-Rafale enjoyed an unquantified superiority over the competitors in Leh, for example using half the runway distance needed by the S Hornet.
😀 Interesting. LoL

That contradicts the tests in Switzerland. While I might believe that it be true compared to the SH, I have a hard time believing that it outperformed Typhoon in that regard.

So it is quality (Rafale) vs. industrial off-sets. (aka bribes)

I think when the no-fly-zone began, the Libyan AF had about 300 mig-23s and 70 Mirage F-1s as the main strength of their AF of which very few were operational. Why was the Libyan AF in such a low state of readiness?

Years of sanctions and a strange to desire to buy much more kit, than they could ever hope to use. Libya once was a huge depot for a potential conflict between Israel and the Arab nations. Other would provide the bodies, Libya (with the oil money) the hardware.

Nothing of that sort is stated in either article! Neither that export customers will have to pay for the AESA, nor that T3B will be postponed beyond 2020.

“”Now we see more defence customers having the idea to go ‘off-the-shelf’, with no pre-financing of R&D. We don’t want to lose some competitive edge in our programmes, so we already started to finance on our own,” he said. One such example is in developing an active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar for the Typhoon.”

“There is nothing on the agenda this year or next year,” Zoller said during a financial presentation at Cassidian’s Unterschleissheim headquarters near Munich on 28 March. “Our governments have no money,” he added. “We have to see whether we can shift those discussions and firm commitments to a later date.”

So they are already talking about the production run of Tranche 3A by 2-3 years. Which means production of 3B would start 2018/19.

It established a lot of things.

1. AESA wont be funded by the current partner nations any time soon. So India would have to pay for it alone
2. Current partner nations have delayed Tranche3B to after 2020 amd only if they need more planes by then and have the money. Which is both unlikely.

No, the governments have told the industry that they are not going to invest any more money in that project.

Sure, I don’t think either the RAF nor the LW would ask their crews to perform missions for which they’re not trained on a war theater. 🙂
May I add that I don’t think German & UK would have limited their training, should they have bought Rafale ? Based on the french example, ex-A2A 12F MN flottille is now multirole, as well as ex-A2G 1/7 AdlA squadron.
Training courses are shorter on the Rafale than on older aircrafts. Example : count in weeks to train for the Scalp-EG on a Mirage 2000D. Count in days for the same missile on the Rafale.
Is it “only” because the Rafale is “easier” than the 2000D ? Clearly not. Rafale crews will be cleared to use the missile with less experience on it than a 2000D crew.
Would it endanger them, or the mission success rate ? Well, I’m not qualified here, but manifestely AdlA doesn’t think so, and so far it seems to me that Rafale holds its rank in exercices as well as in combat, isn’t it?

I know nothing of the crew training of EF users, and that’s not my point here. Besides, EF isn’t the topic here.

It is a budget thing. Germany allocated a certain amount of money for training on the EF and the industry gets money for adding capabilities. The plan made up by the Luftwaffe stipulated, that Tranche 1 would be used for training in the air-to-air role first (need to replace ageing F-4Fs). Tranche 2 would have limited AG capability (here the training of JBG31 is the real problem, which is way behind schedule).

The French spent more money on integrating weapons into Rafale, as they wanted their units to go multi-role quicker.

But that is a problem of the budget the users allocate to weapons integration and not of the airframe.