New Delhi: The Indian Air Force (IAF) has approached the French government to lease one Airbus A330 multi-role tanker transport aircraft for training purposes as a precursor to lease five more mid-air refuellers for increasing the combat capability and radius of its multi-role fighters.

The leasing will be done on government-to-government basis with the IAF already issuing a request for information (RFI) for a single aircraft while a request for proposals route will be used for the additional five refuellers on lease. The issue was discussed during Air Chief Marshal RKS Bhadauria’s visit to France last week.

“With IAF looking towards A330 refuellers for its future, it is only natural that its pilots are trained in advance to handle the aircraft as mid-air refuelling is a precision process with zero margin of error and huge stakes,” said an IAF official.

The A330 refuellers of France and UAE air force have been used to ferry as many as 17 Rafale fighters to India from Merignac-Bordeaux air base since July 2020. Another seven fighters are due to arrive in India in May with a batch being deployed at the new Hashimara air base in West Bengal with Ambala being the first base.