NEW DELHI, Feb 3: A US military aviation giant on Monday offered a lavish range of hardware, including F-16 fighter jets, to replace India’s aging fleet of Soviet-built MiG-21 warplanes.

The offer by Lockheed Martin Aeronautics includes technology transfers and joint ventures, came on the eve of a visit to India this week by French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, expected to discuss an eight-billion-dollar Mirage-2000 deal with India.

The fight for India’s aviation market comes as speculation mounts that Delhi has put plans to buy equipment like badly-needed jet trainers on the backburner and is instead focusing on acquiring “operational assets”.

Both France and Britain have fought since 1983 to supply 66 such trainers at a cost of 1.63 billion dollars, but now it seems they will have to wait yet another year, a senior defence ministry source said.

“We were very young when this particular race started, but if we are now invited then we believe our T-50 is the only supersonic trainer that would meet the requirement of the Indian air force,” said a Lockheed spokesman in New Delhi. Lockheed, developing cockpit controls for India’s indigenously designed light combat aircraft and working on four classified projects, said the company was willing to build its F-16s here only if the order was economically viable.

India’s 700 MiG-21s, some of them 30 years old, have been dubbed “flying coffins” because of their poor air safety record.

“We have received 366 more orders for the F-16 and its production will now continue beyond 2008 and so it remains the fighter jet of choice,” the spokesman said.—AFP