There is a fact that has been rarely mentioned about the KC 390 that if Brazil had been made its option by the Rafale F3, the France could acquire the KC 390 to complement the A 400M.

However a detail most rarely mentioned should be that Dassault has been keeping a lot of stocks from Embraer , indeed the Dassault among others French companies could have been in fact the owners of the Embraer.

I would not be shocked if Dassault could have not been using the KC 390 Project as an incentive to close the deal with India about the Rafale F3.

In this case India could start its own Transport Aircraft Project while the Dassault would have providing consulting to decrease the time and cost of this new project. In this case the Dassault will not lose anything, since it is the Government of Brazil that has been funding the KC 390 project.

I guess that could be better from Dassault to annihilate the partnership between Russia and India and even the MTA project itself, which in fact the MTA will be a competitor with the KC 390, and then to incentive a new project from India.

Indeed from Dassault this would be a competitor with KC 390 either, but maybe it will take more time to reach the market than the MTA, as well as this supposed new project could use western components, as well as French components.

KC-390 has impact on MTA as KC-390 older design with less powerfull engines. KC-390 is likely to overshoot its budget by wider marigin than A400M programe. Its non competitive from the start and Dassualt has no control over KC-390 industrial chain.

Most probably it can’t. Unlike say the Sukhoi Superjet, the MTA is first and foremost a military aircraft with the RuAF expected to be the largest operator of the type. With the sanctions regime still running full throttle, western supplies to an even partially Russian military transport are unlikely to be sanctioned. Something in the PW1000G family might work as a purely India-specific option but integration would be hassle with pushing and prodding required for approvals from the US & Europe.

The whole project is a foolish endevour anyway, as far as India is concerned. If the contract is inked this year and the (hugely optimistic) timeline is rigorously adhered to, serial production at HAL will still begin only by 2020. In reality it’ll probably be closer to 2023 if not 2025. Much quicker, cheaper and more efficient to simply buy more C-130Js. And if the order is large enough, probably negotiate a fair amount of workshare to accompany that.

The whole project is foolish because they only ask $300m from India. This kind of project run by Boeing/Airbus will not come less than $30b in R&D. with over $100m unit cost. KC-390 is joke with 20% less thrust engines and is outdated before even entering service and that assuming Brazil can solove its currency crises for imported parts.

once again:

1/ French air force has no say in it, it is the french government (who wants to avoid paying for new aircraft at almost any cost) who orders the aircraft, and they’re committed to keep the line open by at least 11 orders per year. They’ve delayed the Rafale program before in the 1990’s for years by not financing the buys and would love to spare a couple of billions/year by not ordering any aircraft for the FAF for several years. The french air force (already stretched out to the maximum with all operations around the world and insufficient spares back home) would hate it, but it is the civilians (government) who decide

2/ the assembly line is ready to make 22 aircraft per year as such and without the french orders it would leave dassault free to make 22 aircraft for exports per year without modifications to its line (ramping up would take several months, but could be done still relatively fast, considring the usual delays in aircrat production). obviously all subcontractors would have to ramp up their production but all would be happy to do so (6-7 years of full rate would be beneficial to everybody), and if need be, say, if other orders come to require an even higher production rate, my guess is that Dassault would, again, be happy to increase the rate and make investments to do it (they’d include it in the price, obviously, and, eventually, eventually even get some “research” credits from the french government to make sure the deal works).. I don’t know any vendor that hopes for low sales to avoid producing more 😉 )

Dassualt is in no position to produce 22 aircraft in a year. infact M2K upgrades to India are at the slowest speed.

The numbers you linked to have been completely debunked, and never represented an apples to apples comparison.

so you can make apple to apple comparision. just look at M-88 production rate to AL-31. China alone Al-31 numbers closing 2000.

For this reason and others I am extremely skeptical of the Su-30 having an operating cost advantage over a Rafale. The Rafale may be an extremely expensive aircraft to operate, but the Su-30MKI should be in a completely different class.

(per wiki)
The Rafale has ~34k pounds of thrust in AB.
The Su-30MKI has ~55k

The Su-30MKI’s engine has only 1000 hours operating time between overhaul, its thrust vectoring nozzle requires overhaul every 500 hours, and the total engine life is only 3000 hours.

I don’t have the equivalent numbers for the M88, but unless Snecma badly botched something it should be able to double the numbers for the AL-31.

The Su-30MKI airframe itself requires an overhaul every ~1500 hours of flight and is only designed to reach 6,000 hours total.

http://www.janes.com/article/47805/hal-hands-back-first-overhauled-su-30mki-to-indian-air-force

The Sukhoi is going to burn far more fuel. An operator would need to buy more airframes to get the same hours flown per year due to reduced availability. An operator would need to buy more engines due to reduced availability and lifespan, etc.

Bottom line, if the Rafale can’t handily beat the Su-30MKI’s operating costs then something has gone terribly wrong at Dassault.

Edit:

An 18,000,000 overhaul gets you another 1500 hours of flight time. ($12k per hour, and that just the overhaul, not fuel, not engines, or other normal operating costs)

French jets also have low reliability. 4 out of 60 crashed. considering its late 90s production with Full French.

Su-30MKI despite Indian quality production has much lower crash rate.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2013/05/21/2003562780
Taiwan procured 60 Mirage 2000s from France in 1992. Counting yesterday’s incident, four have now crashed.

I don’t think life cycle of cost of Rafale lower than Su-30MKI.

Having said all that, and knowing how the US/NATO is the main antagonist of Russia, what would one think is the ideal ceiling for the RuAF?
1000 aircraft? 700? 1500?

there is no such thing as ideal size. it need continuous production of fighters for ever.

India could have joined the KC-390 programme as a major partner. Instead, it’s tied itself to a project which is proceeding at a snail’s pace, as a junior partner.

India cant join KC-390 as 99% of its parts imported. MTA pace will become faster once IL-476 production stabilize. same industrial chain.
I am even skeptical of KC-390 production rate considering brazil currency and budget cuts and the export customer of KC-390 are not so rich in resources for military transports.

Since the main customer is supposed to be the Russian air force, I expect their requirements to have priority over those of the IAF.

there is no problem designing it for exports. it will have up to 4 to 5 variants. this is much bigger project than KC-390.