I think it is fair to say that neither Dassault or EF started the trend for over-blown claims for defence equipment.

You’ll probably find that the David slew Goliath story in the Bible was originally the marketing hype for a purveyor of slings.

Both sides hype their products. No story

I can remember a 1960´s LM brochure claiming that the F-104G was a great CAS aircraft!

Hmm I think this particular edition was written by a different set of people.

Cheers

Yes, whoever wrote that article on page 10 must have had a lobotomy…
Its the kind of bullsheet that we find on forums (and gets “thumped” five seconds after being posted).

Argentina – 14, all are going to be replaced by F-1 next year

?!
Strangely the FAA doesnt know!

You’re making my point. Most of the hardware cited have been cut because they were too expensive to maintain, and cutting an order between a third and an half is a serious cut.

Mildave

It will be nothing short of a miracle if the French MOD doesnt slash Rafale orders.
This slashing of fast jet orders, is not a “Eurofighter” thingy, its a “European” thingy, the Swedes have done a massive cut to its Gripen fleet, and almost every JSF partner is threatning to slash orders has well. The cause is this gigantic finance maelstron, not the platforms, or the armed forces wishes, and the French are not imune.

The swashplate is an interesting design, I presume it will entail reduced T/R modules compared to the fixed array Captor?

Quite the oposite, the CAESAR demonstrator had an “underpopulated” antena.

I’ve made no secret that I want EF to win (and I believe it will given EADS’ unassailable lead in ToT and broad-based offsets), I have to admit, however, that Dassault’s roadmap for Rafale’s conformal GaN arrays is very impressive and would be most useful to AMCA and a future UCAV.

What “roadmap for Rafale’s conformal GaN arrays”?!
There are multiple studies for a 2025 MLU, one of the ideas being “thrown around” is using the THALES cloud concept, this is just an “idea”, not a funded program. What will end up in that MLU is not decided.

Some of Hotdogs terms like Typhoid are making it into popular forum culture 🙂

Now time for guesswork percentage of chances for Typhoon & Rafale acc to you at the moment.

For me Typhoon – 60%

Rafale – 40%

50% / 50%

Yes, thats what I am asking. Is it possible that the partners could agree to India receiving a lower price on account of production cuts happening in Germany, UK etc and any export order to India seen as compensating for that? Basically, a win win situation for the partner nations which dont have to pay any settlement to the EF consortium. I am not upto speed on the EF, so am asking whether such a theory could be possible.

Yes, that theory could very well be correct. An aicraft built in Delhi at the end of a 126 unit run will probably be cheaper than one built in Manching. That happened with the Hawk and the Jaguar, i dont see why it wouldnt happen with an Euro canard.
By being offered a partner status, the contractual impositions of not selling below the unit cost for the (four initial) “partners” and the 7% fee could be waived, and the final cost could be something aproaching a “unit cost” based on what an “Indian Eurofighter” “should cost”.
I think thats exactly what happened.