would you consider Russia a close ally of France?

I think Mr chirac does.

Let’s hope for you Brasil takes the M2K, then some problems could be solved via Embraer… And of course, you should have some spares in storage, at least for two years.

Well, if India signed the mega deal with Dassault, that would be even cheaper with HAL 😀

No, not military wise. But Europe and Russia have strong economical relations. Much of our oil and gas comes from Russia, as well as many other raw materials. Further more, Russia has become a large market for western european goods.

IIRC, Dassault is working with Sukhoi in a fighter right now and SNECMA with Saturn.

while noting the attiration you also have to see the combat experieince of either aircraft. F16s have been in combat ALOT more that M2Ks have been.
puts alot of stress on the airframe and maintanance crews. not to mention the pilots who constantly log higher flight times during such times.
M2Ks have been involved in limited conflicted and not full blown wars (Kargil, Agean theater etc)

Right, the F-16 did the WWII and Vietnam

Because of the betrayals maybe…
Seing the Israeli-improved Mirage Vs delivered to Libya and Egypt to attack Israel in 73 may make more than the Israelis think twice before befriending such an “ally”. Just maybe.

As I said, that was apretty special moment in recent French history. Could you give me several equivalent cases ? Sorry if that your country had to sustain that.
ON THE OTHER HAND, Mr Dassault (a jew), give to the mossad all blueprints needed by Israel, so, please, be more modest.

Now on the other hand, those countries which have enough oil, for long enough, can hope to keep Chirac bribed as long as they need him. But just maybe.

You know, one strange thing with the first flavor of the fifth french republic is that political parties couldn’t get enough funds to live more than severl years and all parties had to use “illegal” means.
But, again, be more modest, bribes are still a reality when selling weapons.

That is indeed a possible way to deal with traitorous suppliers. But it’s too expensive for most countries except the oil fiefdoms.

India, Taiwan …..

[QUOTE=dan_pub]
Even most Arab countries seem to have realized that this “ally” is of little value. How many M2000 or Rafale are they buying, lately?[QUOTE]

Are you trolling or is it that you know so few in politics ?

IIRC Argentina also suffered an embargo post the Falklands conflict- though I am not quite sure.
Of course if we really want to go into deep cons- buying from any nation has its attendant risks. The technology can be compromised- anyone remember what happened to the Iraqi AD n/w set up with French help…

France was at war vs Iraq in 91 and one of the closest ( is that word correct in english ??) ally was too with Argentina.
So yes, nobody can complain of that I think.

The case of Isreal is of a different kind and won’t certainly be seen in a near future.

And it could be argued that the risk today is _way_ worse. One should not forget that the president of France is now this Jacques Chirac, ie the man who made the decision to sell the A-bomb factory to Iraq to get bribes to finance his party.

A-bomb factory ? Man, please.
but it’s right that the deal was strange.
WE could have sell several kind of nuclear plant but we chose the easier to get military uranium.
Really, I don’t know what ideas Mr Chirac got at that moment (he wanted an “equilibrium” with Israelis nukes ?) but as you said, every french official was very happy of the IAF strike 😀

And we all know how correct the French behaved in Dien-Bien-Phu or Algeria. So making them saints is a bit incorrect.

I can’t remind anyone who stated that French were saints.
In Viet-Nam, well, that was a “normal” war if I remember correctly.
For Algeria, the problem is that for french, that country WAS part of france.
It’s as if extremists from Mexico wanted the texas for them.
I doubt that the geneva convention would live more than one week.

The very much anti Irac war movement inside the French government was more based on greed (having oil contracts and cash payments) then the love for democarcy…

I doubt that too, but I doubt too that it was only because of greedy thoughts.
Unless of course, you’ve got mails exchanged between Mr Chirac and Total.

Sorry, but from the passiv to active RBE-2, according to thales, it’s only a simple switch of array.

This is much more complex tech than a Pentium cpu.

Sorry, this is totally different matters.
A MMIC modules isn’t as complex as a pentium, enven of first generation.
That’s a MODULE.
Perhaps a single module is harder to get than a single transistor of pentium but that’s not the same conditions.
A single module can cost thousand of dollars, that doesn’t matter.

Intel has plants in Israel.
Several senior engineers at Intel come from Israel.

So, the knowledge to do that isn’t a problem I think.

but if the Rafale PESA radar was intended to be replace anyways, might as well stick to the RDY series until then.

The AdA hasn’t any budget for the AESA upgrade for now but haven’t show really interests, AWACS and Hawkeye will compensate that problem.
the active array has been promoted for exports version only.