New Delhi: By approving the import of 26 French Dassault Rafale-M (Marine) multi-role carrier-borne fighters (MRCBF), the cabinet committee on security (CCS) has finally rescued the Indian Navy (IN) from the operational embarrassment of having commissioned aircraft carrier INS Vikrant in late 2022 but without an effective combat air-wing complement.However, even then, deliveries of the 22 dual-engine, canard delta-wing single-seat fighters and four twin-seat trainers to operate off the 40,000-tonne short take-off barrier arrested recovery or STOBAR Vikrant will begin 37 months after the deal for them is signed sometime later this month, or by around mid-2028.Thereafter, these transfers are likely to be completed by 2031, or nearly nine years after the indigenously designed and built carrier was commissioned to augment the IN’s strategic autonomy and power projection in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) in response to growing Chinese hegemony in the area.In comparison, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) that presently operates two locally sourced carriers and is conducting sea trials on a third, not only builds and refits these platforms in half the time it took to design and construct Vikrant, but was significantly ahead of the IN in embarking fighters and rotary assets aboard them.On the eve of Vikrant’s commissioning in September 2022, former IN Chief of Staff Admiral Arun Prakash had declared that due to India’s “typically disjointed decision-making process”, the selection of carrier-based fighters had got “delinked” from the carrier project, and that a decision to acquire them was pending.“We knew the ship was likely to be commissioned this year,” Admiral Prakash told Reuters in August 2022, adding that hence “the selection process as well as negotiations [for the fighter] should have started well in time, perhaps three to four years earlier”.Other IN veterans echoed Admiral Prakash’s views and 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.One one-star veteran, declining to be named, impishly compared commissioning Vikrant without its own ‘dedicated’ fighter fleet to launching a super race car without an engine.Meanwhile, in the interim, the IN has had no choice but to field the questionable and operationally deficient Russian MiG-29K/KUBs fighters from Vikrant, albeit in a limited and transitional capacity.Over the past 31 months these fighters, which comprise the air-arm of INS Vikramaditya (ex-Admiral Gorshkov), the navy’s 44,750-tonne refurbished Soviet-era Kiev-class carrier, have been conducting deck landings and take-offs from Vikrant to train pilots and validate its flight operations.But a cross-section of veteran naval pilots said Vikrant’s ‘real potential’ would only be realised once the Rafale-M fighters were fully integrated several years hence.Not planning for Vikrant’s fighter fleet was not the first major operational error on the IN’s part and that of the Ministry of Defence (MoD): acquiring 45 MiG-29k/KUBs between 2004 and 2010 for $2.29 billion, as part of Vikramaditya’s and the under-construction Vikrant’s air arm, was the first.Russia, which at the time was refurbishing Vikramaditya, shrewdly reasoned that it would be practical for the IN to buy MiG-29K/KUBs because of their commonality with the Indian Air Force (IAF)’s 60-odd MiG-29 fighters, inducted into service from 1985 onwards.They cleverly persuaded gullible IN officers and MoD officials that indigenously available technical support and associated logistics for spares and maintenance for the IAF’s MiG-29s would support the IN’s MIG-29K/KUBs.Years later, the same logic has proven relevant to acquiring Rafale-Ms, as the IAF too operated 36 Rafale fighters.The fundamental difference, however, was that both French aircraft had a proven technological and operational track record, unlike that of the hugely problematic Soviet/Russian platforms.But at the time, India’s procurement revived Mikoyan’s flagging MiG-29 naval variant programme, rendering the IN as Russia’s sole overseas customer for the MiG-29K/KUBs. The Russian Navy, for its part, till recently operated some 20 MiG-29Ks and four KUB trainer versions or almost half those in service with the IN, but details on their current status was unknown.In the meantime, the IN’s 45 Russian fighters – 16 earmarked for Vikramaditya and 29 for Vikrant – failed miserably in ‘adequately meeting’ the navy’s operational requirements, as they were found to be incapable of delivering their weapons payload to their stated range with a full fuel load.In its July 2016 report, India’s Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) severely criticised the IN for technically accepting the MiG-29K/KUB fighters, despite them being “riddled with problems” and containing “discrepancies” and “anomalies”.In its excoriating audit presented to parliament, the CAG revealed that these deficiencies included shortcomings with the naval fighter’s airframe, its RD-33 MK engines and fly-by-wire systems – in short, the entire fighter.The watchdog’s report also stated that the fighters had suffered repeated engine failures, with at least ten cases of single-engine landings.Of the 65 RD-33MK turbofan engines received from manufacturer Klimov, the IN had rejected or withdrawn at least 40 from service.The CAG noted that the carrier compatibility of the MiG-29K during deck operations were yet to be fully proven and multiple modifications were being effected to liquidate defects. One of these included the ruggedisation of the fighter’s fuselage, but differences between the IN and the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) – Mikoyan – led to a stalemate that is believed to have only been partially resolved, industry sources said.The fighters’ arrestor gear performance and landing dynamics too were problematic, and reports of cracks in tail sections, discovered after two of five MiG-29K/KUB accidents between 2009 and 2022, in which at least one pilot died, also raised red flags.“For a carrier strike role, navies require high readiness and turn-around of its fighters,” said a retired naval fighter pilot. The MiG-29Ks struggled to provide that when required, he added, requesting anonymity.Consequently, the operational availability of the MiG-29Ks between 2014 and 2016 fluctuated from 15.93% to 37.63%, while that of the MiG-29/KUB trainers was between 21.20% and 47.14%, the CAG disclosed.The report also revealed that these technical deficiencies would considerably reduce the MiG-29Ks’ overall service life of 6,000 hours and that even its full-mission simulator had proven “unsuitable” in training pilots for carrier operations.And though the CAG report came nine years ago, the technical problems it highlighted are believed to endure in great if not increased measure, industry sources said.Additionally, the MiG-29K/KUB fleet continued to face severe maintenance problems, as a large number needed repair after each deck landing that damaged many of the fighters’ on-board components.There were also complaints from the IN regarding Russia’s inability to incorporate all agreed-upon features onto the MiG-29Ks. This resulted from the 2014 sanctions, still in place, imposed on Moscow by the US, the European Union and other international organisations for its military intervention in Crimea in Ukraine, which had been contracted originally to provide several of the MiG-29K’s components.Since Russia was consequently unable to integrate these systems and subsystems onto the fighters, the IN was left with little choice but to import them directly from Ukraine.These were then integrated onto the fighters at the Hansa Indian Naval Air Station, where the first batch of 16 MiG-29K/KUBs were formally inducted into service in May 2013 as part of the 303 Black Panthers squadron, but with limited assistance from the OEM.Industry sources said this aspect too had adversely impacted the fighters’ overall efficiency, but the IN declined to officially comment on the matter.Hence, all these innumerable adversities ruled out making the MiG-29Ks part of Vikrant’s combat arm and led to the navy issuing a request for information (RfI) in January 2017 for 57 MRCBFs in fly-away condition for Vikrant.The RfI for the day-and-night, all-weather-capable single or twin engine MRCBF required the platform to conduct air defence and air-to-surface operations, buddy refuelling, reconnaissance and electronic warfare missions.Active electronically scanned array radars, infrared search-and-track systems, laser rangefinders and helmet-mounted or direct retinal displays were also mandated fitments, as were four beyond-visual-range and two all-aspect air-to-air missiles.The RfI also required the shortlisted platform to be able to accommodate assorted indigenously developed and commercial off-the shelf equipment.The tender for the MRCBFs was scheduled to have been dispatched by end-2019, deferred from the earlier mid-2018 deadline, but for undisclosed reasons the choice for Vikrant was limited thereafter in 2022-23 between Rafale-M and Boeing’s F/A-18E/F ‘Super Hornet’.Senior IN officials have iterated that the Rafale-Ms were being inducted as an ‘interim’ measure and, in due course, would be supplemented and eventually replaced by the under-development indigenous twin-engine deck-based fighter (TEDBF), also known as the Light Combat Aircraft (Navy).For this, the IN has deferred by some three years to 2029-30 its deadline to conduct the first flight of the prototype TEDBF, under development by the Aeronautical Development Agency and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited.Subsequently, it would only be ready for series production and induction by 2038, but industry sources said extended slippages remain endemic in all such ambitious domestic programmes.In the meantime, the CCS’s Rafale-M procurement decision avoids a massive credibility gap for the IN, sparing it from the awkwardness of sailing a world-class carrier in the IOR with no world-class aircraft.After years of flaunting its indigenous carrier building capability, the CCS has finally measured up and fulfilled the IN’s need to operate fighters off it.