Or another player.

And who might that be? Do you have any player in mind?

I don’t!

Well, perhaps I should qualify a bit — it will depend somewhat on the circumstances. However I do think that the lower RCS and IR signature will offer some advantages in many (but certainly not all) scenarios.

If we assume a 4 vs 4 with no external support I think the F-35 will spot the 4.5 gen fighter before the 4.5 gen fighters will have a chance to spot the F-35. As already pointed out this will give a huge advantage.

However if the 4.5 gen fighters have e.g. AWACs support and the F-35 don’t then perhaps it could be more “up in the air” who would win.

Anyway it seems to me that VLO is a huge advantage that will to quite some degree compensate for the somewhat lack of maneuvrability etc. that the F-35 may be suffering from.

Note that air forces around the world seem to prefer the F-35 these days and not 4.5 gen fighters.

Another thing is that if they had other 5. gen fighters to choose from the F-35 may not bee the obvious choice anymore… :diablo:

Not just rumors, the IAF Chief itself stated it!

Yes but when? Did you not notice that the MMRCA process has been delayed, not just once but numerous times.

The company would, but if Sweden would is another case and that’s what he confirmed with the foreign policy part.

You are mistaken! 😉

A poster on Bharat Rakshak suggested that perhaps the US blocked the Elta 2052 radar for India (as mentioned in the IAF thread) because they worried it would find it’s way into the Mig-35 — just like SU-30mki has become a formidable fighter but relatively affordable fighter by combining Israeli avionics with a Russian airframe, Mig-35 may be able to do something similar.

However by blocking the Elta radars the US would prevent that from happening.

Any thoughts on this?

No but SAAB got them through the request for proposal by the Indian Ministry of Defence and after submitting their proposal in 08 they have mentioned that the Gripen meets all the requirements and exceeds some, comments from the Rafale team seemed to express a worry about this status, i think even the MiG-35 meets the requirements in the tender.

Well the fact that Gripen NG seems to meet all and exceed some requirements does not necessarily imply that the requirements are “not very challenging”.

Perhaps you are underestimating the NG 🙂

I really think that is true, the operational requirement defined by the Indian Air Force are not very challenging, there were some quotes by Dassault officials that Rafale should be given the advantage of exceeding the requirements, or something along these lines.

Do you actually know the operational requirements?

Could you offer a link to that document? I would be very interested in seeing it!

I took note of another thing:

“Saab to bring Gripen trio to Aero India
January 9, 2011
By Saurabh Joshi

Swedish defense major Saab is planning to get three Gripen NG aircraft to Aero India, the air show in Bangalore due to be held next month.

So do they have 3 demo NG flying now ?

According to Signatory that is most likely a typo, should be Gripen C/D.

Those exchange ratio are still a total mystery to me :
Rafale VS F-16 : 4-2
Rafale VS F-22 : 0-2 (contrary to F-16s, F-22s managed no to get shot at at all, possibly because of the tremendous thrust allowing them to escape awkward situations)
Rafale VS Typhoon : 8-1 :confused:

Sorry for the topic.:o

Perhaps no mystery — perhaps just a lack of details on all the DACT restrictions.

I would not put too much emphasis on any of these results independent of who is “winning”. DACT is DACT and is often misleading.