Rafale were the first in the Lybian airspace and managed SAM attacks during the first raid. It is also reported that it took down mobile SAM sites time sensitive targets. It did while jamming which allowed it to get close enough to those SAM targets without being detected.

It’s worth noting that the Janes article states “Rafale exceeds the minimum requirements… most clearly”. As in one newspaper article (I think it was the Baseler Zeitung) mission endurance and payload have been criteria pointed out in the first place. In this light it’s absolutely not surprising that the Rafale scored so well with its payload/range advantage over the other two types. Anyway it’s a pity that the Rafale didn’t made it, but there are still plenty of competitions which could materialize into deals. However, I’m a little bit pessimistic after all these failures, the French really need to rethink their strategy as it seems to be the main cause for their failures thus far.

Indeed for the strategy…Just careful not to take to hasty conclusions : endurance and payload might have played an important role but that does not mean that were decisive criteria. Othee kinetik performances or sensor performance were evaluated as well. It is the overall performance in each scenario that was evaluated not just specific parameters.

India :

French MP’s visiting India
Business standard , Dec 6

[…]
Forissier is leading a delegation comprising Jean Launay, Christian Blanc and Jean-Francois Mancel on a six-day visit to India during which they will also tour Bengaluru, Chennai and Puducherry.

Asked about the Rafale bid for Indian Air Force contract for 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft, Forissier said he was confident that the French company would be successful.

“We are very confident because we believe that we have offered the best plane which is adapted to Indian needs,” he said on the bids for the 126 MMRCA, winner of which is likely to be announced later this month.

For Dassault and the [french] state, the future of the Rafale is played in Abu Dhabi
Les Echos, Dec 6

After the murderous UAE statements at the Dubai Airshow, and Switzerland, which preferred the Swedish Gripen, the Rafale is still chasing his first success in export. With, implicitly, a key issue, rarely discussed: the maintenance of the French competence in combat aircraft. Speaking a few days ago at a symposium on the war in Libya and Afghanistan, Laurent Collet-Billon, the Delegate General for Armaments, has not dodged the issue.

Maintenance of skills? “It’s easier with an export contract” , He dropped to an audience of military and foreign defence officials.
[…]
Rafale focuses twenty strategic technologies that very few countries have mastered. This is the radar, electronic warfare equipment, or optronics or inertial guidance.[…]
The Rafale, which entered operational service in naval aviation in 2004 and in the Air Force two years later[…]. It should fly in the French army until 2040 at least. If of course it can stay stay up to date in matter of technology. For that , DGA finance periodic changes of the aircraft, called “standard” in military jargon and which correspond to a given configuration for a given period. Currently, the version in use, the more modern, then, is the standard called “F3”, which allows the carriage of the ASMP-A nuclear missile, the latest Exocet or laser-guided weapons.

The rest is already in the pipeline of the DGA. To stay on top as long as possible, another big change in the Rafale will be required. When? Current plans expect this between 2020 and 2025, with work starting around 2013. Some changes are already known. This concerns for example the Damocles pod targets , which guide the missiles. Designed and produced by Thales, the equipment date of the generation Mirage 2000. Others remain to be specified in the field of stealth for example. The road map is not completely stopped, but the bill for the taxpayer will be not doubts around several hundreds of millions of euros. This is the price for France to remain a major military nation. And that’s where the export, particularly the UAE, becomes important.

When they agreed in 2008 to negotiate the purchase of 60 Rafale, Paris and Abu Dhabi have agreed on one crucial point: if agreed, the contract will focus on an improved “and” common version. In other words, both countries are willing to align their needs and then to share the funding of this future standard. In other countries where Dassault hopes to win the cup, it is not the case. If they are in favor of Dassault aircraft, Brazil and India do not want little changes compared to the configuration service in the French army. The Swiss did not ask any.

For the DGA, which knows that post-2013 will be hard, it’s a godsend. If UAE sign, then it will save much for public finances. It’s hundreds of highly skilled jobs in engineering offices in Dassault, Thales and Safran […]. If they do not sign, it will be hard to maintain this skills. At best, given the cuts to come, this will be done at the expense of other weapons programs. At worst, we must assume that politics will have some difficult choices. The theorem admits of no exception: it takes decades to build leading-edge expertise, it only takes a few months to let slip away. The English have had bitter experience, forced to use American engineers to design the next generation of submarines nuclear ballistic missile.
[…]
Without falling into chauvinism, we must hope that the Government, during its last few months, or the next governement, without much ado, will find an agreement with UAE. For violent it was, the rebuke of Abu Dhabi vis-à-vis Dassault does not mean that the chips are down, even if the Rafale competitors were invited to dance. Appointed chief pilot of the negotiations by Nicolas Sarkozy, Alain Juppé maintains contact. The problem is that Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan, the number two in the kingdom, the one without whom nothing can be done, is in a strong position. With 80 F16 with and 60 Mirage 2000 which are entirely satisfactory, he has plenty of time …

http://www.lesechos.fr/opinions/analyses/0201765643970-pour-dassault-et-l-etat-l-avenir-du-rafale-se-joue-a-abu-dhabi-258735.php

According to Dassault’s statement Swiss would have needed less rafale to perform the jobs according to the swiss air force. So depending on who you are listening you can find different conclusions. It is plain normal as in the fighter jet export businness nothing is blak or white. You can find sensible reasons to go for any of the three contenders.

That’s why the lobbying effort is so important to make understand to the decision maker which are the most worthy arguments to listen at.

I am not debating what are the bests arguments or not right now just that in the swiss case I think that SSAB did a great a lobbying job toward the decision makers.

They manage to convey the message that it will be sufficient for the job and at a reasonable costs and that Swiss industry could greatly beneficiate from participating in the gripen NG program. In the end swiss politics listened at SAAB arguments rather than those from Dassault and EADS.

As far as I am concerned I believe that Dassault’s failure lies in the lobbying effort in the swiss competition. They had solid arguments and the backing of the swiss air force, if they did not manage to capitalize on it then they can only blame themseves. If they ended up being overconfident because they won the technical evaluation it is entirely their fault.

But those are just the scores from 2 out of an unknown number of missions. For all we know, the Gripen could have outperformed Rafale and Typhoon in all the other fields (2 more? 10?). We don’t know how these are weighted. We have no idea about the overall score

@eagle : we know all the different categories of testing and their respective weight in the operational evaluation. We know that the rafale was was rated above the typhoon in both AtA and AtG and that it was the only one meeting the minimum requirements as far as the operational tests are concerned. What’s left ? Recce ? I don’t expect the gripen or the typhoon to reach the rafale performance in this area with the brand new Reco-NG pod. We also knwo that only the rafale and typhoon regulrly performed “significativly above the “6” threshold” while the gripen usually performed bellow. In the end the rafale was the recommended choice of the swiss air force according to those tests. What’s more to add ? That does not mean the gripen is not a good choice for the swiss airforce. As explianed above there are plenty of perfectly valuable arguments that push for a gripen decsison.

UAE, France, Tunisia and the Mirage 2000-9s

Posted on: Mon, Dec 05, 2011

French Chief of Staff Admiral Edouard Guillaud, who visited Tunis last week at the head of a high-ranking French military delegation, is said to have discussed there the possibility of the Tunisian Air Force (TAF) buying the Mirage 2000-9 fighter jets in service with the UAE Air Force (UAEAF)

http://www.tacticalreport.com/view_news/UAE_France_Tunisia_and_the_Mirage_2000-9s/2339

Interesting information about the detail of the french strikes : 80 SAM sites were destroyed !! That’s a testament of rafale DEAD capabilities.

From the recent fox three release from Dassault :

Such was the confidence of the
French aircrews in their new
mount that all missions were
conducted without any support
from dedicated electronic warfare
and SEAD (Suppression of Enemy
Air Defences) assets: thanks to its
Spectra state-of-the-art electronic
warfare/self-defence suite, the
Rafale was able to operate at
will in a dangerous environment,
against a dense network of deadly
surface-to-air missile systems.
Even more significant is the fact
that the Rafale was able to accurately
locate enemy air-defence
systems and engage them.”

“Such is the quality of the Spectra
electronic warfare suite that the
Rafale literally disappeared from
the radar screens of the Libyan Air
Force while performing ‘soft kills’ on
the enemy radar systems. Spectra
relies on advanced jamming modes
and jamming techniques to defeat
hostile weapon systems and to
hide the progression and whereabouts
of the fighter.”