i saw this, looks plausible, then again i saw it said its a foreign object diverter,

what are you on about ?
we paid ~$54m for fa-18 and are paying ~$60m for f-35a
i wouldnt say 6m is significantly more expensive

Litening II or III is basically our national pod as well. Carried by Jaguars, MIG 27s, Mirages and Su 30s. The SH has the atflir built in and LM is offering Sniper XR with the F 16 IN. Makes me wonder if Rafale is selected would IAF go for the Democles or integrate the latest Litening, especially if the latter has more capability.

the french are licensing the building of damocles to russia, so i guess if they choose rafale they will go damocles for both rafale and su in future, but i dont really know and it would depend how the new damocles turns out

we run the litening AT on the a/b hornets
LITENING AT features a plug-and-play bay configured to accept a wide variety of data-links and recorders. Plug and Play II data-link capability offers warfighters increased range, digital data recording and an option to incorporate secure, two-way communications over ultra-high frequency (UHF) radios. LITENING’s Plug and Play I, introduced in 2003, was the first data-link to be incorporated in a third generation targeting pod.

then why are the french are busting their ass to get the damme on the rafale ?
got a link to how many were jettisoned at first hint of SAM/AAM or at the exhaustion of fuel during SH deployments ?
at least my posts are based in fact

@ quadbike, we use litening on our old hornets and atflir elec optical on our SH

nonsense, i think you should google, even our 25yr old hornets has a pod and so do our SH
i wasnt going to say how the demmmicclllese finishes up as a pile of bits in the bottom of it with carrier landings, but i guess its relevant now

the french told me about the demmmacleeese and the osf

Until the 5th Batch and the GaN RBE2 AESA.

you just like to stir, dont you, usa has GaN now as per the links i gave you, usa fighters will have GaN well before france does

what band does a2a radar work in ? if rafale blocks x band, it wont have radar

you are saying what you would like it to say, the budget made no such claim, they were specific with metamaterials
the carbone ew thats been shelved ? do you have a link that its the same as spectra, as i doubt very much if it is
only a ??? would think that if the rafale had an rcs of 1m then the SH is 100m