1)
yes 10 years late according to the 1988 plan which was canceled after the callapsing of the USSR. Do you have a link about your €1.5 billion hole ?
“It’s the financial management of the programme by the DGA that’s causing the problem,” Dassault VP Gerard David in* Air Letter No.15466 dated 8 Apr 2004 following the discovery of a B1.5€ shortfall in funding for 2004/5 and the subsequent removal of a “Senior MoD Official in charge for the Rafale”.
Air Letter, Les Echos, 8 April 2004
2)
Rafale M F1 may be more capable than an F-8E(FN) – but not by much, and certainly not to the extent you’d expect of a supposedly fourth generation fighter. Rafale M with Mica or Shar with AMRAAM? It’s a bit close to call. Rafale M or F/A-18……? Rafale M or F-4K……? See where I’m going. And Rafale M is firmly single-role.
3)
The rafale C you are talking about is a F2 plane which has far more capabilities than the T1 eurofighters delivered to Spain, Italy, UK and Germany.
So it should be, it was ordered in 1999, and Rafale’s development has not been held up by Quadrinational wrangling. But is it ahead of where Typhoon will be at FOC? (AMRAAM, ASRAAM, EPW and Litening 3). Captor already outperforms RBE (as the Singaporeans found out), and you’d have to be an incurable optimist (or French) to believe that Rafale F2 will have anything like the DASS (“Reliability concerns spur Rafale audit: Obsolete Electronic systems in the Rafale fighter have prompted Minister Michele Alliot-Marie to order an audit of the programme Defence News, 9 February 2004”). And then you come to the MMI, where Rafale is at least half a generation behind what Typhoon has now.
As for F3. There are big holes in development funding, unless you think Singapore’s in the bag.
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