– AESA radar, it was part of the deal from the beginning

But since the beginning, it wasn’t clear if the UAE wasn’t interested into an upgrade RBE2 AESA.

About the potential sales of Rafale, don’t you think that with the emirati market (and the Lybian on too ?) in the pocket, Dassault won’t be as flexible as we saw, for instance in Brazil ?

Seems like an awful lot of trouble to sell 36 aircraft.

Every contract take time between the official statement to buy them and the definitive signature.

The main issue here should be Brazil’s needs not the manufacturers plans. What Brazil really wants is CODEVELOPMENT. Towards this goal we are more than willing to wait a few more years to get our new fighters.

France proposed a collaboration about the KC-390, something that has been only slightly touch here.
Ok, working on a next gen Gripen is certainly more sexy than the KC-390. But honnestly, I think that there is much more customers for a brand new cargo than a “single engine Rafale”.

Actually it is not OK 🙂

– Fuel weight in 2 CFTs = 2 x 1,150 x 0.8 = 1,840 kg

Total = 25,872 kg
The over weight = 1,372 kg

Since the CFT were there for “marketing” reasons, we can assume they were empty, so, et voila your 24.5 tons 🙂

Got to love how the Chinese apparently are stealing yet again the intellectual property of others.

Disgraceful.

Well, I’m not sure that IP about a 40 years old chopper is still really usefull.

out of curiosity what would it take for the Rafale fanbase to chance its view (even slightly) of what Rafale did or didn’t do in the UAE?

Well, to be consistent with our position, let’s say that an official statement from RAF pilots would do the trick.

Just a problem, in such a case, we would be sure that one of the two side is an obvious liar without knowing which one … 🙁

I am surprised to learn that SH and Typhoon met specs but not Rafale?

It’s the Japanese way to say “Dassault refused the competition because we couldn’t prove it’s a fair one”.

Can anyone hazard a guess how difficult this would be? The MILSTD databus thing is designed to allow this but I guess the aerodynamics are the key thing to check out.

Honnestly, on french forums, we don’t understand what is the problem exactly.
The only problem for Dassault would be the aerodynamic questions.
For software, it’s Thales.
For economical reason, MBDA wouldn’t be happy but it doesn’t really matter.
For political reason :confused:

According to that site:
http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2010/02/16/Emirates-throw-wrench-in-Dassault-works/UPI-90241266346270/#
Adapting the Rafale to carry SLAMs would present technical difficulties and would cut out MBDA, a British-German-French-Italian missile consortium, of any contract Dassault may negotiate.