The Indian Navy celebrated the Navy Day on December 4, 2022, for the first time outside Delhi, in Visakhapatnam. Dassault Aviation, the maker of 4.5 Gen fighter jet Rafale, wishing the Indian Navy on the occasion, once again pitched it multi role Rafale fighter jet. In a social media post, French company stated, “Rafale for the Indian Navy: Force Multiplier at sea. Celebrating #NavyDay”. The Indian Navy, which is the third arm of Indian Defence Forces along side Indian Army and Indian Air Force is looking to induct advanced fighter jets to operate from its aircraft carrier INS Vikrant.
The Navy celebrates December 4 as Navy Day to commemorate its daring attack on Karachi harbour and its decisive victory in the 1971 Indo-Pak war. India’s first indigenously-built aircraft carrier INS Vikrant (IAC-I) was commissioned in September. The aircraft carrier, with a displacement of 40,000 tonnes, was built at a cost of around Rs 23,000 crore.
Currently, Russia-made MiG-29K fighter jets are operated from the aircraft carrier. The Indian Navy is looking to induct 57 advanced jets and trials were conducted in Goa for deck based take off. Boeing and Dassault are competing to provide Indian Navy multi-role combat aircraft for its new-gen aircraft carriers. While Dassault is offering Rafale-M, Boeing is offering F/A-18 Super Hornet to the Navy.
India is also working on indigenous aircrafts for the Indian Navy that will eventually replace the foreign sourced fighter jets. Navy Chief Admiral R Hari Kumar said that the Light Combat Aircraft (naval version) project will significantly help in developing the proposed next generation deck-based fighters. “This is helping us in developing the next generation fighters to be operated from the deck which is something called the twin engine deck-based fighters,” he said.
Dassault Rafale Marine
Rafale is a French word meaning “gust of wind” and is a twin-engine multirole 4.5 gen fighter aircraft manufactured and designed by Dassault Aviation. The Indian Air Force has placed a massive order to induct 36 Rafale jets to form two Squadrons, one in North India and another in South India. The Rafale Marine is the Naval version of the Rafale fighter jets with similar configuration.
The Dassault Rafale has a delta wing design and is capable of higher G-forces as much as 11G and is available in both single and dual seating cabin configurations. The Rafale is 15.27 metre long and a wingspan of 10.80 metre. The Rafale has GIAT 30M/719B cannon mounted on it with the capability of controlled 0.5 or 1 second bursts at 2,500 RPM. Rafale is equipped with a primary missile as the multi-target, fire-and-forget, air to air MBDA MICA missile. In BVR(Beyond Visual Range) air-to-air missile, Rafale has MBDA Meteor.