edge as Indian air force is already operating 36 Rafales and have hugely invested in its modification, pilot’s training, buying & weapons package. At the same time Indian Air Force has no experience of flying American origin fighter jet.

The per unit cost of F15EX is $87.9 million, with per hour flying cost of $32,500. At the same time the price of the Rafale ranges between $100 and $120 million per aircarft in the most basic configuration while its operational cost hovers around US$28,000 for every flight-hour.

F15EX clearly has cheaper per unit cost but it has high operational cost. Capable of flying at Mach 2.5 the F-15EX is the world’s fastest fighter aircraft. It carries 13.5 tonnes of weapons load and a range of 1,000 nautical miles (1,850 kilometres) & can strike targets deep inside enemy territory. Rafale is capable of flying at 1.8 Mach and can carry 9.5 tonnes of weapons load.

The F-15 EX features a quadruple-missile racks called Advanced Missile and Bomb Ejection Racks (AMBERs) with each rack capable of carrying 4 missiles. With four AMBERS under each wing and another under its belly, an F-15X could potentially carry 20 long-range AIM-120D missiles plus, two short-range AIM-9X missiles on wingtip rails taking the total count of missiles it can carry to 22 which is massive and no fighter jet at present possess that capability.

The F-15 EX clearly has better range, weapons pay load capacity than Rafale. However, it comes with a huge RCS. While the RCS of Rafale varies from 0.5 to 2.0, the RCS of F-15 EX varies from 1.5 to 3.5. Further Rafale has better manoeuvrability than F-15 EX. Rafale has overall better performance when comes to BVR and dog fight.

Both the fighter features an integrated EW suite. The heart of F-15 EX electronic warfare capability is Tactical Electronic Warfare system (TEWS) just like SPECTRA for Rafale.

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