Larger aperture size of the Typhoon translating to some 1400 TRMs iirc.

ok, that’s a good explanation lol

Agreed, its just that I think as far as capabilities go, in airborne systems both Selex and Thales are equivalent having done a lot of research into AESAs.

hum, on top of fighter aircraft both ?

I don’t see how this is relevant to the MMRCA: None of the competitors will have EO-DAS similar systems, nor will any have radars that are at the level of the the APG-81, IMHO.

hum, I thought the french Rafale, with its spectra, had quite a similar system, am I missing something ?

Pitting a US 5. gen a/c against a Swedish 4.5 gen a/c is… rather peculiar. The Typhoon ad Rafale would not have succeeded in that competition, that’s why Eurofighter and Dassault withdrew early, they realized they would lose in in any case, so why waste the money… When the Swedes were asked why they did not pull out like Eurofighter they admitted: “The Eurofighter team obviously had better intelligence than us.” MI-5 beats the Swedish intelligence service…?

hum, I guess the reason for not having the EF/Rafale was more that they both knew it wasn’t a fair comparison but just a show to be able to tell later they had evaluated every option. The EF/Rafale teams didn’t want to spend money for nothing, and history proved they were right.

Regarding the comparison of F35 vs EF/Rafale, let’s see first what’ll come out of this program in the end… We may wait quite a while before !

Opit,
As to who to ask if someone wants to know the truth about Rafale capabilities, I’d suggest that it’s better to ask someone who genuinely seeks to understand the reality of both strengths AND weaknesses (and Rafale has plenty of both) rather than asking a French fan boy who’s more concerned with confirming their nationalistic prejudices and preconceptions and with polishing an unbalanced, over-optimistic and exaggerated picture of an aircraft and its manufacturer.

you seem pretty pissed off for someone saying he is neutral and without prejudices.

Life is hard, looks like no one is perfect down here. Well, I guess it’s better to laugh of it, and to make his own opinion without following blinding any guy around… lol

which is kind of weird…
is there any democracy thats works this way exept brazil?

??

You mean a democracy where the political power has the upper hand on the army ? Well, it should be the case in all democracies no ? Or do I miss your point like hell ?:o

I think it is high time the french come up with some real dynamic proposals – an all out rafale purchase seems well beyond the Indian budget of about 10 billion USD.

But the French could offer a mixed package with UAE+Greek M2k-5s + 60 odd rafales and weapons for that price. Numbers, quick acquisition and tech – all in one smooth cuppa. 🙂

USS.

some french posters (with way more knowledge than me) tend to assume that Dassault/France don’t care much about this contract. Somehow the current mirage story is said to have severly displeased Dassault/France. The current presence in the MMRCA contract would be more about not being absent than actually winning it. :confused:

There was no domination. However the Rafale proved to perform noticably better at high altitude(where the exercise was conducted) thanks to a much healthier thrust/weight ratio. The situtaion awarness of the Rafale is good but it’s not exceeding that of the Gripen. The armament for the Rafale at this time was better. No low or medium alt engagements took place between the Rafale’s and the Gripen’s at this point, so for the Gripen being outclassed is stretching it beyond breaking point.

The Swedish ground crew found it hillarious that the software for the Rafale cockpit displays were windows based, with the classic sky and grass field background during start up! One of the Rafale pilots swore loudly that one had to go three steps back in the menu just in order to change the radio frequency, and then go the three steps forward to continue were you left off.

Surely the Rafale is an outstanding machine, but most of the time the mouth of french aviators are much more outstanding.

nice bits of apparently first hands reports 🙂 Do you know where I could read more of these (in English would be great :o) ? Reading the part regarding the comparison between the 2 planes performance would be awesome 🙂

Zedro, fair point about “expeditionary warfare” – but as far as wars go, India has been waging an undeclared ie counter guerilla war for the past two decades in first the Punjab & then Kashmir. Tally up the number of Indians killed – military and civilian & it will be a nasty bit. Second, India fought a brutal mountain war in 1999, almost went to war in 2001, and more recently, last year. So its not “all quiet” in India & preparations for a big one. Not to mention the umpteen Islamist attacks on population centers as well, most recent being on 26/11 last year at Mumbai. Given all that, India actually underspends versus its defence needs.

I don’t discuss that india has been at war recently many times as well, but, the way I see it from France, (Old Europe you know ;)), is that India’s recent wars were less hardware intensive.

IED and the like destroy quite a lot of hardware + force the UK army to use more of their not so many choppers (not to speak of using planes for most of the artillery jobs…).

Furthermore, waging a war close to home is both less expensive and “way better” to actually spend wisely your money. In the end, if some of the UK weapons are not as good as expected, it’s not like the home country might be at real risk (at least not directly). For India it’s pretty different there !

I dont have the numbers on the UK ratio to compare with….

me neither but I think it would help us quite well to have a better picture of the situation.

in the end, my final impression here is that western countries, with all their remote little wars, have lost the big picture and are way too much concentrating of the big ticket stuff (where a few big companies make a lot of money…). The return on investment seems at best foggy nowadays lol

Makes me think it would be even funnier to compare the actual number of soldiers actually fighting in Afghanistan (so without the ones taking care of all these expensive furniture), with the numbers in India.

Still about “bigger picture”, still, I don’t see Indian army close from the UK one in term of discipline and effectiveness (I may be wrong for sure, but that’s the way I see it currently). Having fought little wars all over the place still has some added value, somehow, before the cost of the kit kills it all 😉 Would you agree ?

Fortunately, for UK/US/Europe, war isn’t close from their borders and, regarding the taxes I pay, it looks like reality will soon hit back, between Vietnam, er, no, Pakistan-Afghanistan, and the financial crisis. So all these considerations might change heavily in the next 20 years !