Oh please…

Why the hell do you want another “new” Rafale thread when theres already one been made? Is it a ‘French member allowed only’ to make one or something…

Waste of effort…

:rolleyes:

What made me want to swear today?

27 concrete steps VS my very, very, very ruddy expensive guitar…Which one wins? Answear: The steps…

Yes, dropped my custom made/modified (specially for me) Ibanez RG2228 eight string guitar down a set of concrete steps, top to bottom, lots of scratches and lots of dents and a slightly dented custom pick-up. Matt/flat black body with scrathes…Not good, but thankfully still works & still sounds like Satan shouting at friendly people…

…But still!

I think it is flat out wasteful not going for GaN when it is so close to become standard, even for a customer keen on AESA.

Yeah, in this day & age, I agree.

Thanks for the link EEL.

There is actually one really interesting part…

When are GaN to be introduced on the RBE2AA? 2018?:diablo:

Sorry that was a must.:p

No problem. 😉

Great move to go with GaN to work along side the AESA on a Swashplate, it’ll be quite something for sure.

Don’t be sorry, it had to be said. Especially in recent Rafale news concerning its RBE2AA & GaN, they mentioned something along the lines of; the GaN makes up the small size of the Rafale’s AESA radar and the Typhoon’s bigger AESA with just a Swashplate…Or something like that anyway…

Looks as though they’re going have to come up with something else now.

Hopefully we’ll get something else from the Paris Air Show concerning the Typhoon’s AESA & GaN, also something about how its coming along in Libya. I think this thread is going to be full of news in the next few days or weeks.

@Aspis,

Did anyone say “free fighters”? Get your hands off Charlie De Gaulle, he’s ours!

Saves us buying any for a stop gap and don’t worry, you can keep him, we’ve got two better ones coming along. 😀 😉

@Toocool_12f,

actually, since the pilots will fly with the french navy ( basically, serving france), it’s like an exchange program (and there’s obviously something in return), but, in any case, the french may also say “cool, we get some free pilots”

Well the whole idea of it is because the UK & France are going to be working together & sharing ships, aeroplanes, army equipment etc, so they’re likely to be doing more stuff like this. Free pilots for the French, free aircraft for the RN, everyone is a winner. 😀

I was thinking, for the French, wouldn’t this be a problem – not too much of a problem but still? I was thinking along the lines of putting their own pilots training on hold to train British ones? Like the UK did with the Saudi Typhoon pilots? I know for the UK a lot of training for the RAF pilots had to be put back a bit to help train the Saudi Typhoon pilots, hence their current abilities in A/G, although still doing very well.

To what I was going to say on the other MMRCA thread:

True, if C-17 deal and associated offsets are anything to go by, BAE systems holds all the trump cards w.r.t any kind of ToT, they are after all are world’s largest defense contractor with a finger in nearly every pie.

Well, the offsets is one of the deciding factors as of now, of which Seahawk has kind of failed to realise by the looks of it by more or less bringing up BAE (‘E’ standing for ‘EVIL’) Systems automatically = “bribes” & also, failing to realise that the “better” aircraft is pretty much reduntant now, hence the two better aircraft get shortlisted, hence it doesn’t matter and hence that the talks are now underway in terms of offsets, ToT, life cycle costs, indutrial benefits for the Indian aerospace industry etc and so on.

All of which, the companies behind the Typhoon look to have the advantage in, which ever way one puts it, Dassault have a heavy fight on their shoulders, & I don’t believe Dassault can offer anything close to what EADS, BAE Systems, Alenia Aeronautica etc can offer concerning the likes of industrial benefits.

Per unit cost : Rafale is believed to be cheaper

ToT: French seem to be bending over backwards on this one, they seem to be really desperate, but one Eurofighter GmbH hasn’t played its cards yet, at least not publicly.

Lifetime costs : Lack of any sort of public data to draw conclusions.

Overall, Rafale seems strong at the moment, Dassault really needs to screw up to lose this deal.

Per unit cost: Hard to say if its cheaper, especially when you take into account of the number of aircraft being produced now which is barely reaching double digits.

ToT: Eurofighter GmbH are also bending over backwards & overall, they have some of the worlds biggest aerospace companies involved, one of which being BAE Systems, which would give India the potential to be involved in future projects.

Lifetime costs: Correct; but Eurofighter use lifetime costs as a strong selling point of their product & going by what has been published, they consider this to be one of their strongest.

Overall: Both have a good chance of winning but EADS & Co have a lot more room to play with the price, & I must also say, to me, they seem to look the more confident.

In Mid-May, Second Line of Defense sat down with Pravin Sawhney, editor of Force Magazine, the highly regard Indian monthly on national security and defense. Sawheny provided his interpretation of the decision to downselect European aircraft and its potential impacts.
…

There are three quick processes that they have to go through. There is a commercial bid and there is an offset bid, and then there is talk about transfer of technology, what can be done and how it will be done. And, of course, after that, we need a final price, L1, as we call it. Again, as far as L1 is concerned, I don’t think it is sacrosanct because all these things, the offset, the technology, they all will play a very important role. Life cycle costs, these all are very important things.

We are at a stage now where I would personally say when you talk of this Eurofighter consortium; you are basically talking of two big countries. You’re talking of Germany and you’re talking of UK. So, what sort of cooperation they have within themselves? Can they even meet at the target of the AESA radar? Because as we understand, that there is a slippage in the government’s funding of this radar. Can they meet the 2013 deadline when they want the AESA to be operational?

But the long and short is as of now, it looks like that the Indian government and the Indian Air Force, they are very keen that they sign this at the earliest, this agreement. And I would say that by September this contract should get signed.

http://www.sldinfo.com/?p=19418