GarryB wrote:The competition for the MRCA in India was pretty clearly to a budget of 10 billion dollars... it was totally dishonest to enter the competition with the Rafale and then once they "won" say they want 22 billion for the aircraft they needed.
Totally corrupt... and no real excuse either... everything was laid out.
Now you are just falling into the sensationalist trap of the Indian media, that is the per unit price the MoD was shooting for. They knew very well the associated costs for maintenance and missiles would go much higher.
Regarding the ships the issues found were not made up and could have been foreseen by both sides... even at 2.5 billion it was a cheap deal as it included the air group too... the original deal was stupid... practically a give away... yet it still took 10 years for them to sign off on it...
But lets face it... a real deep inspection and the Indians would probably have rejected it outright and they would have no carrier right now.
It is hard to say what the Russian navy might have decided from there... perhaps they might have upgraded it and put it into Russian service... hard to say.
You want to apply the unit cost to Russian deals but not the unit cost to French deals. That is the Indian media again. The total cost of the Goshkov deal is unknown, there are further cost hikes that the DefMin will not reveal.
https://www.pressreader.com/india/the-times-of-india-new-delhi-edition/20180402/281977493179835