Gen Jean-Paul Paloméros, chief of staff of the French air force, is confident about the Dassault Rafale’s prospects in major international competitions, and partially attributes the aircraft’s previous losses in Singapore and South Korea to politics.

“I’ve flown in the Rafale and I know what it can do,” said Paloméros, speaking to Flightglobal at the Langkawi International Maritime and Aerospace exhibition in Malaysia late last month. “Rafale was designed since conception as a multi-role aircraft,” he added.

According to Paloméros, the Rafale is well suited to handle emerging air-to-air and air-to-ground threats in the Asia-Pacific region.

“The Rafale has very high manoueverability,” he said. “It will be getting an AESA [active electronically scanned array] radar and it has good weapons. It will also receive the MBDA Meteor air-to-air missile, offering extra range against any types of threats.”

The AESA version of the Thales RBE2 radar will be introduced into Rafale in 2013, when French forces begin receiving the fourth block of production aircraft. The Meteor is still undergoing development, but should be deployed on the Rafale after the middle of the decade.

Paloméros is confident the Rafale will emerge triumphant in India’s medium multi-role combat aircraft competition for 126 fighters, where it is on a shortlist with the Eurofighter Typhoon. Indian media reports suggest the decision is imminent, possibly before the end of 2011.

Full story:

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/french-air-force-chief-confident-of-rafale-victory-in-indian-contest-366102/

I thought AESA would come next year, but it seems I was wrong?

If BS were an item, you would be a factory.

LOL, you have run out of arguments it seems!

Had you been more open-minded and willing to learn and understand perhaps I could have tried to explain to you, but given the attitude you are showing I put you on my Ignore list instead.

Bye.

If that had to happen, then it would have happened by now. The IAF needs these planes, and the Govt and bureaucracy has dithered enough. Of the five contenders only the EF and Rafale meet the required specifications. The rest, really did not. They revised the benchmark also to reflect the costs.

Look, India is willing to spend on its modernization, which BTW is overdue by almost a decade.

Take a random look at Indian programs and you’ll see…C130J’s, 9 more to be ordered, C-17 orders 10 placed, 7 more likely, Navy intends to double P-8I orders to 20+…over a hundred radars ordered for the IAF from local, French, Israeli sources…ballistic missile program being advanced…multi-billion SAM order for IAF placed with locals (Akash), another more expensive long range one codeveloped with IAF…

Point is in each of these, IAF/services went for capability. Not just cost, that was considered after certain standards were met.

In the ONE deal, that got cancelled due to price escalation, that was apparently because the IAF did not write the specifications stringently enough (for flight refuellers) so the Fin Min, pointed out that the cheaper IL-78 met those standards too….guess what, the IAF did not order the IL-78, but has thrown open the revised deal again, where the A330 and Boeing refuellers can both compete.

Point being, the MMRCA is as good as done now. It will not be cancelled or revised, and that’s my honest opinion.

India is facing severe security challenges and the IAF needs these planes.

Still, the finance people may wonder when they read stuff like this:

“In all fairness, all the six aircraft in the competition were good, and more or less close to one another in performance. But some of them had to be out, and some had to be in, and that’s it. Let’s say that the two European finalists were the most-compliant in the 600-plus parameters that the IAF selection team had set.”

http://www.indiastrategic.in/topstories1068.htm

So all of them were good and “more or less close in performance”. OK they picked the two most-compliant, but was it because they met some key criteria that the others did not meet or was it because “some of them had to be out and some had to be in”?

Hopefully there were good reasons why the 4 others were excluded but reading the above text one does not get that impression, it seems more like an arbitrary (and very expensive!) decision. Perhaps the person giving the statement (Chief of Air Staff of the Indian Air Force) does not know what he is talking about?

American carrier groups and naval forces in general never snoop around and in other nations waters. Yeeeep.
Let’s not make this bigger than it is.

When did they had to shut down civilian traffic because of it?

Sources please

The Kuznetsov group stayed in international waters for the entire exercise.

As stated above it was not just inside of Norwegian EEZ, we also had to shut down helicopter trafic to and from the oil rigs due to the Russian activity. They were interfering with civilian activity in a manner that is not acceptable.

I find it strange that you seem to defend such behavior. Why?

Oh dear. Neither Dassault nor EADS has such technology. They are not engine manufacturers. The technology has to come from Safran or Rolls-Royce.

True; however it’s not surprising that journalists and others don’t care about those little details.

Anyway would the European engine manufacturers be willing to share that technology? Would Eurojet be obliged to do so if India becomes a full Eurofighter partner?

CFT are entaierly composite.

Ever heard of “Have Glass”?

Do the F-16 have radar blockers in the air intakes?