SNECMA (of French SAFRAN group) is completing the development of M88-4E engine for the Dassault Aviation Rafale omnirole aircraft.

Qualification and delivery of the first production standard M88-4E are expected for October and November 2011 respectively.

The first flight of a Rafale aircraft powered by a M88-4E instead of the M88-2 took place on March 22 of 2010. A campaign of 70 flights has been achieved in October 2010.

SNECMA has produced a total of 260 M88-2 engines and have 146 on order.

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Well first that may explain why most upgrades have been AtA so far, and two a agile heavy aircraft will simply rarely be more agile than a lightweight aircraft.
Then the pilots flying the Typhoon are still quite new at this, we should give them a few years to learn to master their aircraft.

PS: when dogfighting aircraft tend to lose both speed and altitude.

less stealth shaping and rely more on new materials.

Well then there is no issues since we are saying the same thing !!

The first generation of stealth aircraft using shapes technics wasn’t great to build a true air superiority figher and was limited to the F 117 bomber, but new technologies (ie new materials) made shaped stealth obsolete, as was demonstrated with the F 22 and now the F 35 (I think I posted a youtube documentary on this).

However internal bay is a feature of shaped stealth that will probably remain even with new stealth materials and techniques. The aircraft like Rafales, Typhoons and Super Hornet will probably research alternative ways by having stealth pods as was demonstrated by Boeing, and talked about by Dassault.

Now from an engineering point of view, everything has drawback. There would be no need for engineers to overcome them if that wasn’t the case (well unless… after all we all knew they got paid for nothing didnt we :D!).

It’s true that a Gripen or Mirage 2000 with internal bay would be a bad idea, but not necessarly for medium and heavy class of fighters.

But if you say that stealth technics using shaping like F117 doesn’t help an aircraft aerodynamically then I could’t agree more !

, and whatever it will succeed at, some people try to suggest that it might be on pare with DASS ?

Well I think we know by now that the US press cannot be trusted…
They are conviced (for a long time now) that the US (and so the UK by extension) are beyond anything and anyone else. So if SPECTRA seems to be that good… it still has to be worse or at the very best on part with US-UK technology.

The Typhoon is really developped by 2 countries, UK and Germany, with Italy and Spain giving some money and buying the plane.
Only the UK was willing to develop the Typhoon to its full capacities, and Germany has almost constantly to be cajoled into funding the plane. At first Germany wasn’t even willing to fund a self defense suite for the Typhoon and planned to get a US pod instead.
The concept of the plane (high altitude flying, interception and air superiority) mean that they only had to care about long range BVR AtA or AtG missiles.

Even the F35 has better systems when it comes to detecting threats than the F22 because AtG missions are always more dangerous and complicated. For a analogy, the F22 and Typhoon are snipers, while the F35 and Rafale are close quarter combat specialists..

In the end it’s politics that made the Typhoon expensive, for AtA interception (lest be honest it wasn’t design to bomb Bagdad, and I doubt any flanker would have cross the sea to attack Britain).

Had France and UK find a way they could have both developed the Rafale (or something close), since their need is almost identical, while Germany, Italy and Spain just wanted to replace some old airframe like the F4.

And again, the fact that even the F 18g were not considered “safe” enough to operate over Libya (which hasn’t a very good air defense), and that no other planes but Rafales went in, is proof enough. Combat Aircraft June 2011 or Air international May 2011 (dont remember which) says that French pilots turned down many time the offer of the US to provide F16 SEAD escort. Since a Rafale been shot down would be disastrous for any export market, I have to say that either they are damn confident about SPECTRA, or they are fools.

India has acquired lot of French defence systems in the past ,this time they might not want to put everything into one basket and go for the Typhoon.. Remember, IAF pilots were more impressed with Typhoon than any other contender. I hate to make any prediction but my instinct says TYPHOON… Besides, Dassaults Mirage upgrade bill is very difficult to digest . I am sure India will take this into consideration.

Not only will Dassault and Thales upgrades the Mirages, but they will also share most of the technologies along with it. I don’t think it could have been any cheaper. I don’t think the US would have upgraded the F18 or F16 in the future with technology transfert, and I apart from the Russian, I don’t think anybody in the west would be so cheap i fact…

Currently Typhoon and Rafale can both land on a carrier… but only the Rafale can hope to do it twice !
If it was more effective than the F35 UK would already be investigating a possible buy.

Rafale been based on the same technology than M2000 it makes sense to buy it so that it would only strenghted India knowledge.
At the same time since many upgrades are from technologies developped for the Rafale, India may want to try Typhoon to get more.
But I doubt their industry would be able to effectively ingest all these technologies (French, Russian, Israeli, US, Europeans…), but who knows ?

About the pilots been impressed by the Typhoon, while there is no big surprise there I would be cautious since we had many repport of the Rafale been out, IAF prefering the Super Hornet, and how amazing it was and blablabla…

BAE Systems has been under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office, into the use of political corruption to help sell arms to Chile, Czech Republic, Romania, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Tanzania and Qatar. In response, BAE Systems’ 2006 Corporate Responsibility Report states “We continue to reject these allegations…We take our obligations under the law extremely seriously and will continue to comply with all legal requirements around the world. In June 2007 Lord Woolf was selected to lead what the BBC described as an “independent review…. [an] ethics committee to look into how the defence giant conducts its arms deals.” The report, Ethical business conduct in BAE Systems plc – the way forward, made 23 recommendations, measures which BAE has committed to implement. The finding stated that “in the past BAE did not pay sufficient attention to ethical standards in the way it conducted business,” and was described by the BBC as “an embarrassing admission.”

In September 2009, the Serious Fraud Office announced that it intended to prosecute BAE Systems for offences relating to overseas corruption. The Guardian claimed that a penalty “possibly of more than £500m” might be an acceptable settlement package. On 5 February 2010, BAE Systems agreed to pay £257m criminal fines to the US and £30m to the UK. The UK already massively benefited from £43 billion contract in tax receipts and jobs in the UK, and had dropped an anti-corruption investigation into the Al Yamamah contracts later taken up by US authorities. Crucially, under a plea bargain with the US Department of Justice BAE was convicted of felony conspiracy to defraud the United States government and sentenced in March 2010 by U.S. District Court Judge John D. Bates to pay a $400 million fine, one of the largest fines in the history of the DOJ. U.S. District Judge John Bates said the company’s conduct involved “deception, duplicity and knowing violations of law, I think it’s fair to say, on an enormous scale”. BAE did not directly admit to bribery, and is thus not internationally blacklisted from future contracts. Some of the £30m penalty BAE will pay in fines to the UK will be paid ex gratia for the benefit of the people of Tanzania. On 2 March 2010 Campaign Against Arms Trade and The Corner House were successful in gaining a High Court injunction on the Serious Fraud Office’s settlement with BAE. The High Court may order a full review of the settlement.

Link

All I’m saying is that BAE might find it hard to deal in a context were :

Indian Defence Ministry has assured that the MMRCA will be carried out with transparency and devoid of extraneous influences. There is no political pressure and the scale of the deal is an opportunity to exercise its professionalism. India has assured that its decision will be independent of any strategic and geopolitical factor.

From what was posted already on this thread :

the essential argument in this regard is that “the British are infinitely more experienced than anyone in the identification of points of influence and corruption, or to corrupt bureaucrats in the Indian bureaucracy to achieve a result. ” This “expertise” Britain is at least confirmed by the number, according to these same sources, the British BAE (who works for the Typhoon, according to this peculiar situation reported above) would be “between 30 and 40” in India, this MMRCA market, while Dassault would have a permanent delegate.

I’m only providing more materials for what have been posted and quoted. It’s your right not to like it and I respect it.