One thing for certain is that there won’t be problems identifying the difference between aircraft from the PAF and IAF. Future PAF aircraft will stick to the conventional wing layouts while the IAF is going for delta wings.

EF has a whopping 62% larger radar than Rafale,
even discounting Meteor ranged fights, (where a 2-way data link is needed anyway)
that will make a difference on the biggest conventional challenge of today:
Defense against Cruise Missiles.

I feel that neither price nor capability will play the biggest role here. The Indian government wants access to European markets. Both deals are so comparable it will come down to other intangibles unrelated to the actual aircraft IMHO.

The Rafale is not all that deficient at spotting cruise missiles. With a pair of MICA-IR, SPECTRA, and an AESA radar the aircraft will be pretty good at optical and electromagnetic scanning. And with Rafale getting Meteor its not really an advantage for Typhoon.

In the back of my mind Saab screwed the pooch a long time ago not using EJ200 and strictly European parts in the Gripen C/D. Not only would it eliminate the meddling and intrusive behavior of American politics in their exports, but it would have made parts for other European programs cheaper with the economy of scale. So far its cost them Indian, Poland, and Brazil competitions. The success in Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia and Thailand should have heralded in many more orders. Instead they don’t really stand a chance in any more. There is virtually zero chance in the Malaysia, Denmark, Netherlands, and Switzerland competitions.

Until the forces start flying swarms of drones to augment the future fighter force there just isn’t going to be enough numbers in the air to replace AWACS. I’d imagine that AWACS as we know it will become less important in the next 25 years and smaller versions, akin to high altitude JSTARS, will become more important. They’ll need to fly in the stratosphere and fly efficiently at a high speed yet use a large enough wing to keep the stall speed as low as possible. I just don’t see long range SAMs being all that effective against something like that. It’s pretty tough to maneuver a missile dynamically at the ranges they suggest.

North Korea is no embarrassment to China. They form a strategic buffer zone and China will seed them whatever equipment they deem necessary to maintain the strategic buffer. If any new hostility broke out in the DMZ I could see China flying in J-10’s or shipping in HQ-10 to balance the power along the border.

Perhaps it was the basis of China’s JF-17?

Possibly because the entire case for the F-35 goes out the window if the plan is to hang weapons off of it on a regular basis. :rolleyes:

Not really. I don’t the plan ever was to use its stealth onevery mission.

F-20A cost nowhere near the price of an F-16A and it’s operating costs were half that of the latter. It’s nonsense like people claiming AMX cost the same as an F-16A. An apples to oranges comparison. By the time F-16 was a decent mud mover the AMX was long since out of development.

SE may be able to reach Mach 1.3 in a dive, but it’s engine cannot sustain speed greater than the speed of sound. The A-4 was a better all around utility player for quite a bit less money. The SE came about economically by rebuilding the Etendards. Otherwise they weren’t really inexpensive relative to anything in their weight class.