Now you are mistaken. Su-27s have scored multiple kills against MiG-29s in Eritrean-Ethiopian war. This is one of the few conflicts that really shows real capabilities of involved aircraft – both sides had no force multipliers and equally trained pilots with comparable stick time, a great proof of MiG-29’s inability to counter big fighters like Su-27 and F-15.

It must be point that these “basic” Mig-29 has been made with very limited BVR capabilities, MIG made that plane in a sovietic context, with the help of numerous ground radar.

The last version of Mig-29, even vs last Flanker wouldn’t be the same “easy” target.

as it stands today, without a good export order (if the saudis dont pay up) will they have enough funds to create the definitive model of the Rafale
(a) quickly by 2008
(b) in large quantity (say 100-150)
(c) at a unit cost of around $50 mil.
(d) with aesa and meteor

The F3 standard has already been funded (it’s official since several months, during a meeting in Singapor IIRC) but AESA and MEteor aren’t in that package as Kovy said.

Just like what happened in Brazil, MExico could rent several mirage 2000.

Of course, the USA and several european AF could proposed second hand F-16 too.

How does the EuroFighter differ from the Rafale in terms of RCS :diablo:

For now, the rafale enjoy an abvious advantage, the electronic array, a small immobile antenna vs a bigger and mobile one for the Typhoon.

Some posters like to point the fact that Typhoon air intakes looks like the raptor ones and should be better but nobody can really know just by a look.

What the hell does it mean when the author points out that the ADLA has found the rdy to detect fighter size a/c at 140 km?? And further goes on to say that the RDY 2 will have an increased range by 15%!!! 😮
Is there a difference between detection range and look down/up range? Also is this range different from TWS range?
I can’t get comparable thorough specs of the RDY 2 from the horses mouth (dassault) and I don’t know anything about the author of the abovementioned website but for lack of better sources had to go with it.

The RDY2 is just like a RDY but with updated technologies so that
– better sensibility
– smaller electronic system that allowed a bigger antenna.

Also consider that ACIG gives the Rafale radar RBE 2’s range as ~ 100km! http://www.acig.org/artman/publish/article_295.shtml
So now does the mirage have an even more powerful radar than the rafale??

The RBE2 has been choosen because of the capabilities of electronic radar to mix A2A and A2G function.
the pure A2A performance isn’t as important as Ef2000 or mirage.

Why ?

that was the french doppler radar and suffured lots of troubles at the beginning of his career (see what happened in Greece) and the RDI and the RDY has been pretty good technical sucess.

Well, if you dig a bit deeper you might find out that UAEAF was exactly as unhappy with RDM performance as HAF was. They also threatened with returning the Mirages back.

RDM ? More like an esthetic feature than a radar 🙁