No to British control. No to shared control. Only French dominance is acceptable.

Here you are on the political ground (and yes, pride has something to do with it which is not offensive at all)

But I think I see what AMIGA means, something you don’t get.

Let’s go on the pure ingeneering ground and forget everything else.

Let’s say France got the leadership of the air frame and UK the leadership of the engine.

It’s “leadership” and program management, not workshare.

That just means that in any project you need someone who can say “ok, your point of view was very very interesting, it made a lot of sens, that’s why we’ve spent a lot of time to evaluate it,….. but finally that’s not the solution WE keep”
And since the time to evaluate every point of views has been well taken BEFORE (and not after if possible…), everybody accept the decision.

That’s the way it works in complex technical program anywhere, even smaller ones. The politicians who’ve never invented nor build any popcorn bag in their lives don’t get that and we see the result.

Now for the work share, in the ideal case the strong points of each partners are complementary (for example RR better for the compressor but SNECMA better for IR reduction and single christall technology) And then each parner take the part where he’s the best.

Otherwise it’s about 60/40% at worst for the work share and the best technology is taken anyway.

After for the pride parameter:

It’s useless to be at the short of the French like an Italian defender in football.
We are better today concerning the design from A to Z of a advanced AC, live with it.
But if you want to invent something, go ahead and we’ll be very happy to follow English leadership.
I don’t know, invent a spaceship who can detect the spematozoom of the foes from anywhere in the solar system and France will follow English leadership as long as those ones master this unique technology.

More seriously, we could build our PA2 under the british leadership once they’ll have shown their competence with the 2 QE class…
I also regret we couln’t find a solution with the Astute design for our own Barracuda, now that the Astute seems to work that’s it.

“Catching up”? LOL.

Yeah, the first Eurofighter with a Storm Shadow will be ready to take of – finally – by 2018 (yes: according to NAO, they’ll be “catch up” with A2G by 2018)

In the mean time:

Program:
If its RBE2-AESA enters in industrial phase, Thales intends to maintain its lead in providing some technological bricks considered crucial to broaden the scope of active antennas. This new roadmap is built around two key technologies: gallium nitride (GaN), a broadband semiconductor called to prevail for future emission-reception modules of radars with active antenna, and silicon-germanium (SiGe), a low power semiconductor, whose use in the control floors of the beam of active antennas will significantly reduce their size.

If I remember correctly a previous article, we can expect anuncement about GaN for Rafale this year.

Have you found an agreement finally with the ‘I’ and the ‘S’ of “PIGS” to fund the rotary Captor first operational AESA?

Catching up… :rolleyes:

I dont mean to be snippy but certain groups with a vested interest have (somewhat succsesfully) pushed the myth that the typhoon is a cold war a2a interceptor being foisted on our country by the evil RAF/ BAE (pick newspaper pick day). that is hogging all the funds as the raf try to make it relevant just so they can whiz around in the latest toy.

Insert CVF, Heavy Armour and apply same argument to the relevent service

It does amuse me hearing how we have paid millions for tanks that have sat in germany doing nothing since the end of the cold war, have no relevance in modern warfare and yet hide bound generals are so stuck in there ways they wont scrap them, conviniently forgetting the Gulf Kosavo the Gulf (again) Afghanistan (ok not UK).

There are many criticisms that can be levelled at the typhoon program, but very few of those relate to the aircraft.

Are you are referring to this – PDF-1, Link-1???

Yes

Simple reshersh on “cold war” words

Page 5

Typhoon was conceived in the 1980s during the Cold War, mainly for use as an air-to-air fighter and the aircraft is highly capable in this role. But the operational environment has changed significantly, making the ground attack role more important and so the Department is upgrading Typhoon to become a fully multi-role aircraft which can conduct both air-to-air and ground attack missions.

Page 11

Typhoon was conceived in the 1980s during the Cold War as a collaborative project with Germany, Italy and Spain. Primarily intended to operate as an air-to-air fighter, around 70 Typhoons are already in service, as at December 2010, and are mainly used for this role, protecting the air space around the United Kingdom and the Falkland Islands. As Figure 2 on page 14 shows, sufficient Typhoons are now routinely available to meet these tasks and undertake the required pilot training. Our consultants assessed the relative quality of the current Typhoon aircraft compared to other air-to-air combat aircraft. Their analysis shows that Typhoon compares well with its peers in its air defence roles.

Make a reshersh on ’37’ or ‘saudi’, it’s interesting. All like this.

The report isn’t entirely clear about the Saudi deal for one reason. The UK ordered 184 ac 24 of them were diverted to SA. it’s not made clear whether the money recured from the sale is being taken into account.

To me it’s clear enough but well… the NAO repport is there and everybody can make is mind.

TAt the end of the day the cost figures aren’t comparable as those of the Eurofighter programme in the UK cover everything from inception of the programme to the retirement of the last ac in 2030 (according that report). It’s still an estimation which is subject to change in either direction. I also doubt that the RAF will retire its last ac in 2030, 2040 is much more realistic!

You’re right. The figure aren’t completely comparable.
The big points are IMO:
– we don’t know for sure if british figures are tax included or not. I supposed they were not but it’s not written clearly anywhere,
– we don’t know if the French costs figure include the maintenance or not. That’s a BIG point which is included in NAO figures actually.
– the NAO figure add all the costs for the A2G capability as well as StormShadow integration. But it’s not clear for the AESA and Meteor.

However the feeling it gives (to me at least) is a kind of desesperation feeling concerning this program. They hope to integrate the A2G by 2018 (!) but nothing else and certainly no exciting vision for the future while the manufacturing is completed by 2015. Almost sad.

Now my fear is that as a shareholder of EADS, we French we’ll have to pay for heavy losses of EADS/Cassidan after 2015 if all the structure has to be liquidated. I certainly don’t hope that.
Especially since Thomas Enders want to integrate EADS more and more with Airbus… It would be a kind of a anoying irony if we French finish paying 50% of a the (not yet certain) Cassidan losses with the profits of Airbus…

Opportunities to get rid of people like gaddafi legaly are rare enough not to miss them.

Yes.

The worst I can find is a parliament exercise where they divided the total cost of Rafale purchases up to now with the 180 piece ordered up to now.

It gives 94m€ excluding VAT

http://www.marianne2.fr/blogsecretdefense/Le-Rafale-trop-cher-Bienvenue-au-cafe-du-commerce-_a452.html

(By the way the article compare with EF and F35 costs and the journalist is much more credible than the Canard Enchainé’s folks on those issues to say the least…)

But anyway this 94m€ figure is just a virtual exercise, it isn’t accurate because there will be 286 Rafales ordered by France only and the R&D as well as the infrastructures are already paid. So the unit price fall accordingly.

The program unit cost on the 286 pieces is 112m€ HT per planes

Un récent rapport du Sénat estime le cout global du programme Rafale pour les finances publiques à 43,567 milliards d’euros sur toute la durée du programme (en tenant compte de l’inflation depuis le lancement en 1989) et cela, sur la base d’une commande prévue de 286 avions. Soit 152 millions TTC l’unité (ou 112 HT).

The fly away price paid for each new Rafale isn’t very easy to compute because the DGA order the plane, the engines, even the OSF to different suplyer. But we are more around 60m€, that’s certain.

@ c-seven

I am certain that it is my “big mistake” not to buy a Lamborghini… but somehow, my bet is my banker won’t let me anyway… 😀

Sure, and my banker agree too. But we needed our F16/ 2000 AND our F15/4000 otherwise we don’t answer the market needs fully or we let a huge hole in your offer.

They should have bought 40 or 50 M4000 and pray for other customers to come later. After all that’s what they did with the 2000-5 before Taïwan bought the first batch. Without that we’d have missed the F16 blk 52 generation.

Now it’s simplier, the Rafale is in the middle…

XXXX Off topic! XXXX

Congratulation to Dassault ! A company lead by engineers won over a company lead by sales jerks. 🙂

Exactly. I’m impressed by your fair play Sir.
(I got the same feeling but it’s easier of course…) 🙂