Will be sad to see the last F-6 dervatives leave PAF.

Indeed the F6 has served the PAF very well, a highly underated fighter in my opinion.

I thought PAF had decided to go for (and orderd) an Italian radar for JF-17 all ready?

Indeed I find this whole French upgrade package rather bemusing, the Selex Grifo is a far more logical solution. Pakistan already licence builds a variant and there is an upgrade path for AESA. If you look at page 4 of the product brochure here the Grifo S7 is listed as the JF17 option.

http://www.selex-sas.com/EN/Common/files/SELEX_Galileo/Products/GRIFO_FAMILY.pdf

I would think a combination of the Grifo S7 for radar and Swedish or South African ESM/ECM, RWR would be logical. Pakistan has a growing defence relationship with both South Africa and Sweden.

Wasn’t that the one where they had a ‘test’ with silvered balloons popping up as targets, & the turret swivelling & guns shooting them down infallibly, which impressed everyone – until it was leaked that the guidance system wasn’t working at all, & the ‘test’ was choreographed & rehearsed?

One of many tests, the US Army were so keen to get the system the minor issue of it not actually working was ignored.

The silly thing is they could of fitted licenced built GEC 35mm Marksman or Gepard turrets to M60 chassis and they would of had a world beater. Instead they stuck two WW2 vintage bofor canon barrels on an M48 chassis slower then the Abrahms and Bradley it was meant to defend with a fire control computer that had a habit over heating, a radar not designed for the ground roll and a totally new feed system which was happier jamming then actually feeding rounds into the guns.

The Marksman was actually tested on the M60 chassis and I’m sure the Gepard turret wouldn’t of been a problem.

Marksman in Finnish service on T55 chassis

The advert for the M247 looked good on the other hand:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfELF24mvwg

and i’ve said this before, to a disappeared legendary
poster earlier up this thread, how come no one with
the “The French are telling lies” position has
even bothered to think that : since such an exercise
as the Advanced Tactical Leadership Course uses
Awacs and ground based detection ( not withstanding
the possible satellite shoots since they won’t exchange
them or let us have a copy posted here ) in addition to
all the A/Cs electronics and cams, IF THE FRENCH
have lied/misrepresented/embellished the truth……….
EVERY darn fu…ng one over there in the UAE now knows!

I do understand that some think that, we, French are so
dumb, ouch it must hurt! But to believe that our best
minds did not think of the consequences of such an act…
well, sorts of requires about the same in dumbness…?

Take your time; have a cold one or warm for our Brit
buddies; think it over.

I wouldn’t say lies, they have made public statements, but massage the nature of what happened to support the Rafale in sales contests…yes. Please don’t be offended other airforces certainly do the same thing. The RAF and USAF are both guilty of that kind of thing over the years, just the way things work when it comes to selling or procuring multi million dollar/Euro/pound defence equipment:

I suggest you look up the M247 Sergeant York or the TSR2 when it comes to a service massaging the nature of what happened to support an agenda. OK the M247 is pretty much the extreme of what a service (the US army in this case) can get up to but does teach you to read between the lines.

In the case of the 7-1 statement, OK clearly that is true but without either service going into detail over the nature of the engagements its unfair to read this as a major technical failing for the Typhoon. If on the other hand it was gloves off with the systems, skilled aircrew and Typhoon was roundly thrashed I would be the first to shout out the Eurofighter partner nations have purchased an utter Lemon. Considering there are other exercises against different types with Typhoon clearly wiping the floor with all who came I think its unwise to read too much into what happened. With the potential sale of Rafale to the UAE I am aproaching the statements from AdlA with the same Cynicism I would show the RAF if a major procurement was on the cards for Typhoon.

Maybe. Or maybe not.

It has been clearly stated that the Rafale was in “degraded” mode, but nothing in any way has been said about the Typhoon.

If it seems “logical” to pretend that the opposition were in a similar state, but it has not been claimed.
Meanwhile, if the Typhoon had been had been in degraded mode too, then why has it not been said ? At a minimum this would have helped the Typhoon’s PR to minimize the stated results.

After the debacle of the exercise in India a few years back with Tornado F3’s and the Indian press taking everything in the exercise out of context causing much embarrasment for Bae Systems and the RAF I get the impression these days for them to stay out of such debates.

Also as I keep saying there is reduced performance state and intentionally operating with a set of imposed restrictions, as neither service has fully explained what was agreed I find it hard to draw a logical conclusion over what happened.