Does anyone know the identities of the Rafale Bs deployed to Dushanbe?

Was B318 (7-HM) among them?

(Dassault’s 7,500 th aircraft, don’t you know……)

What does it say, exactly?

Are you suggesting that Rafale Roadmap will have just one bulge above the nose, with no FLIR or IRST except when Damocles is carried? Or just that OSF IT will include the old IRST with a new TV/laser?

I doubt that they’ll bin the FLIR, TMor. Where did you get that from?

I should have said, explicitely, that OSF IT will be introduced with the “Roadmap” aircraft (the Dasault folk all seem to use the English term, rather than ‘Carte de Route’ or ‘Carte Routiére’ to the extent that I don’t know the French term) which is what they now seem to be calling the follow on to F3. The F4 designation seems to have been dropped.

Apart from warbirds:

NASA: Two WB-57F. Further aircraft may return to use.

HAMM: Two former DERA B6 Mod/B6/8

Two further TT18s may return to use in the USA

Two PR9s may return to service in the UK under lease.

About eight B8/58 are maintained in airworthy condition in Peru.

Google translation, eh? That looks useful, and might help me quite a bit. Thanks TMor

J’orthographierais le mot “étudie” comme ceci: i-n-v-e-s-t-i-g-a-t-e 😉

(Writing it is easy: If we were face to face, though, I’d have to say: “Vous devez parler TRÈS len-te-ment. Je suis Anglais et je suis désolé, mais je ne peux pas parler français. Parlerez vous trés len – te – ment s’il vous plait.)

Ou avez-vous voulu dire Monsieur Smartypants (“Slip Intelligent”)?

TMor,

I’m not minimising what Rafale achieved in TLP at all – you can accuse people of that who infer that it flew as a single-role mud mover.

Exercises are there to get training value from, and if an aircraft gets shot down, the training value for the pilot will be greater – the humiliation of being downed by a Jag, for example, would be embarrassing enough to teach a pilot several lessons about lookout and complacency.

You might also correctly surmise that everyone on the red side wanted a piece of Rafale – if you were a young fighter pilot, having a kill (especially a guns kill) against the latest and most agile fighter on the opposing team would be worth more than gunning down a lumbering old Tornado.

There is a suggestion that the same Rafale was shot down in rapid succession by two Jags (a ‘Prescott’) before kill removal could take place. That wouldn’t count, in my book, and I was referring to the report that the F-16s and/or the F-15s got one as well.

Who cares? Some Rafales were shot down, but they obviously still did well enough to be ranked second in terms of kill:loss ratio.

It wouldn’t surprise me if someone shot down a Typhoon, too, nor would I view it as being some kind of disaster.

But I am fascinated to know what did come first.