It rained… and it rained aeroplanes for Airbus at the 49th Paris International Air Show at Le Bourget, while the military segment was put on the backburner. The record orders for Airbus, and we are not talking military over here, grabbed headlines and it appeared that the defence sector did not have much to offer on ‘mega scales’.

From an Indian perspective, the two-shortlisted medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA), France’s own Dassault Rafale and the four-nation consortium Eurofighter Typhoon, had campaigns running and their executives keeping their fingers crossed. Eurofighter proudly displayed “Indian MMRCA shortlisted”. Lockheed Martin C-130J and Boeing’s C-17 Globemaster III made their presence felt.

Lockheed Martin’s F-35, said to be the only fifth generation multi-role fighter aircraft, is fighting delays, but the company had interactive presentations on the strengths of the fighter and its cost competitiveness, said to cost substantially less than a Rafale or an Eurofighter Typhoon. The ones that had flying displays were aircraft already in operation in their respective countries and elsewhere, but none of the latest fighters from the US, Russia and China was around. However, what wowed the audience was Eurocopter, the X3 (pronounced ‘x-cubed’), developed by EADS. The speedy helicopter which made its debut has already flown over 260 miles per hour and is built around an existing airframe.

In the absence of the latest fighters, companies made strong pitches for weapons programmes and subsystems. Raytheon showcased capabilities of its various military systems, particularly of interest to India, including how it seeks to integrate combat-proven Paveway family of weapons on India’s light combat aircraft (LCA) and not to forget how its weapons can be integrated on both the finalists of the MMRCA. The Airbus Military C-295 airborne early warning platform with an S-band radar by Elta systems, did get attention.

Not just that, some of the OEMs talked about how they were adding commercial variants to some of their defence programmes, one such being Embraer KC-390, hoping to capture the air cargo segment. The show highlighted how OEMs were increasingly looking at dual applications to prop the defence business industry.