With UAE almost on the brink of ordering Rafale , every one is closely monitoring Indian MMRCA , Brazil seems to be watching even more closely, in terms of selection of aircraft’s only on performance and technical and avoiding any political interference , Indian MMRCA report will be much sort out after, to those countries ,who are interested in technical information of fighter aircraft .

I have my doubts that the Indians would be allowed to share the information of the evaluation with other countries. There are usually restrictions when it comes to forwarding such information to third parties.

Tejas has an open architecture system, so a physically compatible weapon could be made compatible with the aircraft.

I think IAF jaguar’s also have open architecture MC. Not sure though.

I’m more concerned about the physical aspects of size and weight of the weapon than about the electronic side. It’s questionable that individual hardpoints are cleared for such heavy weapons and/or that they could fit size wise.

From a Typhoon or a Tornado?

Surely the Typhoon would be the prefered choice, wouldn’t it not?

You can forget about that, the Taurus isn’t integrated on the Typhoon yet and the test firing is conducted in a few weeks! There is absolutely no chance that a Typhoon will be used for this. I suppose the WTD61 or the JaboG 33 will deploy one or two Tornado IDS for this.

I think that people look at it from the wrong perspective. Before the Su-30 was introduced into the IAF it had no heavy fighters at all. There was no other viable option to the Flanker back then and it is rather clear that the heavy Flanker replaced a number of smaller/lighter types. The IAF has changed its force structure from a one sided light-medium combat aircraft fleet to a mix of heavy and lighter fighters. Right now the IAF’s mix of combat aircraft is around 150 heavy Su-30s and ~450 light-medium types. The FGFA will replace the Su-30 in the longer term, while the MMRCA will make up for numbers and in the mid term replace types like the MiG-27, Jaguar, MiG-23 (alread ywithdrawn from service) and to a certain extend probably the MiG-29 and M2k as well. The AMCA will be complementary and the MMRCA also is an assurance in the case the FGFA and AMCA suffer from delays. The LCA on its side will replace the MiG-21 which was once the most numerous fighter in the IAF. In the longer run we’ll see a fleet of 126+ LCAs, 126-189 MMRCA, a yet to be specified number of AMCAs and probably ~350 heavy Su-30MKI/FGFA. The mix of heavy and light fighters is not that one sided either. Considering that the USAF purchased ~750 F-15A-D and ~1000 F-16s and that the Soviet AF introduced ~700 Su-27 and not many if any more MiG-29s it is a false perception that various larger AFs operated a high-low mix to the extend stated by many here.

And you guys are oh so great aerospace engineers.:p

DERA is USA.;)

No that would be DARPA or how it is called. DERA was the predecessor of QinetiQ.

a rafale carries 4.5t of fuel internally, and can fly for about 2100km with it giving it about 460km/t of fuel range
the F-35B carries 8.3t of fuel internally, and can fly for about 1660km with it giving it about 260km/t of fuel range

You are using the wrong figures here!

1.) Rafale’s internal fuel load is 4750 kg (C/M)
2.) F-35B’s internal fuel load is just ~6300 kg
3.) The F-35B’s range figure might be conservative

But the truth is that the block 1s as of yet are toothless tigers and by that measure even less capable than early Eurocanards were because all of them were at least cleared for some weapons at the time of delivery. So all the gizmos like EOTS, EODAS etc. are fine, but without weapons these aircraft are as of yet training jets only.