I’m always astonished that French people are so bad at speaking English… like they aren’t even trying. You can’t even compare to French speakers from other countries. :confused:

I can assure you that English people are far worse at speacking french :dev2:

According to the website mentioned above:

1. Ordered Rafales: 180（Rafale B x 63, Rafale C x 69, Rafale M x 48）.

2. Delivered Rafales (2013): 126（Rafale B x 42, Rafale C x 45, Rafale M x 39）.

3. In-serviced Rafales (2013): 121（Rafale B x 42, Rafale C x 44, Rafale M x 35）.

4. Delivering plan in the next 3 years: 26（Rafale B x 18, Rafale C x 1, Rafale M x 7）.
* 2014: Rafale B x 8, Rafale C x 1, Rafale M x 2.
* 2015: Rafale B x 7, Rafale C x 0, Rafale M x 4.
* 2016: Rafale B x 3, Rafale C x 0, Rafale M x 1.

5. Delivered Rafales (2016): 152（Rafale B x 6, Rafale C x 46, Rafale M x 46）.

6. In-serviced Rafale (2016): No more than 147（Rafale B x 60, Rafale C x 45, Rafale M x 42）, and 33（Rafale B x 22, Rafale C x 3, Rafale M x 8）of them shall equip RBE-2 AESA radars.

There is a little mistake for in service rafale :
It should be Bx41, Cx45, Mx35

Dassault , are you sure ?, beware not to become yourself a victim of the press frenzy….. .
provocative communications , orchestrated or simply fueled by popular antagonism between France and England , has identical root at both ends….

Correct, EElightning is falling in the same press trap as the one he is pointing out…

Dassault has always been extremely silent regarding export prospects. Especially about the UAE. During press conferences, former Dassault CEO was always refusing to talk about them even when the journalists were pressing him with questions.

On the other hand, French government representatives, like the defense minister or Sarkozy, used to express their confidence that a contract would be signed in the near future. But that was when France was in exclusive negociations with the UAE. Since the UAE decided to start an open competition, French officials simply acknowlege that the Rafale is still in the competition. No more, no less. That being said, the failure of the exclusive talks has been a huge disapointement for the French team has they were actually very closed to sign when everything eventually collapsed during the previous Dubai Air Show.

Today, as usual, Dassault barely communicates, which is quite annoying sometimes. On the other hand BAE and EADS are quite aggressive as far as marketting is concerned. I mean, just take a look at the last issue of EF World which is obviously targeting the UAE market.

You are forgetting two things:
1- That statment goes to any aircraft/missile combinations, as long as MiG have missiles with greater speed and range, a) it will fire first b) its missiles will reach first even if fired at the same time with the enemy. So when on the offensive it will never have the need to turn away, just put some angle to reduce enemy’s attack range.

Then we agree that turning away is not what the mig will do contrary to what Mr “mig-31” thinks

2- Zalson’s 140 degrees azimuth, 130 degrees elevation coverage helps there. A 70 degree angle to the target will easily make the opponent’s missile fall short. And at M2.5, a ~50 degree angle climb can be pretty quick in gaining altitude. Combine two and its pretty impressive.

yes a 50 deg climb would work but will reduce the tracking range and speed at the same time and I don’t think it would be wise to loose all your kinetic energy in a mig-31.

So I would rather go for a high mach 60 deg turn in the horizontal plane.

Agile fighter may sound really cool in movie but lessons in WW II shown that even in WVR combat fighter with much superior turning will lose to the one with superior speed and acceleration ( that why we switch from tri-fighter to bi -fighter to monofighter ) so basically even if missiles dont work mig-31 still superior in dogfight

you can’t apply tactics of WW2 fighters taking advantage of slight manoeuvering or accelleration capabilities to modern dogfight.

At dogfight altitudes and speed, the mig-31 will turn like a brick, won’t out accelerate any descent 4th generation fighter (not to mention fox2 missiles), will have the crappiest SA you can imagine due to poor visibility and will be a target easy to spot and target due to its huge size.
A mig-31 deciding to enter a dogfight with, let say a F-16, will be dead after the first turn.

Don’t fool yourself, any Mig-31 pilot with a bit of common sens will disengage and return to base when he runs out of BVR missiles.

since its a hot subject right now. this thread focusing solely on Indian Navy (go to military aviation section for the AF thread).

India’s first two carriers are STOBAR, but it seems likely that the third one might be CATOBAR, throwing things more in confusion

if the IAF rafale become a reality, the best choice is to go for the rafale M.
besides the fact that India will have most of the tools and known how to built the plane by herself, this is actually the only one in the list to be combat proven from an aircraft carrier.

Among other things the Rafale M is combat proven for
standoff multitarget interdiction
CAS
Deep strike
multispectral low and high altitude recce
buddy refueling

And most of the other roles are operational : air defence, anti-ship, nuke

I did like this line from Jon Lake on MMRCA:

“For the Indians it’s all about credibility [….] If they believe what the Typhoon consortium told them, then by 2018 Typhoon will do everything that Rafale does now. But they clearly don’t believe it, and I don’t blame them.”

Like if the Rafale development would have stopped when he wrote that :sleeping:

it is only enhanced by fast playback of the video.

Which video are you talking about ?