New Delhi: India and France on Monday (April 28) sealed the deal in which the Indian navy will receive 26 Dassault Rafale-M (Marine) fighter aircraft to be deployed from the carrier INS Vikrant.Under the over-Rs 63,000 crore deal, the navy starting in mid-2028 will receive 22 single-seat fighters and four twin-seat trainer aircraft, which the defence ministry said will function as a “force multiplier” for the service’s existing carriers.All aircraft are expected to be delivered by 2030, the ministry said.Crew for the aircraft will receive training in France and India as part of the deal, which includes a simulator, equipment associated with the fighter as well as with the Rafale jets operated by the Indian air force, weapons and performance-based logistics.It also involves an agreement to set up a facility in India to produce Rafale fuselages as well as maintenance, repair and overhaul facilities “for aircraft engine, sensors and weapons”.“The deal is expected to generate thousands of jobs and revenue for a large number of MSMEs [micro, small and medium enterprises] in [the] setting up, production and running of these facilities,” read the ministry’s statement.As the Rafale-M fighters have commonalities with the air force’s Rafales, the former’s procurement will aid joint operational capabilities, it also said.After Union defence minister Rajnath Singh and his French opposite number Sebastien Lecornu signed the inter-governmental agreement, officials from either side exchanged signed copies as well as the aircraft package supply protocol and weapons package supply protocol in Delhi in the presence of defence secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh on Monday.Indian and French officials exchange documents related to the former’s procurement of 26 Rafale-M fighter aircraft. Photo: X/@SpokespersonMoD.Singh and Lecornu signed the agreement virtually after the latter deferred his trip to India for personal reasons, The Hindu reported.The cabinet committee on security had approved the import of the aircraft earlier this month.By the time the navy’s first Rafale-Ms arrive in India, around eight years will have passed since Vikrant was commissioned.Just before the carrier was commissioned in September 2022, former navy chief of staff Admiral Arun Prakash said that India’s “typically disjointed decision-making process” had led to the selection of carrier-based fighters to get “delinked” from the carrier project.“We knew the ship was likely to be commissioned this year … the selection process as well as negotiations [for the fighter] should have started well in time, perhaps three to four years earlier,” he told Reuters.In the interim, the navy has fielded the operationally deficient Russian MiG-29K/KUB fighters from Vikrant in a limited and transitional capacity.Speaking to The Wire, navy veterans admitted that operating a ‘fighter-less’ carrier was not only operationally ‘discomfiting’ but a public relations ‘disaster’ for the world’s fifth-largest navy, as such a state rendered it unable to fulfil its primary role of providing fleet air defence and executing strike and maritime interdiction missions.Senior navy officials have said that the Rafale-M aircraft are being procured as an ‘interim’ measure and that the service plans to eventually replace them with the under-development indigenous Light Combat Aircraft (Navy).