IMO there is still a place for dumb bombs.

Nic

If used in numbers and with a platform like a B52, B2, B1B (carpet bombing). Or like during WWII burning entire cities just to destroy a few factories…

On a modern battlefield like Lybia, SA7 and other soulder launched AA missiles will force most aicraft to fly at least at medium altitude where precision and visibility will be degraded (Which is why NATO is asking for US drones to fly lower and better ID targets before firing). Against medium and small targets, unguided rockets (at the very least) will do a much better job than dumb bomb.
Everytime you fly a aircraft in hostile situation you are at risk and you want to be able to destroy the target as fast as possible, with as few assets as possible, and preferably outsite the engagement zone of the enemy.
In CAS you dont want your bomb to be dropped on your own soldier, in near urban installation you want to avoid civilian casualties since their psychological effect can lose the war as sure as bullets.
Against armed division, flying to low mean vulnerability even to AA guns…

So really I don’t see many situations were dumb bombs would be relevant.
During the Kargill war IAF used laser-guided bombs with their M2000 but with the guidance been done by other assets due to the lack of pod for the M2000.

This could be just routine news being sensationalized or it could also indicate a sense of urgency on the part of the PAF to get assets usable against the US / NATO, in case of a future confrontation. (F-16s won’t work against them)

JF 17 against NATO fighters ?:eek:
Best way to win is to avoid any confrontation !

That’s not what I heard :

The committee claimed that the RAF was having to cannibalise aircraft for spare parts in order to keep the maximum number of Typhoons in the air on any given day.
It added that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) had warned the problems were likely to continue until 2015 when it expects the supply of spares finally to have reached a “steady state”.

and

“The Typhoon supply chain is complex and stretches across Europe. However, the department admitted that it had not been managed well enough or delivered all the required parts when needed.”

So yes the govt has trouble managing even spare parts for the Typhoon (actually the whole progam if you ask me), but cannibalising “new” aircrafts is a pretty desparate move. So when you read that it will be done until 2015… that’s no longer just the govt not ordering enough parts…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13081691
http://www.modoracle.com/news/Typhoon-Grounded-Over-Spare-Parts_22847.html
http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/8979907.Typhoon_pilots_grounded_over_spare_parts_shortage/
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/2011/04/15/20bn-raf-typhoon-jets-grounded-due-to-lack-of-spare-parts-86908-23063205/
http://www.channel4.com/news/spare-parts-shortage-grounds-raf-jets

But future threats will have increasingly lower RCS, and thus, more radar range is always better.

I must really be missing something…

Anyway, since most of the aircrafts are going to be built in India, only big companies like BAE, Thales, EADS, Dassault … are going to make real money moving engineers and boosting their presence in India. The 4 countries producing the typhoons already have trouble providing enough part for themself (RAF having to cannibalize some a/c for parts) so I doubt their sub-companies will be of any use for India.
EADS has equal share in both the typhoon and rafale, so whatever the typhoon proposes from this front, the rafale can match.
Thales is a world leader providing electronic systems to the Typhoons, F16s, MIGs… as well as for navies and land forces.
India and France are co-developping the SR-SAM including MBDA, with further cooperation in missile technology possible (ASMP i.g) if India becomes a big user of Mica missiles (M2000 + Rafale) since after all even the Meteor auto director is derivated from Aster itself derivated from the Mica.
I won’t even develop Safran’s cooperation advantages (Sagem AASM, Secma…).
Any cooperation with BAE will come with string attached from the US…
The typhoon so far has costed more to the UK alone than the rafale for France yet so far for less a/c, and less capabilities…

However I read somewhere that the huge amount of the deal allowed the India govt to ask about almost anything (from nanotechnology to space engine technology), so I guess we will have to wait for the result to know what exactly they wanted, and what could the competitors offer.

What I’m saying is that if you want to attack a tanker, it’s not that difficult.
One of the busiest sea route is in the persic gulf, so everybody knows were to look for (just imagine how can somali pirates detect and attack tankers ?). Using a jet aircraft it’s not difficult to take a look at sea and differenciate a tanker from a corvette. So whether or not Iraqui air force were able to use exocet effectively is a secondary question. What I know is that the simple “threat” would have been enough as psychologic warfare to mobilise part of the coalition assets to make sure the sea route remain safe. An exemple is what happened in the mediterranean after Kadafi threatened to attack airliners.

The shape of the F16’s air intake has little to do with the landing gear, but was designed in order to reduce the RCS of the a/c. Many other a/c using underbelly intake have adopted similar design since.
The S shape is one of the most effective and popular with western fighters and it’s no wonder that the rafale and typhoon were design with.
One of the main raison I read about the rafale having the intake on the sides is in order to have better crash resistent aircraft (underbelly intake been quite fragile), less structural stress from heavy load…

The size of the antena is only critical for mechanically scanned array radar which needs to orientated the antena in the direction of what you want to scan. The bigger the better because you can scan a greater portion of sky with one sweep.
ESA use static modules to scan whatever portion of sky you want to scan, so the number of modules determine the number of operation, and the power of the modules the range.
In a A2A engagement a very few modules (100 or so) are more than enough to detect any a/c.
Today’s ESA radars have between 800 to 2000(raptor) because they are expected to perform multiple function at once, and have low maintenance issue (a few hundrey malfunctionning modules should not prevent the radar from working).
The raison the captor-E is going to have about 1400 modules is to improve the internal EW capabilities of the typhoon.
The RBE AESA with about 1000 modules + Spectra are more than enough.
The Elta’s Elta EL/M-2052 aesa radar is considered as one of the best AESA radar to be operational and yet is similar in size with the RBE or the F18’s AESA radar.
Both RBE and Captor-E are based on the same research technology (AMSAR) and so are going to be quite similar. Now if you want a radar >300km you should by an AWAC which is going to be far more effective to operate for target discrimination than a fighter. Not only greater range mean more energy (and the risk of interference with the a/c electromagnetic), but it also mean greater risk to be detected far outside the range of effective weapons.

If your target is a tanker, you don’t have to worry about SAM. Even hand launched grenades from the cockpit might do the job…:)

I would still be very surprised if the rafale had no export order before 2018…