You’re trying to generalize from something which happened in the past.

Tout a fait vrai… very true.

The idea behind “the French way” is not to refuse compromise. The idea is to let each member contribute on what he knows best, though i concede that at the time, the Snecma problem blurred the picture

Makes sense.

though i concede that at the time, the Snecma problem blurred the picture

Unfortunately that stopped each member contributing to what he knows best, shooting the whole idea down, didn’t it?

This is a matter of cost efficiency.

The defence sector is hopelessly inefficient (plus ca change, plus ca ne change pas). It wouldn’t recognise cost efficiency if it was staring it in the face. The most cost effective place to assemble the aircraft would probably have been in Italy. I don’t think France would have agreed to that, do you?

I don’t think it was too clever of the UK to fail to see the advantage of designing an aircraft with a carrier variant, either. Les betises des rosbifs, hein? Anyway, getting off topic here.

As far as I know, it’s not exactly like you put it. Dassault (and France too) thought that since they required the most numbers of fighters, they wanted to get the design lead as a result. That doesn’t sound so unfair does it ?

I don’t think that was the motivation. I think it was that France wanted to be in charge (la gloire de la France etc), wanted the design of the aircraft to be based on Dassault’s own design and wanted to be in charge of production. Buying a third of the aircraft produced hardly justifies design and manufacturing leadership. let alone running the show and subcontracting the work one chooses to subcontract (that would be the less interesting stuff, wouldn’t it) to the other “partners”.

Do you suggest that if the UK had wanted the most aircraft and BaE had suggested the it should have design and manufacturing leadership, France would have seen that as being a fair arrangement? Jamais, mon vieux, jamais, jamais, jamais…

Dear Snow Monkey,

let me first of all, say I’ve no intention to define what is “wrong” or “right” on this political agreement, to me, Lula and Sarkozy seems to be two smarty pants on each side of the table.

But let’s look at the different players on this:

FAB: first choice was Gripen, would be quite happy with SH as well, not happy at all to see Rafale being push to the front for political reasons;

Unions: “CUT”, the most powerful one, sided with Gripen due to larger jobs creation;

Entrepreneurs: at large backing Gripen as well. Embraer goes along with Gripen and SH. Initially not happy with Dassault proposal (it was leaked a letter to FAB saying that Embraer had no interest in working with Dassault), but bullied by the Minister of Defense to accept a possible future agreement.

Press and population in general: in general not supportive of military spending; press was highly critical of the political choice for the most expensive proposal; NJ ToT argument didn’t convince anyone.

Rafale support was coming from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (anti-American bias) and Lula against all other players listed above.

…DELETED…

So, what is left is international politics to support Dassault.

Chances for Rafale now? I would say basically none, but who knows? The same could have been said about SH just a couple of months ago.

Best and sorry for the long post.

Thanks for your interesting thoughts. If you are right in your assessment of the situation (and it sounds to me like you are), I agree that Dassault now has little chance.

I say “Dassault” because while I am sure that Rafale is magnificent, its manufacturer appears to have a reputation for taking advantage of its monopoly supplier situation to charge much more for spares, upgrades etc than other suppliers when they find themselves in that same monoply supplier situation.

I also recall that when England, France, Germany and Italy were looking at joint design and production of a new fighter 30 years ago, Dassault wanted design lead, effectively a monopoly on the technology to be developed. IIRC they also wanted assembly to be done by themselves. This is not how you behave if you wish to co-operate with other partners. Could that attitude be part of the reason that Embraer is (apparently) not interested in working with Dassault?

To me the case for selecting Gripen is now overwhelming.

Am I right in thinking that Dassault currently has a reputation for quoting very high prices for after sales support? When I read about the update prices reported for India’s M2K’s, I am very surprised.

Yes Brazil seems able to afford these jets. However short-term there seems to be no hurry to get new jets (if you consider the threats that may arise). Longer-term things become more blurred and nobody knows how the world will develop.

However one may argue (and I would be surprised if nobody within FAB is arguing this) that since we are now in 2011 and the 5. gen fighters are “just around the corner” does it really make sense to invest heavily in 4.5 gen fighters?

I think the FAB is aware of the developments of F-35, PAK-FA, J-20, and (soon) AMCA, and for sure there will be others.

I have argued this already: IF they still want to buy a 4.5 gen then it should be as a stop-gap, and/or as the “Lo” in a “Hi-Lo” mix consisting of 4.5 and 5. gen fighters.

Gripen seems well suited as a “Lo” in such a mix; to some extent also SH. Rafale seems too expensive to be the “Lo” in a Hi-Lo mix, or as a stop-gap for that matter. Mirage 2000 could be an interesting stop-gap since FAB already operates some.

Or they can decide to just refurbish their current fighters, wait until 2020 and go straight for a 5. gen.

http://www.embraer.com/en-US/ImprensaEventos/Press-releases/noticias/Pages/EMBRAER-REVISAR%C3%81-43-CA%C3%87AS-AMX-PARA-A-FAB.aspx

Still she seems to talk to the US about tech transfer…

http://www.forexyard.com/en/news/Rousseff-starting-over-in-Brazil-jets-tender-2011-01-17T153207Z-UPDATE-2

Hmm perhaps they will go for SH in a big way and not a 5. gen fighter?

Now if I were Saito that would make me furious… 😀

Edit: F-35 is over budget and will initially probably be very expensive. However given the large number of a/c that will be bought by the US+ partners/close allies the price will eventually come down to an acceptable level, probably cheaper than a Typhoon or Rafale. So saying that it’s “overpriced” may hold true initially but not in the future.

Interesting observations about a hi-lo mix or just waiting for F-35.

To me one problem with F-35 is that while the price should come down over the years, if you need them in the next few years you are likely to be paying a very, very high price. It’s all very well saying the F-35’s price will have fallen by say 2018 but if you need them before then, it looks more and more like they are going to be very, very expensive. With development delays and production not rising as anticipated, the date at which they will cease to be very, very expensive keeps moving to the right.

In the end everything depends upon the orders, a order for 2 squadrons of LCA is not a light one, 40 planes is a lot of money, a lot of men could spend their life in true luxury in the amount of money a single plane costs to purchase and run for 30 years.

Discounting MiG-35, I get the impression that Tejas price is 1/2 that of the next cheapest MMRCA contender. Buying 40 Tejas Mk1 to replace MiG-21’s is a far, far cheaper option than buying more MMRCA’s to keep up squadron numbers.

But it isn’t just an additional $2b. It has been over $5b already. That is sunk cost and can’t be changed, but that isn’t a good reason for spending even more. There are going to have to be simply enormous benefits to justify the extra cost, but there isn’t.

You may be correct in your view that there will not be enormous benefits justifying the extra cost.

As explained ad nauseum, the F136 will only ever be as good as the inlet/exhaust nozzle allows them to be, the same as the F135.

I know nothing technically about the F-135 and F-136 and have not argued that the F-136 is in some way better than the F-135. I simply refer to the reported advantages accruing from having 2 different engine suppliers for the F-16. If those analyses/reports are incorrect in their conclusions, so be it.

The lesson seems clear enough to me. If you fund the manufacturer you choose appropriately and apply fixed price contracts you will get the engines you need at a reasonable cost (reasonable to everyone).

I don’t think that follows. There was a fixed price contract for the A400M. Let’s say it was to supply at a reasonable cost. The single contractor said it could not keep to the contract: either the price went up or it would not be supplying the product. Having 2 different F-35 engine suppliers should lower risk in terms of price.

The only real benefit GE offered was a better warranty conditions. What the study doesn’t look at is the cost of the infrastructure, support equipment, training facilities and courses and additional deployment equipment that is required to actually support multiple engine types. It has an enormous flow on effect amongst units, with maintainer qualifications and the effect on transfer opportunities, access to spare parts inventories and so on.

All of that to get a slightly cheaper engine?

Again, it comes down to the fact that if it is such a good idea, why isn’t it done with more platforms? Haven’t seen anyone here try to address that question…

Good question. Might it be that paying to develop 2 engines for an airframe becomes viable when demand for a very large number of engines is anticipated?