Fact Check: Did The HAL Build Mirage 2000 Fighters Used By IAF To Strike Terror Camps In Pakistan?

In a pre-dawn strike today, nearly 12 days after the Pulwama attack, the Indian Air Force (IAF) reduced to rubble the biggest training camp of terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed in Pakistan’s Balakot using its Mirage 2000 fighter jets.

At least 12 Mirage 2000 fighters, reportedly equipped with smart Israeli mutation, struck the camp to avenge the killing of 40 personnel of the Central Reserve Police Force in Kashmir’s Pulwama on 14 February.

Soon after the attack, leaders including Congress President Rahul Gandhi and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal congratulated the IAF for destroying the camp and stayed away from praising the Modi government.

However, some activists on Twitter went a step further, praising Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), claiming that the state-run firm had “manufactured” the Mirage 2000 fighter used by the IAF for the strike. This, apparently, was done to target the government, which has been accused by various parties of favouring Anil Ambani’s Reliance Defence in the Rafale deal by not making HAL part of the contract signed with Dassault for 36 Rafale fighters.

These activists include Garga Chatterjee, considered close to the Trinamool Congress, and Pankhuri Pathak, former spokesperson of the Samajwadi Party.

Of course, this is not the first time when someone has claimed that the Mirage 2000s were built by the HAL in India. Recently, Rahul Gandhi, attacking the Rafale deal in Lok Sabha, has claimed that the Mirage 2000s were “HAL-built”.

However, these claims can’t be further away from the truth.

The Mirage 2000 fighters were acquired by the Rajiv Gandhi-led Congress government in a deal signed with France in 1984 in response to Pakistan’s acquisition of the Lockheed Martin F-16 from the United States. These fighters were reportedly built by Dassault Aviation, which is also the maker of the Rafale fighters, at its factory in Bordeaux. India had acquired 49 of these aircraft then.

But, as Livefist points out, the French had offered the option to built an addition 110 Mirage 2000s in India. The Congress government, most accounts suggest, had decided against accepting the offer of building the fighter in India.

“Since the contract signing, the French had offered Mirage license production in India — an offer that was open till 2006. The IAF was and is very happy with the aircraft. It had proved a game changer during Kargil. If the decision to make Mirage 2000 in India had been made then, IAF would not have been in the numbers and capability mess it is today,” Livefist has quoted Air Marshal Anil Chopra (Retd.), who commanded the 1 Squadron ‘Tigers’, as saying.

In his report for the India Today in 1984, journolist Dilip Bobb wrote, “When the original Mirage deal was signed, the 'Intention to Proceed' contract was for an initial order of 40 aircraft for outright purchase in fly-away condition and an option to produce another 110 Mirages in HAL in Bangalore, for which Dassault was agreeable to provide a total technology transfer”.

The offer, this report says, was rejected as the erstwhile Soviet Union had persuaded the then Indian government to buy MiG-29 fighters.

“It is ...the nature of the competition that has forced the Indian Government to review the second part of the Mirage contract; namely, the Soviet Union. Or, to be more specific, the MiG-29. The first sign that an attempt to scuttle the Mirage-2000 production programme was being made came when the Soviets offered India the MiG-29 the latest in their inventory (it is meant to enter Soviet operational service in 1985), during Defence Minister R Venkatraman’s visit to Moscow last August. The offer was repeated during Soviet Defence Minister Marshal Dmitri Ustinov’s visit to New Delhi a few months later,” Bobb wrote.

Without doubt, these claims do not arise out of an incorrect understanding of the IAF’s history or HAL’s achievements - it has many, like its many failures. They are meant to serve the “united” opposition’s anti-Modi agenda ahead of the election and this lesson of history will not deter many from repeating this claim.