The UK Government has recently called CVF the centrepiece of its future plans

*snicker*

That bodes well.

Nonsense #3, unless you don’t think the UK is capable of putting destroyers, frigates & SSN’s together in a group. In which case neither Brazil or France can either.

I don’t think the UK has the will to do anything other than what Uncle Sam tells it to anymore. Maintaining the facade of independence is all well and good whilst the sun is shining, but those days are over.

Maybe the UK should get this farce over with and just unload the hulls to France and Brazil respectively, use the cash to further flesh out those capabilities it can actually afford. It’s not like those gators are going anywhere without cover from Uncle Sam.

Prospects don’t come much better than the world’s future third and fourth-largest economies. Brazil is the more important of the two in terms of future development prospects I think because if selected Rafale would be the nation’s sole advanced manned combat aircraft and the natural focus of future development efforts, whereas India has several other programs on its plate.

This isn’t the first time I have read something so paranoid coming from Australia. Really?! Why this constant feeling that the invasion barges are ready to roll tanks onto the beaches of Australia!

It’s not paranoia. It’s responsible planning for the discharge of the primary responsibility of the Australian Defence Force: to maintain the territorial integrity of the nation.

The fact is that the strategic environment Australia has enjoyed since World War II is and will continue to rapidly erode in the decades ahead. We will no longer be a big fish in a small pond, but rather a middle-sized fish in a pool of sharks. And just as significantly, the ability of the United States to guarantee our security will continue to erode as well.

I’m not paranoid about the possibility of invasion from ‘the Muslims’ or anyone else – which is not the same thing as neglecting the basic duty to anticipate, deter and prepare to respond to such hypothetical aggression – In fact the security development I’m most concerned about of late is the announcement that American troops will be stationed in Darwin. I believe that an armed neutrality is the best posture for Australia in the decades ahead and that the path the establishment has chosen exposes the nation and its people to unnecessary risk for little gain. In fact I would go so far as to label it an abrogation of sovereignty.

What sort of bass-ackwards world is this when traipsing halfway around the world to bomb brown people in huts is ‘the sort of thing we do now’ and actually defending the nation is ‘paranoid’?

Even when the Japanese were rampaging across the Pacific and Australias defences were minimal the risk of invasion was minor.

In the sense that Japan figured it more was more trouble than it was worth and that they could gain our submission without actually having to invade merely by isolating us completely from Great Britain and the United States, yes. And they were probably right too, we just never had the chance to find out.

what’s more, if India chooses the Rafale, it may eventually encourage brasil to do the same, which would mean also another assembly line and production facilities on another continent

If India chooses Rafale then Brazil is in the bag too. If India chooses Typhoon … well, I’d still probably tip Rafale for Brazil but the field is more open.

Brazil is probably more important to the future of Rafale than India tbh.

I wonder if Switzerland’s order means SAAB can better its offer if need be.

Should do; of course cost was never Gripen’s problem. No amount of orders will improve the technology transfer side of things. Rafale is still in pole position here I think, ironically for reasons unrelated to its performance.

Presumably the complaint was judged to have some merit…