France wants ‘fair competition’ in 126 IAF deal
1/17/2009 10:57:50 PM

Eyeing the mega deal for 126 multi-role combat aircraft with India, France on Saturday (January 17) said it expected “fair competition” and equal treatment by New Delhi to all the bidders in the selection process. France, whose Rafale fighter plane is a competitor for the mega deal, is keeping its fingers crossed as it recently lost a contract for 197 military helicopters, due to “severity of rules” in India.

“We are participating in a competition … We know there is competition and we know in India, competition is to be taken by the word,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s Diplomatic Adviser Jean-David Levitte told reporters in New Delhi. Noting that Indian rules are strict, he said, “We were victims of the severity of these rules (in helicopter deal) last year.

But we accept the rules provided all competitors are treated in same way. It is fair competition that we want,” he said. He claimed Rafale fighters are the best next generation planes and it would bag the deal if the competition is fair.

Developed by French major Dassault, Rafale is a twin-engined multi-role fighter aircraft and is being produced both for land-based and ship-based operations. The aircraft was last year inducted for operations over Afghanistan by France. Rafale is competing with American F/A-18 and F-16, Russian MiG-35 and Swedish Gripen for the over $10 billion 126 aircraft contract.

An Indian Army contract for 197 light utility helicopters with French Eurocopter as one of the contenders was cancelled by the Defence Ministry in 2007 after objections were raised over the selection process. Levitte, who met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and held talks with his counterpart M K Narayanan, said France was keen to give new impetus to defence and strategic partnership.

He noted that India and France already have considerable cooperation in the defence field, whose symbols are Mirages and submarines being built near Mumbai jointly. He said the two sides could also jointly develop Kaveri engines in India for the country’s Light Combat Aircraft (LCA).

“India can buy the engine off the shelf outside India or prefer to build it in India with partnership of France,” he said, adding his country was asking New Delhi to take a decision on it. He added that France was ready to share the technology required for the development of an aircraft engine and it will help India to develop “its own aircraft engine industry.”

DRDO is looking to procure new engines for the LCA project and Eurojet consortium with France as one of its partners has offered its EJ-200 engine for it. Six Scorpene submarines are being built near Mumbai with Transfer of Technology (ToT). “It is an excellent symbol of what we can achieve together,” Levitte said.

French consortium DCNS received the contract in 2004 for building six submarines at Mazagon Dockyards Limited in Mumbai. Talking about Mirage 2000 fighter jets, Levitte said discussions on their “upgrades would be over soon.” French defence company Thales along with other French Companies have offered to upgrade the Mirage 2000 to the Mirage-2000-5 level.

He said discussions for co-development of a Short-range Surface to Air Missile (SR-SAM) systems were also “nearing conclusion.” DRDO has released global RFP for co-development of SR-SAM system and is looking for foreign collaborators to develop the system.

http://www.timesnow.tv/Newsdtls.aspx?NewsID=26797

The guy is pretty confident !

Isn’t 40 aircraft a bit much for this role nowadays? That means 2 E/Cs being dedicated to that role?

Scorpion82,

(I have the article about the “gascogne” squadron and I try to sum it up in this post)

2/EC is indeed dedicated to that role and until recently it was not 40 but 60 aircrafts which were supposed to be dedictated to that role. The “livre blanc” defense review reduced that number.

But this squadron will be able to do secondary missions and even AtA for self defense for instance.

these nuclear squadrons are very specific : they have their own culture, a very specific mindset and way of working. there are some specific skills to have which are imposing a dedicated sqaudron. Usually they seldomly train abroad. A nuclear mission imply a planification pushed at its paroxysm.

As it was said these squadrons will be the only one with navigators in the rear seat (not pilots).

pilots come from the mirage 2000N and must adapt to a totally new generation aircraft which will take some time. Also some people of the provence squadron will join this new unit to give theire experience.

The Gascogne EC-2/7 rafale squadron is being reactivated (former mirage IV P nuclear deterence squadron which was closed in 2005).

The first rafales with the “colors” of this squadron can be seen in St dizier AFB.

It will be fully operational in 2010 with the ASMP-A nuclear missile.

source : air&cosmos from the 9th january.

Air Shows while impressive are hardly a good way to judge a fighters performance……..

this is very true : situational awarness, EW, stealth, HMS+HOBS missiles, long range missiles neglect these “wow” factor at airshow.

Maneuvrability, speed are still imprtant but much less than before…Survivability is a broader concept.

A SH block2 is perhaps not the fastest but in total it is one of the most efficient if not the most efficient aircraft in service (including the F22).

It can drop LGB, antiship missiles, cruise/gliding missilles… many things the raptor can’t do for a fraction of the cost. A much more useful asset. In fact the SH was the backbone of the iraq campaign and is widely used in afghanistan. This is the aircraft which his helping winning the real wars, overlooked because people are often thinking “my aircraft is faster than yours” my aircraft can kill yours”….the SH is an aircraft well fit to the real world and operational situations.

Much more appriciated than the F22 or the Typhoon from those who are fighting the real wars…

an interesting read of the carbone pod demonstrator which will probably be seen in the next decade on the rafale.

http://www.mputtre.com/id16.html
abstract

Quote:
Of course, the United States today is just about the only country that can afford scores of dedicated electronic- attack aircraft and the cast of thousands of highly trained experts who support them. “The US has specialized EW aircraft that cover an area and so take some of the burden off the strike aircraft in terms of self- protection.” said Dov Granot, business development manager for the Elisra Group (Bene Beraq, Israel). The Israeli Air Force favors a system where select aircraft in a strike package are equipped with escort- jamming pods. “Israel’s philosophy is that an aircraft needs to be able to protect itself from start to finish, from take-off through landing.”

Jean-Philippe Gourion, deputy director of strategic planning for Thales Airborne Systems (Paris, France), said Thales is working on an escort-jamming concept in which dedicated platforms and crews would be replaced by a combination of integrated systems featuring a solid-state, phased-array jammer with very high transmitted power and real-time multi-beam steering. This would be fitted in an automatic pod carried by a multirole fighter for the stand-in/escort jamming mission. Since 1993, Thales has been developing its Carbone offensive jammer demonstrator under contract to the French military procurement agency. According to Gourion, the Carbone is significantly more powerful than existing or upgraded offensive-jamming pods. Carbone also draws on Thales’ digital receivers and real-time geolocation algorithms, such as those implemented in the Spectra EW system for the Rafale aircraft.

The Carbone demonstrator has been mounted on a Mystere 20 testbed aircraft and has flown extensively since 1998, including during the NATO MACE X field trials in August 2000. A preliminary study for a pod installation has been through cost-assessment and risk- reduction studies. “Operational trials have demonstrated Carbone’s effectiveness, and particularly its capability to jam through scattered lobes.” Gourion said. “This is a big change in the strategy of the use of such equipment.”

A fighter aircraft carrying a pod-mounted phased-array jammer would have the ability to loiter at the periphery of the threat area, but not necessarily in line with the flight path of the strikers. Once the strike package is about to enter the threat area the electronic attack aircraft is alerted by datalink to commence jamming through the secondary or scattered lobes of the threat emitters. Thus, the enemy would remain unaware of the direction of the strike package’s arrival. Gourion pointed out that there would be some burden during the mission-planning phase to ensure that timing, waypoints, and jamming duration are synchronized. “In fact, if your mission planning is excellent, then you are not obliged to use a datalink or otherwise transmit between the strikers and jammer aircraft,” he said.

Another benefit of this approach to stand-in/escort jamming is that the electronic-attack aircraft does not have the same demands on its self-protection jammers, thus eliminating the potential for interference. In fact, Gourion questioned the wisdom of even attempting to operate electronic-attack and self- protection systems on the same aircraft at the same time. “Frankly speaking, I don’t think that it would be a very good idea to use stand-in jamming tactics other than those that attack side or scattered lobes at some distance,” he said. “If the electronic-attack aircraft is loitering at very low altitude somewhere in a relatively safe place quite close to the danger zone, then you can decide at a given instant to pop up and begin your jamming job.”

But if you have to stay in the high- threat area, Gourion continued, it would be much more preferable to use a UAV as a stand-in platform, loitering at very high altitude — say, over 50,000 feet. The very same selective-reactive technologies that automatically detect, track, and provide the correct jamming response to threats in ICAP III conceivably also make it possible for the EWO to be snug in a command shelter hundreds of miles away, monitoring the proceedings via SATCOM with a cup of coffee. Try that in a cockpit.

very interesting. Some graphics in there…

The AASM booster in pretty big comparing to the bomb. I didn’t notice it before.

I found this on a greek forum about an encounter of rafaleM F1. That was in the greek press initially. (the initial version of the rafale in its first deployments) and F16blk52. It talk about the Elint capabilities of spectra as well as some processor issues. (The F2 processor is different)

“Also said the French had a fairly serious problem with the mission computer, but that was the only problem. The capabilities of the radar to locate targets, and the ECM and ECCM suites are very impressive, capable of giving a complete view of the operational combat environment without AWACS. It can locate enemy radar signals to their precise location from over 200 miles away. F2 and F3 will have many vast improuvements from experience gained from the F1.”