Note, egypt only bought rafale once france offered a sweet financial package and india only got them as they r desperate to slde the declinig fleet numbers. And france has spare capacity. So rafale sales success is nothing stellar either id say.

I would place the emphasis differently: Rafale with two export orders is no better than it was with zero export orders.

And of course Rafale is a superb aircraft. But if France could go back and do it all over with a clean slate, I’m sure a slightly smaller, single-engine design would be very tempting.

Russian engine, not available for export, lack of established market credibility, take your pick.

No question that the aircraft itself is a beast — a veritable next-gen F-16. Makes everyone else look a bit silly, really.

F-16 52/60: No performance or agility.
MiG-29M/K/35: Why not buy a Flanker?
Rafale, Typhoon: Overbred, too expensive.
Gripen C/D: Too small.

…

Gripen E/F: evidently as close to replicating the superb balance of J-10 as anyone outside CAC is going to get.

I was under the impression that the Gripen referendum had doomed to the F-5s to retirement without replacement.

Why isn’t anyone talking about population control?
It was a big topic in the 70s-80s..now you never hear of it.

Because population is a solved problem. In fact, fertility levels in most advanced societies — and many that aren’t so advanced — are below replacement level. As for the rest, we know how to get there. Of course, it’ll take some time for that to actually happen, and in any case we’ll spend the next couple of centuries dealing with the growth we’re already committed to, but from a big picture perspective it’s not a complicated problem — we’re not going to go on multiplying like bacteria.

It’s good advertising really:

S-300: Aggressor states don’t want you to have it, so it must be good. Stay strong. Buy Almaz-Antey.

Huh, the UK is actually rather generous when it comes to foreign aid, I didn’t know that. It’s one of the few OECD nations to meet the UN target of 0.7% GNI devoted to Official Development Assistance (ODA), along with Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Luxembourg.

In absolute terms, the UK’s ODA spending lags only the United States, and not by nearly as much as one would expect — $19.4bn vs. $32.7bn. The UK spends more than Germany on ODA, and nearly double what France and Japan do.

Interestingly, this seems to be a recent phenomenon, and the current rate is an all-time high. As late as 2007 the UK devoted only 0.36% GNI to ODA — barely half the current level — and this in turn was up from an historic low of 0.24% in 1999. The UK’s long-term average since 1960 seems to be around 0.4%.

In Australia, cuts to foreign aid have been in the news recently. Our ODA reached a peak of 0.66% in 1975, and a low of 0.25% in 2003. However, as planned cuts take effect over the next couple of years, our ODA spending is projected to decline to a new historic low of 0.22% of GNI.

To me, it looks as if he’s been careful to be non-commital over details of future purchases, over numbers, type of contract – everything – while praising his boss over the latest move & criticising (with justification, considering how long it’s taken so far) the deal made by the previous government.

In other words he sounds like a politician.