Vincent is a very nice guy, but i think he’d appreciate his site to be cited when you post some of his photos…

sorry, I just cross posted from the Military news thread..it was posted there without any citation.

First picture of an upgraded Mirage-2000H..previously we’d seen an upgraded Mirage-2000TH..what helmet is the pilot wearing? A Gerfaut helmet or the Thales TopSight HMDS?

or they wre banking on the fact that they’d be able to better control what’ going on on a company that has everything to learn.. in any case, as I said earlier (and you obviously didn’t read before answering) is that the example of Reliance/HAL i took was only there to illustrate that in their answer to the RFP, the manufacturer proposes stuff and the client can disagree and make changes

My friend, as far as RFP responses, you propose a solution and if you do get selected, you don’t have much leeway to go and change the solution or get to dictate terms to the customer who is paying the money. The customer may mandate a choice (like HAL being the prime integrator in India) and the vendor has no choice but to follow the customer’s directions, unless there are very valid and logical reasons as to why the vendor cannot.

Here, Dassault may have had very valid concerns about HAL’s production technologies not being upto Dassault’s level, but the way to go about it would be transfer technology and assist HAL in getting to that level. I know you’ll say that HAL didn’t put up those facilities as yet, but Reliance doesn’t have a single hangar in place!

The reason India is investing so much in this deal is not just for force numbers (they can be met with other cheaper fighters too) but to gain technology that is lacking in India as of now. Reliance Industries are so absent from the aerospace scene that to suggest that they be the prime integrator is laughable. They would be starting from a non-existent technology base, whereas HAL already has plenty of infrastructure and experience already set up. They need Dassault to take them one notch up, whereas with Reliance, expecting them to suddenly emerge as a viable alternative in 3-4 years is a truly laughable proposition. Many in India took it as a very obvious sign of Dassault playing truant with technology transfer and this being a backdoor proposition to retain more work and technology at Dassault’s end rather than transferring it to an entity that reports to the GoI.

you took your example backwards. in your example, the car retailer is a crook who has shown you a model, and a price, you agreed on it and then he tried to give you a model with less stuff inside. Then you point that India wanted the F3, and Dassault proposed the F3R as if the F3R was some sort of reduced-capability model. In reality, the F3R is an upgrade that does everything the F3 does and some more stuff that have been added (enabling two more underwing stations for example). Basically, if Dassault proposed the F3R with the price it won, India would be crazy to refuse as it is a better aircraft than what they asked for in the first place.

See, the problem was there were many reports on massive cost escalations AFTER the deal was won by Dassault. It was claimed that the configuration being thrust upon India was the F3R (which I know is more capable then the F3) but that the Indian side wanted Dassault to stick to the F3 config which they had proposed during the RFP. From what we know, Dassault DID NOT propose the F3R with the price it won the deal with- it expected much more, which is where the big escalations came into the picture. Now we hear from Dassault that the price hasn’t gone up, so I expect they’ve gone back to the F3 configuration.

Do you realize the picture shows a Rafale B ?

My bad..didn’t notice the landing gear was that of the Air Force version..

But I do recall reading a report on the Admiral getting a flight on the Rafale M..and back then it was the F1.

I don’t think re-posting of entire articles is permitted, but here is the concluding summary:

thanks!

After choosing Dassault, they start negociating technical items (until now) and, obviously, the conditions change from the initial proposal. As a result, if Dassault has to change parts of its proposal it obviously has an impact on price. For example, Dassault said they’d put an assembly chain with Reliance (an example along many), but GoI says “no, it has to be HAL”… a condition has changed and that may push Dassault to reevaluate the price as setting up an assembly line in HAL may be different than Reliance. From memory, the technical things that were negotiated are counted by thousands, and each time something newis negociated, it has an impact on overall price.

You know very well that HAL was the mandated airframer for MRCA..this was clear from the time the RFP was released. We know that since umpteen reports made that clear. There was no scope for any change in that from the RFP days..

Dassault tried to bend the rules by suggesting that Reliance Industries (which as many posters have repeatedly pointed out, hasn’t even assembled a Cessna class aircraft to date) be the company that assembles the Rafales..if anyone tried to change conditions AFTER winning the contract, it was Dassault, when it tried to get Reliance into the game.

frankly, I’d any day go with HAL over Reliance. Sure, they’re a Public Sector Enterprise and hence they have all the disadvantages it brings, but they’re far far more competent in aerospace than Reliance, which has done ZILCH so far. What Reliance is however known for, as any Indian will attest to, is their ability to bribe their way through the corridors of power in New Delhi. Dassault appears to have been banking on this well known competence of Reliance Industries.

Imagine you go at your car retailer and ask him for the best price on a particular model. He’ll give you a liw price but it won’t have many options in it. If you ask him to add metallic paint, air conditionning, massaging seats, satnav, cruise control, and so on (all of which were not in the “best price” offer), you can expect your dealer to raise the price of the car you’re asking from him.

Same here, GoI asks for changes over the initial proposal, Dassault asks GoI to pay for them… it’s called normal business, and they all know it.

Again, you’re stating falsehoods. The correct example would be this- you go to your car retailer and ask him for the best price on a particular model. He quotes a particular price for a PARTICULAR configuration that he offers..and then when the discussions begin, he reveals that his quote didn’t include a bunch of other features that SHOULD have been included, since that would be standard fit on the model that you were looking at (in this case, Rafale F3, not the F3R that Dassault was reportedly trying to get the IAF to purchase).

I just pointed out the fact that it could take off, even if it’s not ideal, “as is”.

And operationally, a practically useless capability.

when one looks at what costed you to acquire and make operational the Gorshkov, and buy the Migs, for a smaller amount of money/time you could’ve bought the Clemenceau and a bunch of Rafales, refit it as needed, and, even upgrade its catapults and eventually extend the upper deck if needed..

How do you know how much it would’ve cost to upgrade the Clemenceau with new equipment to last another 20-25 years (as the Gorshkov will) and new catapults (from where? the US wasn’t considered as a viable option when the decision to go with Gorshkov was made). And those Rafale M F1s would’ve had to be upgraded as well, and if we go by the Mirage-2000H/TH upgrade cost, that would be a huge cost to add to the mix.

and you’d have had a CATOBAR carrier which would allow you also to acquire experience, easing the building of your next carrier in the process. what’s more, if you’re to go fighting, you’ll be better off in a Rafale rather than any Mig[/QUOTE]

What was of most importance to the IN was that some carrier capability remain, not just that they gain some CATOBAR experience. They’ve made do with limited carrier capability in the form of the limited capability that Sea Harriers brought and compared to that, even STOBAR with the MiG-29Ks was a big jump in range and payload capabilities as well as modernity of the airframe.

And I’m not sure I’d buy your argument about being better off being in a Rafale than a MiG-29K..if you’re talking about the latest Rafale M F3 then its undoubtedly a great fighter, but the original F1 wasn’t that special in terms of some of its capabilities versus the MiG-29K..in fact, the MiG-29K is one of the most potent fighters in the sub-continent today, alongside the Su-30MKI and PAF’s F-16 Block 50. This version overcomes nearly all of the drawbacks of the original Fulcrum series..the primary gripe about the Fulcrum was that it was short-legged, had poor MMI and that the radar modes were tedious to operate and that it didn’t feature a FBW that would allow for carefree handling. the MiG-29K has overcome all of those- from a much higher internal fuel fraction, to weapons carried, to cockpit sophistication, digital quad FBW, radar, and even some RAM coatings. the IN is rightly very happy with it, teething troubles related to service entry aside.

You seem to be thinking of this as a personal quarrel (& that’s how the officially stated Indian reasons make it sound), which is inappropriate.

Actually it is you who makes it out like a personal rejection was handed out by not accepting the offer of the FA2s. This and the Qatari offer for 12 Mirage-2000-5s with MICAs is one of your pet gripes whenever the topic of India’s issues with procurement comes up.

The latter one was a botched procurement attempt thanks to some truly incompetent work by the MoD, since there was no such illogical offer by the Qataris to strip the Mirages of anything and it made ample sense to buy those with their weapons without any complications in negotiating with a third country to buy weapons.

By offering the SHARs ready for the EL/M-2032, the UK was actually offering them in the ideal state for India. So why do you keep going on about it as if offering them in that state was an insult, & therefore grounds for rejecting them?

I’m just stating that when you offer equipment with riders that don’t make any sense whatsoever (“no we can’t sell the Blue Vixen radars..But you might want to look at our Captor radar which we’ll offer with “full” ToT if you buy our shiny new ultra expensive Typhoons”..yeah right!), the buyer is going to be cheesed off. It introduced unnecessary complications into the negotiations and the IN rightly refused to bother considering the time it would take for such a deal to fructify and the deal died.

As things stood, it hardly mattered and the remaining SHars held fort till the MiG-29Ks were operationally inducted. now its a matter of time before the INS Viraat and the SHars retire and in hindsight, not going for those FA2s ended up being a very wise decision.