Can’t be “corrected” unless India makes a political decision to reward states which shun Pakistan, & India has recently been moving in exactly the opposite direction. And forget about persuading anyone to shun China: if they have to choose between the Chinese & Indian markets, they won’t necessarily choose India.

Possibly, but the Chinese don’t exactly have the best reputation for respecting IP agreements they’ve signed and not stealing your pants if they can get away with it. E.g., they just admitted to flat-out ignoring their PREVIOUS agreement with Russia re: aircraft designs, but are claiming they will NOW respect I.P. agreements… Right. Brasil and India (as well as Russia) haven’t demonstrated the same (complete lack of trustworthiness) sort of approach, and are in fact ‘trusted cooperation partners’ of multiple Western defense contractors. Unless you have NO other options and are completely desperate, China doesn’t really seem like a good ‘partner’. They have in fact put out designs that appear to be straight rip-offs of South African missiles… They were willing to purchase A HANDFUL of copies of the Rooivalk – which wasn’t agreed to, with justification, since that’s pretty much not even hiding their intentions to reverse-engineer.

Thanks for you sharing your take on it. I’m a new member as well.

As far as I know, HMS *IS* integrated/certified on Rafale (from 3 vendors), one just needs to “sign on the dotted line”. So that is a non-issue. Likewise, everything else (radar, countermeasures) seems to work fine and nobody is complaining there.

About France buying Iris-T, I put that smiley face there for a reason ;), though when France needs to replenish Mica stores, if Iris-T is available, cheaper, and integrated (and Rafale has had some export success to bolster French egos), I’d put a REMOTE chance on it happening :rolleyes:. In any case, I was mainly thinking about Brasil, India, & UAE as France doesn’t need to replenish AAM stocks for the Rafale in the immediate future. I don’t really think Eurofighter is well placed for any of those contests, so certification on Rafale would be net gains for Iris-T if things developed that way – thus HAL might have a case for larger proportion of profits (not workshare, though HAL might share the certification work alongside Dassault).

About the M2K’s, another poster (HGP) claimed Hellenic Air Force has “scheduled” to upgrade ALL non-Dash 5 Mirage2000’s to that configuration, though I couldn’t find any source for that… :confused: That was part of my question about the Iris-T’s, whether the system-architecture of Dash 5’s and Rafale are similar enough to make a dual-certification (allowing Greece to standardize on Iris-T with entire modern fleet – F-16, M2K, Rafale) easy to accomplish at little additional cost (and possibly none to HAF). For all the historical (and logical) reasons you mention, I certainly see why the Air Force would not want to cover certification costs, but the increased sales possibilities (cheaper Iris-T seems attractive for other potential Rafale buyers) seem solid enough that it may be attractive for Dassault and Iris-T consortium to share together…???

But if they don’t go for Rafale, I agree buying F-16 Bk. 52/60 now and JSF when available is the most viable route. If Rafale can’t resolve it’s problem areas in the near future, I don’t think they will by the time JSF is available, and I don’t think Eurofighter will make it in either time-frame, given the “65% AtG” weighting. I guess I don’t see the weapons issues with Rafale as “all negative” as much as opportunities to address these issues, which, assuming upgrades of all M2K to Dash 5 and integration with Iris-T, would let the Air Force make the most of the French hardware they already have. Otherwise, if HAF is serious about standardizing on Iris-T, they should really look into selling their entire M2K fleet (including -5’s) and buying more Bk.52/60s. In light of HAL participation in Neuron, getting to a point where cooperation with France fully works instead of perpetually living with it’s shortcomings, seems like a positive outcome to aim for.

Apparently HMS are currently available for the Rafale, even if France has chosen not to invest in this capability for their Rafale fleet at this time. Thales, Sagem and Israeli HMS have been stated to be available on Rafale, and even if they are more “primitive” than JHMCS (for example), they completely fulfill the stated requirements of the Hellenic Air Force. (their benefits for both AtG and AtA are clear)

The main other non-political :rolleyes: factor I see re: Rafale and Greece is the weapon integration, particularly Iris-T which Greece already uses for F-16s. Besides having some degree of superiority over Mica IR within the short-range envelope, it’s signifigantly cheaper than the longer-range Mica. My question is, given Greece is also a partner in the Iris-T program, what perspective is there for Iris-T integration on Rafale? (if parallel integration with M2K-5’s would present little additional cost over Rafales alone, that might also present a desirable scenario)

For Dassault, having more missiles types integrated might help them sell more planes.
Equally, it stands to reason that Greece/HAL might be able to negotiate an agreement with Diehl/Saab, et al, to obtain a higher proportion of the profit on any future sales of Iris-T to Rafale users (India, UAE, Brazil, France :rolleyes: ) if they integrate it themselves.

I don’t really see any “technical” impediments to integrating Iris-T on Rafale, it’s just a manner of it being paid for. Is anybody aware of information on this subject, or the willingness of the various actors (Dassault, HAL, ++) to move this forward? With both HMS (already available) and Iris-T integration, Rafale (F4+) certainly seems a strong candidate for Greece. The advantages of profuse weapons availability for both US & Russian platforms is obvious: If anybody at Dassault has a brain, I’d think they’d be interested in at least taking the easiest steps to alleviate this discrepancy.