Rest assured, UAE won’t be buying Rafale at current or higher price.
So beats me what revenge you are talking about

Well what the UAE said about Dassault is quite humiliating, so Dassault “could” wish to take revenge in case of success in India, but that’s just me saying.

At current price, Rafale is sure to be more competitive simply because the deal include the M2k-9, and all the weapons inventory won’t have to be sold or replace. While the UAE could sell their missiles and such, I doubt they will be able to sell their cruise missiles, and so far the US hasn’t be willing to offer them long range cruise missile I guess.
They also contributed financially to the Damocles pod and other upgrades actually in service with the French fighter jets, so going for another plane would be far more costlier.

So I would be very surprised if they went for something else unless the USA are capable to offer a very, very attractive offers. However I doubt it. SA and UAE are happy with the US, but they don’t want to depend entirely on them for defense, which is why SA bought EFT, UAE M2k and now they are looking for something European.

I think they will keep the action going until they have a really good offer, or their M2k becomes really obsolete.

Right, that’s why UAE was so happy with the way the required Rafale upgrades were handled…. :rolleyes:

Rafale is quite a new plane and the goal of the UAE sale is to have a common plane with France. As such France and Dassault are not willing to pay for upgrade right now, since that would mean different planes with different standards when the goal is to have a worldwide homogenisation of the Rafale.
As far as I know the UAE agreed to it long ago, so their recent attempt to have the Rafale upgraded ahead of schedule was more fanciful than anything as shown by the Lybia’s war.
Now if the UAE had put the money on the table that would have been no problem, but they didn’t.

In the case of India right now we’re talking about ToT, not upgrades. And apart from the upgrade of the M2k where ToT is already included, Thales is also working on the Scorpene submarine with India. So it may be a strengh if India is happy with French companies and is unwilling to take risk somewhere else, or they can decide they have more to gain with the EFT since they are already integrating French technologies, and the upgrades for the M2K have a lot in common with the technologies present on the Rafale.
So they have to choose between risk and relative safety. Because the deal is becoming more expansive by the hour, they might go for relative safety to prevent overcost etc. Or not.

Will they really paint it due to stealth requirement ? Much of these 5th or stealth planes are pretty much the same color aren’t they ?

This is Typhoon Gmbh best card to play thanks to EADS and BAE that have a large portfolio of activities.

EADS, BAE, RR, Thales etc. are still going to do the upmost to implant themselve in the Indian’s market no matter who wins, because India is more likely to spend on military equipment in the future than europeans countries that are short on cash.

What’s going to be really important are the strategic goodies India will be able to squeeze out of Europe. EFT partners also have ELINT capable satellites, UK has nuclear technologies etc. so it’s going to be tight.
One domain where France can help is long range missile technology since it’s the only country in Europe developing intercontinental solid propellant missiles. But we’ll never know if that’s part of the deal because of International treaties against proliferation.

In the end I beleive it’ll all come down to political lobbying, since I don’t see where one has a clear advantage over the other in ToT, R&D etc.

It would be interesting to see how the EFT nations would really welcome India since they are already fighting each other over who get what, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

@ TR1 : At this point this is no longer over performance but cost, politics and other goodies. So whoever win or loose won’t be the best/worst performance’s wise.

Anyway I sure hope Rafale wins, because it’s worth it 😀 !

Some reports are hinting about the role the Avtobaza system had in the alleged downing of U.S. stealth drone by the Iranian electronic warfare and air defense units early December.

Still doesn’t explain how they did it though.

I’m very impressed by the article, it’s well constructed, researched and written. Most importantly it dares to look beyond the traditional, which is the sort of attitude that allows one to overcome challenges where others would falter. I’ll try to add some idea’s that might be constructive.

A Simplified & Yet Useful Missile-Launched UCAV (ML-UCAV)
I like the concept very much. You could deploy these along a border, hiding them in terrain, moving them constantly, like you would any mobile SAM systems.
When an enemy comes near, you launch them like you would a SAM, but these would carry missiles themselves, giving you a bigger chance of hitting the enemy aircraft. Their qualities as an aircraft will also allow them to move into position first, hold off the attack if needed, flee, pursue, engage multiple targets, and ofcourse be recovered and re-used afterwards.

Why a longer range classical sam system (maybe even energy directed) not more effective ? Any combat aircraft unmaned or maned cannot survive without complex self protection system, detection systems, weapon system etc that cost lots of money.
It may be useful for long range, dangerous strike mission assuming it could be autonomous enough, essentially been a cruise missile that comes back home, but even then why not just use cruise missiles ?

While Chinese are quite an ingenious and ambitious people, they still have a long way to go before they can actually compete with the West or even Russia technologically. That’s what their generals and defence minister are saying. According to them China has a 20 to 30 years technological gap with Europe. That’s why they are doing everything they can to buy modern technology from the west and thanks to the embargo they have to settle for Russian and Israeli systems.

That’s the reason why while the J 20 might be an interesting advancement for the PLA air force, I think it will take years for it to become a really credible threat. And I doubt Russia will help what essentially could become the only real threat (on the market at least) to its PAKFA.

During a trip to China by French defense journalists in September, Gen. Chen Zhou, author of China’s defense white paper published in March, said with some humor, “We are learning military transparency but can’t do it overnight, and it does have limits as we cannot put state security in peril.” Hence, there was no mention of Taiwan, details of the aircraft carrier, missiles or the nation’s space program during the tour.

A recurring theme of the PLA hosts was the technology gap between China and the West. Chen claimed the PLA “has a 25-30-year technology gap. We haven’t even completed the mechanization process and now we have to move into the digital age. Digitalization [of military equipment] is our biggest technological challenge.”

Less than a month after Chinese defense officials came out and said that the PLA doesn’t compare to the United States military, the Asian giant’s defense minister quantified that statement, saying that China’s armed forces are about 20 years behind the U.S. technologically.

http://www.asianweek.com/2011/11/19/chinas-pla-air-force-admits-25-30-year-technology-gap/
http://www.china-defense-mashup.com/chinas-pla-air-force-admits-25-30-year-technology-gap.html
http://defensetech.org/2011/06/08/chinas-military-tech-20-years-behind-u-s/
http://www.global-military.com/tag/national-defense-university
http://www.9abc.net/index.php/archives/8786
http://www.f-paper.com/?i1026011-Technological-gap-with-the-West-PLA-candid-30-year-advantage-is-the-will-of-the-spirit

Rafale Unit Programme Cost: €142.3 m
Typhoon Unit Programme Cost: £113.49 m
Rafale Unit production cost: between €64-70 m and €101.1 m
Typhoon Unit production cost: between £42.42 m and £45 m

I guess that economies of scale and a higher production rate have an effect.

I would be very happy to know from which hat you got your numbers.

First the MoD is no longer providing the actual cost of ET. Then you need to add the R&D cost of Germany, Italy and Spain to have the real number of the program cost. And I’m just starting…
Anyway good try.

In 2007

Because the prices for the ordered machines already delivered and are calculated on a guaranteed quantity of 620 machines. Should decrease the guaranteed number of units increases, the so-called “price system” that includes delivery, training and maintenance. Which currently stands at around 120 million € per machine. Germany, Spain, but also the industry could claim the increased costs in the British and Italians. This also applies to the 136 already delivered machines, which are among other squadrons in the Bundeswehr missions.

http://www.tagesspiegel.de/wirtschaft/kunden-kaempfen-mit-eurofighter/1117378.html

In 2011

The watchdog said the overall project cost had risen to 20.2 billion pounds and that the cost of each plane had risen to 126 million pounds each.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/04/15/uk-britain-typhoon-report-idUKTRE73D8PE20110415
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurofighter_Typhoon#Costs
http://www.channel4.com/news/multibillion-eurofighter-typhoon-overspend-revealed
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12614995