France Submits Its Formal Bid for 114 More Rafale Jets to India

France’s Dassault Aviation submitted its formal proposal to sell India 114 more Rafale fighter jets on August 6, 2026, according to ANI, which first reported the submission. The response answers a Letter of Request India issued in May, giving Indian defence officials the price, delivery schedule, and local-manufacturing terms to evaluate.

The proposal is valued near ₹3.25 lakh crore, or roughly $39 billion at current exchange rates, which multiple outlets describe as India’s largest single defence purchase to date.

Dassault has proposed delivering the first 18 jets in fly-away condition from France, with the remaining 96 assembled in India through a local industrial partnership, The Aviationist reported, citing the terms behind February’s government clearance.

Technology transfer would cover the engine, airframe, and avionics, and the offer includes a maintenance facility in Hyderabad for the Safran-built M88 engine that powers the jet.

The new jets would arrive in the newer F4 configuration rather than the F3R standard India’s existing 36 Rafales fly, with an option to upgrade the older jets to match, according to idrw.org.

Dassault Aviation has cast the deal as building India into its second global Rafale production line, extending an existing partnership with Tata Advanced Systems that already builds Rafale fuselage sections.

Why India isn’t running a new competition

India is not holding a fresh multi-vendor contest for the 114 jets. New Delhi is instead negotiating directly with France under the same government-to-government structure used for the 36 Rafales bought in 2016, avoiding a repeat of the Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) competition that dragged on for nearly a decade before collapsing.

The Rafale won that 2012 contest outright, beating the Eurofighter Typhoon and four other of the world’s most capable fighter jets. But disputes over cost and liability terms killed the planned 126-jet order before it was signed, and India settled for 36 jets at a steeper per-unit price than the original bid.

The squadron gap driving the purchase

The purchase would help refill squadrons the Indian Air Force has lost as older jets retire. Its last MiG-21s, in service for 62 years, left the fleet in September 2025, and further MiG and Jaguar retirements are planned through the early 2030s.

Deliveries of the homegrown Tejas Mk1A, meant to backfill many of those slots, have run behind schedule. That has left the air force well short of the 42 fighter squadrons the government has authorized to cover simultaneous threats from Pakistan and China.

That squadron math runs parallel to the export calculus shaping other fighter programs, including the production plans behind the F-35.