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Checklist before buying used Eurofighter Typhoons
The classic problem of lack of transparency over military procurement remains unaddressed, with the shopping list and contacts of military procurements never made available to the public.
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Typhoon or Sukhoi? (JP/T. Sutanto)
D
efense Minister Prabowo Subianto has offered to buy 15 used Eurofighter Typhoon jets from the Austrian Air Force. The bid came after the US State Department issued an initial clearance for Indonesia to purchase the Bell-Boeing MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft.
The plan to buy the Typhoons is not new. In 2015, when the current Indonesian Military (TNI) chief, Air Chief Marshall Hadi Tjahjanto, was the presidential military secretary, the Typhoon was one of the options to strengthen the Air Force fleet. But eventually the government chose to buy Russia’s Sukhoi Su-35, the contract of which was signed on Feb. 14, 2018.
This Typhoon shopping can be interpreted in three ways. First, Prabowo is keen on purchasing the Typhoons to avoid sanctions under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA). Indonesia risks being penalized if it proceeds with the purchase of 11 Sukhoi Su-35 jet fighters. Indonesia once experienced such kind of punishment, which impacted supplies of spare parts for its Army helicopters.
Second, the arrival of the Typhoons may serve as a stop gap in developing the country’s primary weapons system, as delivery time of used military jets is quicker than that of new ones. New aircraft is normally delivered about four years after a contract is signed.
Lastly, the plan to buy the Typhoons can be seen as defiance to President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s order on July 7 for the Defense Ministry to prioritize its defense spending on domestic products in order to boost the economy.
Those interpretations have arisen because the government has not provided adequate information and an explanation on how our defense capabilities will be developed in the next five years. Since taking office last October, Prabowo has yet to release defense strategy policy documents, such as defense white paper, defense strategy, etc. Those documents are essential to understand how the defense sector will be managed until 2024.
The classic problem of lack of transparency over military procurement remains unaddressed, with the shopping list and contacts of military procurements never made available to the public. Therefore, we do not know whether a procurement program, including the purchase of Typhoons, is based on strategic planning or simply an ad-hoc policy.
