Key points
- Dismal showing of India’s Rafales has triggered a wave of allegations between India and France
- Indonesia launches audit of its recent deal with Dassault after poor performance of the Indian-owned Rafales in Pak-India conflict
- France is punching back at India—pinning pilot error rather than deficiencies in Rafales jets
- India refusing to permit Dassault’s audit team to gain access to India’s arsenal of Rafales
ISLAMABAD: The dismal showing of India’s expensive French-built Dassault Rafales in its recent conflict with Pakistan has triggered a wave of accusations between the Indian and French governments, according to a report of an international magazine, The National Interest.
Not only has the unimpressive display of the Dassault Rafales in the opening phases of the recent conflict come as a shock to the entire world, but other clients of French defense contractors are having second thoughts, the international magazine reported.
READ ALSO: Top French Newspaper Criticizes Indian Air Force
According to The National Interest, as was first reported last week, Indonesia has launched an audit of its recent deal with Dassault to purchase a handful of the fighters. It reported that, though no reason was given for the audit, it is transparently clear that Jakarta is worried about the poor performance of the Indian-owned Rafales in Pak-India conflict.
India refuses to allow French auditors access to Rafales
This week, in order to salvage the Rafale’s reputation, France is punching back at India—pinning the losses on maintenance and pilot error rather than deficiencies in France’s most advanced fighter jet.
Unconfirmed reports in the global press and across social media suggest that the Indian government is refusing to permit Dassault’s audit team to gain access to India’s arsenal of Rafales. Dassault’s auditors want to inspect the Indian fleet of Rafales to ensure that there are no technical problems that the Indian Air Force (IAF) may have missed, according to The National Interest.
The Indians are certain to be twitchy about this request. Why? New Delhi understandably fears the French auditors’ main purpose is to shift the blame on the poor performance of the Dassault Rafales onto the IAF itself.
India’s Air Force has lacked readiness for over a decade
After the loss of India’s Rafale jets in the opening phase of its recent war with Pakistan, some have speculated that the Rafales were not the problem at all. Instead, they have insinuated that poor IAF pilot training and lax maintenance standards over the course of many years are to blame. The French are trying to cover for the fact that their complex Rafale jets are no longer superior enough to Pakistan’s Chinese-built aircraft to justify their vastly higher price tag.
The National Interest reported that of course, there is ample evidence to suggest that Dassault, whose pride has been clearly wounded, might have merit to its concerns. After all, in December 2024, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India and the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence reported on a recruitment crisis that was affecting India’s military. According to its reports, the IAF was “grappling with a critical shortage of pilots”—a shortfall that “increased from 486 in February 2015 to 596 in 2021, underscoring the growing challenge in maintaining operations readiness,” as Shivani Sharma of India Today reported on December 20, 2024. The CAG report is even more damning of the IAF’s tireless but ultimately unsuccessful efforts to recruit an additional 222 trainee pilots between 2016 and 2021.
Clearly, the French auditors are aware of these issues. They were well documented, but ultimately went unaddressed for a decade before the war erupted earlier this month.
Personnel shortages delayed the attempts by the IAF to repair operational issues with critical training aircraft, such as the Pilatus PC-7-Mk-II. Without reliable training birds, coupled with a serious lack of qualified pilots, the IAF was poised for a failure if war erupted.
As for the Parliamentary Committee, they indicated that the pilot-to-seat ratio of 1.25:1 for fighter aircraft was insufficient for “high-intensity operations” of the kind that defined India’s four-day war with neighboring Pakistan. The IAF then possessed a meager 31 fighter squadrons, when the country’s air doctrine called for a minimum of 42. The IAF then failed to phase out older aircraft and bring in new ones in a timely manner, further degrading its defense readiness.
Rafales get shot down by Pakistani Air Force
So, the question then becomes: why did those Rafales get shot down by Chinese-built Pakistani Air Force (PAF) warplanes and their Chinese-made PL-15 air-to-air missiles? Was it because the Indians bought overestimated French weapons and platforms, or was it simply because the Indian military was poorly prepared for the fight at hand?
Pakistan’s excellent performance
Of course, the crisis within the IAF cannot by itself explain the excellent performance of Pakistani PL-15 missiles against what were supposedly India’s superior air capabilities. In other words, despite whatever readiness issues there were with the IAF, they cannot camouflage the problems with the French weapons and warplanes that India was using against Pakistan.
Nor should anyone dismiss the very real strides the Chinese have made in terms of producing systems that are on par with, or perhaps even better in some cases, than the expensive and complex Western systems.
Meanwhile, the Indians are sharing their displeasure with Dassault, the French maker of the Rafale warplane, publicly. One of India’s biggest gripes against Dassault is that the French firm has persistently refused to share the source code for their Rafales with the IAF, despite India’s position as a longtime client, according to The National Interest.
Blame game
The Chinese have been having great fun with these stories on different platforms of social media. After all, why shouldn’t they? Chinese weapons and warplanes outperformed expectations in the war. When news about the inability of India to access Dassault’s source code broke—at roughly the same time India captured an intact Chinese PL-15 missile—one of Beijing’s so-called “wolf warrior” diplomats took to X to mock New Delhi: “India spent $288 million per Rafale, and they don’t even have access to the source code. These Indians also claim they can ‘extract the software’ from the burnt out wreckage of a PL-15 missile. Yet, they can’t even access the core functions of their own Rafale jets?”
This was a fair question raised by the Chinese account. It highlights the gap between the propaganda surrounding the so-called military supremacy of India and the reality.
The National Interest concluded that the bottom line is this: for whatever reason one prefers, India was unprepared for the high-intensity of the war with Pakistan at the start. Ultimately, India likely bought the wrong platforms from Western defense contractors who overcharged and underdelivered. While France and India will continue to point fingers at one another, they ultimately share the blame for the obvious failures at the start of the war.
