Whew. Nice analysis there.

As for the last, a 9.5 ton engine has been proposed for the Rafale, but neither the French Navy nor the Air Force were interested, nor were export customers(the ones offered to India and Brazil will have the 7.5 ton Snecma M-88-4E). The only exception is the UAE for whom a 9.5 ton version of the M-88 was one of the main requirements. This version, should the deal happen, will be called the M-88-9.

There is no 9.5 ton engine for Rafale. and UAE simply wont fund 9ton as it is not commercially viable. In absence of second French carrier. I doubt there will be more Rafale Naval orders. Do Rafale wings fold up.

12F :

In the begining of a war , SEAD/DEAD missions are often used to open a breach in the adverse defenses for strikers to go in . They are often missions limited to one to two “corridors” . So , you only have to deal with a small to medium area and not a whole costline . You also work from known Intels and only have to cope with a minimal unforeseen .
Libia was a rather good exemple when the AdlA and MN had to go in before the cruise missile barrage to help in emergency the people from Benghazi by bombing Kadhafi ‘s Tanks , Artillery and mobile Command Posts attacking the City . Rafales created one or more corridors and almost all the SAM activity around benghazi was destroyed on the first day .

Important Fixed SAM sites are usually treated with cruise missiles in the same way than adverse airbases are . Problem is , systems like the S-300/400 can perfectly defend themselves against cruise missiles .
The West has some sharp swords but the East has some strong shields .

Cheers .

Libya war was a disaster for Rafale & EU.
Now Dassualt have to bring down the price of Rafale to be acceptable to Arabs (See how UAE deal become unworkable in commerical terms) as it was unable play the decisive role against tribal infested unprofessional 40 year old air defense in a flat desert environment.

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/10/world/la-fgw-gates-brussels-2011061
Gates praised the role of Norway and Denmark in Libya ,saying they had provided 12% of the strike aircraft for the operation but had carried out about a third of the airstrikes.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/09/us-nato-libya-gates-idUSTRE7583VV20110609
“I can tell you that the United States is committed to this,” he added, noting that Washington is providing 75 percent of the air tanker refueling capacity and as much as 80 percent of the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance flights.

JSR :

Perhaps but don ‘t forget that SPECTRA RWR can read a radar at 200km . A good RWR often warn the crew that an adverse radar is overthere before the radar can detect or track . If the crew think that it is not wise to attack wrt the flight plan , they only have to change course and stay outside the SAM range (bubble) . If the mission is to attack the SAM , there are various options , mainly depending on the landscape and the adverse system(s) . Anyway , it is a risky business .
If you ‘re confident in your ECM capabilities versus the adverse system(s) at hand , you can go in with some good chances to destroy enemy Units . Depending on the altitude chosen to go in , on top of SPECTRA the crew can use the RBE2-AA to map the ground and the targets , or the OSF-TV or even the Micas ‘s seekers to scan for hot engines/electrical systems on the ground . 6 AASMs can knock out an entire SAM site , even if it ‘s well protected .

This is the kind of mission where the Rafale shines .

Cheers .

RWR at 200km is in effective against long range search radars that likely to see bomb laden or ET Rafale from 400 to 500km. and those radars will alert other mobile radars and sam tels to move around or deploy dummy tels.
Your only looking at tiny AESA of Rafale but not the advances made in ground based radars which are not inhibited by nose size or engine power.
6 AASM cannot knock out even a single mobile TEL with experianced crew let alone a a sam site.

You can see 75% of sorties related to electronics done by US. and rest 25% does not mean that Rafale alone did. and nor those 25% missions equal 25% effectivness. Rafale has only minor role to play except for droping bombs that any one can do when 75% of work is done by some one else.

http://www.airforce-magazine.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2011/December%202011/1211edit.aspx
Still, it was the US Air Force that largely made the mission possible. The US flew three-quarters of the intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance missions, noted President Obama’s national security advisor Tom Donilon in a Washington Post commentary, and the US provided three-quarters of the coalition’s aerial refueling

well, while it is obvious that the lowering of euro is positive for european exports, believing that it is the only reason for the interest in rafale is, well… unfounded… to say the least

besides, your own argument “it was not mature enough” goes my way: today, it is a mature platform, capabilities-wise, and that is what interests customers more than just a euro-dollar parity calculation

Its good that you accepted it took Rafale very long time to mature enough after being delivered to French operational units. And still no one has signed the dotted line. so euro is becoming a big factor. I am not saying Euro is the only factor. higher oil prices in past decade also helps towards more efficient platforms.

Appearance in 20 years sound more reasonable than not appearing for the next 100 years.
To assume that since UCAVs crashes now they will therefore continue to crash is downright lame. Manned aircrafts crashes too.
The X47B/Phantom Ray are in a different league from the Avenger/Predator which are used to fight the Taliban.
To assume that the X47B/Phantom Ray will remain just that for the next 20 years is unreasonable. They will evolve.

These are not the years of the F22 where people code in Ada. When people had to design parts using a drafter. When the maximum computing prowess they can put inside the F22 is a cluster of i960MX and later PPC G5. Things moved on, people use Rapid prototyping tools, object oriented language, CAD/CAM etc for speeding up development. Today Intel processors(embedded options) are more than 1000x that of i960MX(a stone age ~66 MIPS) all within an envelop of 100W with passive heatsink, No fancy cooling needed, in a space of less than 300mm2. The computing power evolved exponentially.

Money is another thing, but if the necessity arises it will be done.

Sorry for derailing thread. 😮

X47B are not as capable as JSF for Strike. Neither the engine power nor the speed & verstallity of weopons on same scale. JSF is still consider cheap due to numbers. There is no such volume for high end UCAVs.
funding will be issue as cheap money from creditors like China/Japan/Arabs dries up due to ageing & overpopulation. Another 20 year programe will not survive funding. here we are talking about bomber that will be stealthier than B-2 and possibly faster with 1/20 production rate of JSF.
Private contractors for such complex project needed certain volume per year to stay in business.
see An-70 & bomber building at same factory in Russia.

er, hiw about India? UAE who resumed talks with dassault after Libya? Kuwait declaring their interest in the the aircraft?

It looks to me more function of collapsing Euro. These countries will negotiate to bring down the price of Rafale down to where they precieve Rafale capabilities merits.
IF they think Rafale is 10% better than other contenders they will pay 5% more.

TR1 :

Ok , but how do they “pass on” the tracking to hidden Buks ?
Is it even possible ?

There is promotional video. watch after 2minute for BUk-M2. there is self protection vehicles that misdirect or shot down incoming HARMs and missile loader vehicle are completely separate from Radar and command posts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GcAUaLrPNU

Any external bomb laden Rafale will be detected from considerable distance making all these vehicles move.
how far Rafale can lock on moving target?. and i dont see any one impress with Rafale after Libya experiance as no one signed for it for almost a year now.

Not currently, but in the not so distant future, UCAV will have everything that manned aircrafts had and then some. Even B2/Tu95 is not supersonic but they launch missiles.

distant future 50 years? or 100 years?. supersonic lunch of compact missiles more for fighters in class of Su-35. you need all this speed if you are dealing with antiship missiles against moving ships or armour.
Not a single UCAV can lunch 3000lbs cruise missile. even if you put reduce range/weight cruise missile. the range UCAV will be less than few hundred kms with speed of a helicopter. UCAV are good if your dealing with tulibans that have no information that UCAV is even coming.
. that was my theory when i wrote that ground forces will play more importance in any EU conflict.
Airdefence is getting stronger that difficult for Airpower to shape conflict so new weopons are needed to penetrate it.

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/russia-to-resume-hypersonic-missile-activities-371910/
Russia to resume hypersonic missile activities
Rogozin describes this decision as “a treasonable act to our national interests”, and claims that the USSR at that time had a lead over the USA in many areas of hypersonic research.

“Sadly today we see Russia lags noticeably in this sphere,” he says. “Hypersonic missiles have significant advantages in terms of reaction times, invulnerability to existing and future air defence systems, long range and high altitude and kinetic energy.