In Air Fan, they say the navy has formed new pilots for the Rafale, that a lot of them have been trained for night landings, and that now they have new ways to train them which allow a faster training. But Air fan has always this the-Rafale-is-fantastic tone which really hides many things.

There has been a rather big article about the 12F in Air & Cosmos. They say the Rafale F1 is now fully operationnal (since today 21/6/04) and that many things have been corrected these last months/years, including the accuracy of the link MICA EM / aircraft, ECM reliability, IFF reliability, and reliability of the calculating units. It is said in that article that now all work and that the pilots have regained confidence in the aircraft. I hope that is true and that all will be be better and better.

The aircraft you are talking about Steve is certainly the B303.

They may compress their planes into Jpeg so that they take less space in the hangars.

What happen with the Recce version of the Mirage F.1. They have been retired or there are plans to maintain operational. Rafale will assume the recce role alongside the Mirage IV?

The Mirage IVP will be withrawn next year (I even got a date : 31/8/05.) The French air Force still operates 4 of them.

Actually there are 40 Mirage F1 CR (recce) and 40 F1 CT. According to the plans, they will be withrawn only about 2010. The number of CT should lower first (-10 in 2008)

But of course the Rafale will get the recce capability and will replace them all. A new recce pod is included in the Rafale F3.

Try landing a non navalised Rafale on a carrier.

There isn’t really a difference between Rafale M/N and C/B

the only major difference is the front landing gear, they are the same machines whereas that would be far more difficult to see a Typhoon on a carrier…

A french Jaguar was hit by a SAM7 during Gulf War 1 (or 2 as you wish, but not the last one for sure.) It seems the missile was stuck into the plane without exploding. The pilot came back home and made an emergency landing.

I think I even saw this Jaguar with the hole (it seems it is now an attraction for tourists during air shows lol) in an airbase some years ago.

these are Mirage 2000 C RDI in the 2 last pics

Originally posted by glitter
WRONG, otherwise, why did Dassault give two different names ?
The -5 = a2a
the -9 = more a2g

Mostly wrong.
The -9 and mk2 has some cool updates extrapolated from the rafale but cannot use exactly the same.

that’s what I said, the -9 is just a -5 + , it has more a2g because the UAE wanted that. just some options added, they are from the same family

and about the Rafale things that’s what I wanted to say, and that’s why I said that the Rafale will be better anyway.

I have found this pic

http://homepage.tinet.ie/~steven/images/mirage2000.jpg

earlier today I was looking for some pics of Mirage 2000 of different countries, hard to find some egyptian ones.