Indian Armed forces have power to purchase weapons on emergency basis up to 300 cr. Air Force has signed a deal to purchase HAMMER missile for its Rafale fighters under this provision.
India is getting first batch of Rafale fighters this month. These fighters will be armed with best in class beyond visual range Air to Air Meteor missile and deep strike long range air to surface Scalp missile. But Indian Rafale doesn’t have a medium range air to surface missile. French Rafales are armed with HAMMER medium range air to surface missiles. India decided not to purchase HAMMER missile in Rafale deal as the cost would have escalated and opposition would have raised so many questions. Another reason was that India had already purchased Spice 2000 missiles for its Mirage 2000 from Israel. The same missile was used in attacking terrorists camps in Balakot, Pakistan last year.
India had evaluated both Spice 2000 and HAMMER in 2012 for Mirage 2000. Both missiles have similar capabilities but Spice 2000 was almost half the price of HAMMER. So, India decided to purchase Spice 2000 missiles. The idea was that the same Spice 2000 missiles would be fitted into Rafale. But the situations have changed now. India needs a medium range Air to surface missile now to target any Chinese bunker or post in Ladakh region. As India is receiving Rafale now, it will take some time to integrate Spice 2000 missiles into Rafale (the same way a fitting steering wheel of BMW to Mercedes will take some time). As HAMMER missles are already used by France in their Rafale and it needs no integration, IAF went ahead with emergency purchase. In addition, France have assured India that they will deliver HAMMER missiles quickly and they will divert missiles build for French fighters to India.
Now let us come back to the politics and let us look the tweet of Congress leader Manish Tewari .
If India would have purchased actional HAMMER missile as part of original Rafale deal then Congress leader Rahul Gandhi would have said that price of Rafale is very high (more than his actual allegations). Due to budget constraints, many times India buys main weapon platforms without its supplementary weapons. Like T-90 tank arrived in India without its Russian armor and INS Vikramaditya arrived in without its air defense system. Later these systems were fitted on those platforms. It was quite natural to think during Rafale deal that India would integrate Spice 2000 missile on Rafale to save cost but this is an emergency situation. And emergency situation needs emergency measures. And this is decision of Armed forces as they have power to buy weapons up to 300 cr. without lengthy Govt. approvals. As of now India is buying somewhere around 100 HAMMER missiles and one missile cost around 70 lakh Indian Rupees. I think Congress should refrain from doing politics on such emergency purchase.
If Govt. and public takes these allegations seriously than the purchase of these missiles would be delayed and it will impact the capabilities of India in a possible India-China conflict. I think only one country should be worried about these HAMMER missiles and that is China. But Congress being Congress is always ready to make political issues out of national security. Let the missiles come and then you can ask such questions in parliament or public forum.
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