Authorities in India have approved a plan to acquire 500 air-to-air missiles from a French firm for the country's Mirage 2000 aircraft fleet.

According to officials, a Cabinet Committee on Security meeting, which was presided over by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, gave its approval to procure 490 MICA missiles manufactured by France's MBDA under an agreement valued at Euro 950 million.

The missiles will be integrated with Indian Air Force's 51 Mirage 2000 aircrafts. The aircrafts are already undergoing up gradation at facilities in France under a deal worth Euro 1.47 billion.

MBDA will be required to invest at least 30 per cent of the value of the deal back in the Indian defence sector. The Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP) requires international players receiving orders greater than Rs 300 crore in value from the Indian government, to plough back 30 per cent of the amount in the country's defence, civil aerospace and homeland security sector.

Indian government had signed an agreement with Thales and Dassault Aviation to upgrade IAF's 51 Mirage-2000 fighters. The two companies will take ten years to update the aircrafts and two have already flown to France while the remaining will be upgraded within India.