Funny, when a French pilot writes something in a blog it is taken as the Absolute Truth, when a Brazilian pilot gives his personal opinion in a blog it is “pathetic arguments”.
This is not excatly the same thing ;
On one hand we have a french active squadron leader talking at an official press conference about an exercise he actually took part in. The fact that this interview is reported in the blog of a famous french defense journalist (and not just an anonimous fan boy blog) is also relevant to assess the value of this info .
On the other hand we have a respectable but retired FAB pilot who gives his opinion about a selection process about which he has only very limited official insight (if any). And he bases a big part of this opinion on 25-30 years old bad experiences he had with one of the contender.
Well, think what you want, but I prefer to take his opinion with a pinch of salt.
It is also funny that after complaining for years that Rafale often won the “technical evaluation” but lost “due to politics”, now the situation is reversed in Brazil! The FAB puts Rafale last, and it’s the politicians that put it first.
AFAIK, the situation is not reverse.
Where did you see that the rafale lost the technical evaluation ?
The FAB said that all 3 aircrafts meet the technical requirements.
Thus, there is no technical winner or looser for the FAB.
Price and TOT should not have been part of the technical evaluation and shouldn’t have been taken into account in any FAB report, leaked or not. That is why Jobim asked a new report with only what was asked to the FAB (ie no ranking based on price and TOT or whatever was not the FAB business in the first place)
Rafale is a fantastic aircraft, I like it a lot! However it seems very expensive, and even more so if they want all the ToT.
rafale developement represents about €10 billions and 20 years of advanced research and expensive trials in all relevant aerospace fields :
– composite materials airframe
– aerodynamics and associated FBW system
– jet engines
– esa radars
– esa ECM
– BVR missiles
– stand off cruise missiles
– multispectral optronic
– sensor fusion
– RCS reduction (I didn’t say stealth 😉 )
– carrier operation compatibility
That’s a lot of known how which are ALL in the rafale bag. AFAIC, I doubt that Brasil would get everything…
The only other contender which can match this set of TOT, is the F-18E, but the US congress will never accept TOT of this magnitude (especially not on missiles, radar and ECM)
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