NEW DELHI \u2014 India has canceled its $12 billion program to purchase 126 medium multirole combat aircraft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to a July 30 press release from the Indian Ministry of Defence, “The RFP issued earlier for procurement of 126 Medium Multi Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) has been withdrawn. In this multi-vendor procurement case, the Rafale aircraft met all the performance characteristics stipulated in the Request for Proposal (RFP) during the evaluation conducted by Indian Air Force.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The release added, “This information was given by Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar in a written reply to Ahmed Patel in the upper house of parliament on Thursday, 30 July 2015.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Indian officials provided no reason for the cancellation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dassault Aviation, prime contractor for the Rafale, was not immediately available for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Separately, the Indian prime minister said in April there would be an off-the-shelf order for 36 Rafales. Dassault hopes the government-to-government negotiations will deliver a contract later this year. If New Delhi does seal the deal, that would be the third export win for the twin-engine fighter jet, following Egypt and Qatar earlier this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first request for information of the MMRCA was floated in December 2005 and the RFP followed in August 2007.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rafale beat the Eurofighter Typhoon only on the basis of lower cost after they were the only two bidders left in the field. The F-16, F-18, Gripen and MiG-35 were eliminated from competition after flight trials in August 2011.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Under terms of purchase, the first 18 aircraft would have been delivered in fly-away condition while the remaining 108 would have been manufactured under a technology transfer process. Out of the 108 aircraft to be license-produced in India, 74 would have been single-seat and 34 twin-seater aircraft. The delivery was to have begun three years after the contract was signed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pierre Tran contributed to this report from Paris.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" India has canceled the request for proposal for purchase of 126 Medium Multirole Combat Aircraft<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":35890,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":37,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3390],"class_list":["post-18080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"KPM6RMTHYBHOBGHDD46VFPGMUY","arc_canonical_url":"\/breaking-news\/2015\/08\/04\/india-cancels-12b-combat-jet-program\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n