Rafales and self-reliance

India seeks self-reliance even as it faces the strategic challenge of a real two-front threat scenario. This calls for defence requirements to reacquire budgetary priority

The “Vertical Charlie” by a lone Dassault Rafale stole the show at the Republic Day Parade 2021, we are told. For the Indian Air Force (IAF), the arrival of the third batch of Rafales the next day marks a less vertical ascent, but nevertheless, an overdue process of generational upgrade in combat capability. Just as 68 years earlier, when Dassault’s Ouragans arrived at Palam and ushered the IAF into the era of jet fighters.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, while formally inducting the first Rafales into the IAF at Ambala in September last year, made headlines with a warning to India’s adversaries.