Sorry MSphere, the Greek F1s were intercepting Turkish fighters up until the very last day of service. No secondary duties for those guys.

Greece is a special exception. you need to throw everything up in the air to stop the Turkish horde

ok so it finally seems it will be F-16 block 70 vs Gripen

this is all because IAF or the MoD (maybe both) sabotaged themselves by drawing out the MMRCA for too long, as well as drawing out the Tejas development.
now reality hit them, and theyre stuck in this situation.

sounds a lot like republicans now stuck with Trump and can’t get rid of him.

So what gripen is being offered?
surely Saab will let them build it in doors. not sure about the F-16.

you know what is that none of this would’ve popped up had IAF bought the Mirage 2000 line.
By today, the air force would consolidate around just the Su-30mki and M2000, the jaguars, migs, etc would be retired by now and there would probably be at least 200 mirages.

Yes, I have to admit, their procurement strategy isn’t smart. The tendency in Western air forces has been to minimise fighter types for all the reasons you mention. It may also be worse than Sukhois and Rafales, there may be another type in there too, plus HAL FGFA, Tejas, LSA and the rest.

for some countries, it is strategic.
in case one country places an embargo, you still have the aircraft of the other country to use.
or to appear neutral..etc
like Greece and their issues with Turkey (thus buying French and US)
or Finland scared of USSR (so buying western and soviet).
its an expensive but more strategically redundant

I would like to say India’s rational MIGHT be because they are scared of another US embargo..
but I think more likely, its because of poor planning. That MMRCA took soo long that only now they realized they don’t have enough airplanes and now need to quickly buy something off the shelf. Also gov’ts fault Tejas took soo long, not enough are out.

At the risk of re-railing this thread, it does seem interesting that the Rafale has significantly longer range than the F-35 (896 Nmi compared with 751 Nmi in air-to-air configuration).

On the other hand, that’s with the Rafale using 3 external fuel tanks. The source doesn’t actually say what type of fuel tank was used, but it’s likely either the 2000 L tank or the 1250 L supersonic tank. I’m guessing the former is more likely. You can see what they look like here. The link says that the three fuel tanks weigh an additional 14,700 lb, which seems kind of high to me since 3×524 gallons (at 6.8 lb per gallon) means 10,690 lb of fuel, so it’s saying there’s an additional 4000 lb of weight for the fuel tanks and their associated pylons. Not sure if that’s accurate, or if something’s wrong with my assumptions. The Rafale carries 10,300 lb of fuel internally according to the link. By comparison, the F-35 gets its 751 Nmi range from 18,250 lb of internal fuel.

However, nothing in life is free; assuming about 1500 lb of missiles (since it’s air-to-air config) and pilot, this means the Rafale weighs about 48,000 lb at takeoff, with a max thrust of 34,000 lb, for a thrust/weight ratio of 0.71, compared to the F-35 which would be at a weight of about 49,000 lb but a thrust of 43,000 lb so a higher thrust/weight ratio of 0.88. Their wing loadings would also be similar, the Rafale at 98 lb/ft^2 compared with the F-35 at 106 lb/ft^2. The Rafale also presumably won’t be supercruising or pulling 9 G’s with those fuel tanks.

And of course to give you an idea of the F-35’s range, the Typhoon with 3 fuel tanks (presumably 1000 L each) had pretty close to the same combat radius as the F-35 does on internal fuel: 747 Nmi versus 751 Nmi.

It would’ve been interesting to compare the Rafale using 2 fuel tanks instead, since that would probably give a range similar to the F-35’s on internal fuel, but of course Lockheed did the comparison so it was their choice.

thanks for the numbers VanillaExtract. they seem to confirm the things the other members made

– Rafale with 3 drop tanks outranges the Flanker and F-35
– But Flanker and F-35 numbers are solely on internal fuel. Their range on internal fuel alone is actually impressive
– But but, Flanker and F-35 doesn’t have external fuel options yet. People say the Flanker can, but no picture of a flanker with fuel tank exists. F-35 external fuel tanks will probably be made by Israel. maybe by then, we will see a different story about its range
– Typhoon is perhaps one of the worst of the 4.5 and 5th gen jets on range. Behind the Rafale, F-35, Sukhoi, Gripen-E.. etc only ahead of the old Gripen, J-10 and MiG-29