Biden met with President Dilma Rousseff on Friday and assured her that the U.S. Congress was likely to respect Boeing’s agreement to transfer sensitive technology to Brazil as part of the deal…

Rousseff, a pragmatic leftist, has said the technology is even more important than the jets themselves because the deal must boost Brazil’s own budding defense industry, including planemaker Embraer SA (EMBR3.SA), to be worth the price.

If TOT is the cornerstone of the deal a likely approval of that is not really good enough, is it?

Meanwhile, the government has been less happy with the other finalists. France’s recent agreement to build submarines with Brazil has resulted in fewer technology transfers than expected, one official said.

Didn’t do Dassault any favours holding back on TOT in the submarine deal. Would a deal with Dassault also result in fewer technology transfers than expected?

Not very appealing partners, US and France. The first cannot give cast iron guarantees over TOT. The second’s attitude may be to transfer as little technology as possible.

Its Rajat Pandit, *** removed by moderator *** Take it with a shipload of salt.

So there is no problem with brakes overheating and Rajat Pandit got it wrong? If so, thanks for putting me right on that.

But there are still “several basic problems” — leave alone complex issues — that continue to dog the fighter despite it having clocked over 2,000 flights. “Tejas still cannot taxi back after a sortie since its brakes have to be first cooled with compressed air.”

They must have done rejected take offs before first flight… How many years have they been aware of the problem without fixing it?

If Dassault fails today, that alone doesn’t mean a thing for EADS.

I think that is an accurate observation. I don’t think it likely that Eurofighter would automatically be invited to negotiate a deal. Even if they were they would face the same liability for HAL performance to which Dassault objects. That stumbling block might make it impossible to conclude a deal.

ROME — Italian opposition parties and some lawmakers from the ruling Democratic Party called on the government on Thursday to abandon its plans to buy 90 Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets.

http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articles-view/release/3/145430/opposition-mounts-in-italy-against-f_35-order.html

Anyone think Italy will abandon F-35?

Thanks for that explanation. If you are right, then the figures look plausible: $25K pfh for high maintenance, high hours USAF F-16 C/D aircraft versus $32K pfh for low maintenance brand new and shiny F-35’s. Of course there is a lot of uncertainty attached to the F-35 figure since it is not for a mature aircraft. Nevertheless F-35 looks like it will cost in the region of 100% more to operate than F-16. That is massively different to LM’s claim earlier this year that it would cost about 10% more to operate than F-16.

It looks like the USAF may have to dig deep into its pockets unless its F-35’s are to spend a lot less time in the sky than intended.

Its okay for France to be upset, but they must realize that Korea is still more or less a US security colony, just like the UK and Japan.
but aside from that, the Koreans did hold the Rafale in very high regards.

They should have bought it then, shouldn’t they instead of wasting Dassault’s time and money.

TSR-2 was an extremely overhyped aircraft, infact quite possibly the most over hyped aircraft of all time. So many show stopping issues coupled with performance that was good in some areas and not good enough in others. Thankfully it was binned.

What show stopping issues? Undercarraige problems were show stopping? Where were the performance shortfalls? Are you referring to the use of a development engine to rush the aircraft into the air for political reasons? I see it as the most advanced strike aicraft in the world at the time, featuring automatic flight control system (ACFS), terrain following radar (TFR), forward looking radar (FLR), sideways looking radar (SLR), inertial navigation system (INS), internal weapons bay for conventional and nuclear munitions, capable of mach 2 at altitude, supersonic on dry thrust, able to fly at 200ft to evade radar… Where is the over-hype?

Cost-wise it would have been very expensive (£600+ million program cost for 110 aircraft) but much cheaper than F-111 which cost Australia several times as much as expected and was about a decade late in delivery. In the end the spend on development and airframes plus the cancellation cost of F-111 totalled almost half as much (£250 million) as it would have cost proceeding with the programme. I do not include the cost of the abortive AFVG nor the cost of developing the Spey-powered F-4 – more expensive than the standard F-4 with inferior performance – which was ordered in the absence of TSR-2.