I’d bet on AESA.

We all saw that episode already 🙂

Over the next three years India will receive another four dozen MKIs and probably two dozen Tejas. Adding three dozen Rafales on top of that is only a 50% increase in airframes delivered over the period — hardly a game changer. The 36-unit Rafale order as some kind of “emergency supplement” makes no sense vs. the obvious alternatives of extending/increasing MKI and Tejas production. It’s a political gesture through-and-through.

Or maybe the IAF knows why they want Rafales better than you insisting on their buying either obsolete fighters (Typhoon T1), unreliable ones (Su-30) or Powerpoint warriors (F-35).

RETIRED colonel

He’s still at the Ecole de Guerre.
I can also clarify what was quoted, since I actually met him two weeks ago at a talk about… French interventions in Africa.
Glendora, if that makes you happier he was very critical of Sarkozy as well, in the way his personal interventionism (or, micromanagement tendencies) heavily restricted the freedom of action of the French troops deployed in Kapisa after the first casualties were sustained (this after ordering them deployed over there…). Basically succumbing to the “zero death syndrome”. Burdening them with restrictive rules of engagement intended to minimize the risk of taking casualties, forgetting that in war, you don’t achieve anything by not taking risks.
It’s the same attitude he criticized in other countries, especially since in the ened, it didn’t prevent casualties anyway.

I can – even for some EF partner nations, just as soon as you look at ops that might be conducted outside a coalition environment. The proliferation of advanced ‘Flankers’, MiG-29s and F-16s could very easily produce a scenario where the highest possible kill:loss ratio would be of vital import, and where knocking the enemy off at the longest possible range would be advantageous.

Even within a coalition effort, if the USAF are unable or unwilling to deploy F-22s, Typhoon’s capabilities suddenly become very relevant.

And for some potential export customers, the possibility of air-to-air is very real indeed.

But this is a Rafale news thread, and we should not be harping on about the Typhoon here.

I disagree. Had you been able to wave a magic wand and make the Cold War vanish, and could have given me give me a cast iron guarantee that’s all that the RAF would ever have to do, I’d have taken Gripen over Typhoon back in the 1990s. We’ve got Typhoon now, but if that cast iron, copper-bottomed, rock solid guarantee were still on the table, I’d ditch JSF in a heartbeat and take shed-loads of Gripens for the expeditionary stuff. Or maybe second hand A-10s, even!

And in the same circumstances, France would be mad to stick with Rafale over a cheaper, single engined jet too. ASMP? Who needs it? Strategic range? Pah! Even Scalp and Storm Shadow look pretty disproportionate and extravagant for Libya…..

In a Carebears-led world you’d be right, unfortunately you have to prepare for the worst, a lesson painfully inflicted during the 20th century.
Besides, I don’t think current military planners and governments want “a fair fight”. Go explain to your public that, unfortunately, some of our pilots died in combat against a theoretically significantly inferior enemy because we wanted to give the other side a fighting chance… 😮

The red planes on the top right corner look suspiciously like F-16s…

(…)

Now let us look at your own claim that Rafale “demonstrated brillantly the capability of SPECTRA to handle a fully operational Air defence network without any dedicated EW support.”

That “fully operational network” was largely made up of ageing Soviet-era radars and equally ageing SAM systems. The long and medium range SAMs were all obsolescent at best, while in the area of short-range SAMs the best were probably the SA-8s and 30+ year old Crotales.

So it was hardly a modern air-defence system.

And was it really “fully operational” for more than hours given the cruise missile bombardment that Libya received in the early stages of the campaign?

I have no desire to belittle the Rafale and its combat record over Libya. I’m only trying to place that record into context.

I’m in agreement with the rest of your points, so I’m only answering the last.
Libya’s ADS wasn’t the kind of mythical super advanced (you know, S-400 everywhere, Tors and stuff) people fantasize about. And yet, so far nobody has any combat experienced against anything newer, correct me if I’m wrong. The ADS in Serbia used the same generation hardware, maybe a little improved, and with smarter operators. Not to mention Iraq.
And yet, you had B2 flights over Libya and Growlers, even after the Macross missile massacre, pardon, Tomahawk volley. So, either the Coalition were huge p*ssies, taking all those precautions against an impotent, senile ADS, or it was still dangerous enough.
When those crazy French were waltzing around without invisible stealth bombers and dedicated jammer planes.

Conclusion : at the very least, Rafale’s SPECTRA is effective against the older Russian SAMs which are all anyone has combat experience against.
It leaves the matter of the cutting edge Russian stuff and sophisticated AESA radars, but then… the same question applies to the VLO aircraft.

Oh, when will we get some news to cheer me up? The whole Rafale is the defacto king of the Universe fighter system is so boring now.

Perhaps we can look forward to a commitment to RAF CFT, Brimstone/Stormshadow/AESA equipped Typhoon in the near future?

Lol ! Well I’m hoping for some Typhoon-related news without any Rafale comparison here, for a change.