It’s true that cancelling some Rafale orders would force long awaited MLUs of Mirage 2000D and Mirage 2000N which are getting tired anyway. I’m not sure it would be such a cost cutting measure to cut the Rafale numbers to 180 airframes.

I say get out of the Euro, have the franc devaluated by 25% and sell Rafales like hotcakes.

Nic

I think it’s far fetched. The offers have been made weeks ago, so such an article wouldn’t change anything to dassault’s offer to India.

Nic

Good luck dogfighting with any of the eurocanards.

Nic

GBU24 was supposed to be integrated for 2010, so if all went to plan it should be integrated already.

(quoted in the Peter Collins article that’s available on the Dassault website)

http://www.dassault-aviation.com/fileadmin/user_upload/redacteur/presse/revue_de_presse/Flight_test_Dassault_Rafale_Fr.pdf

Nic

With offset & counter buys of 100% or more, i think it is the tax payers of the sellers country that are being screwed

Well I’ve been wondering the same many times. What’s the point of selling with more than 100% offset? For the manufacturer I can understand that it would be interesting, but for the seller country not at all, unless they already import most of the stuff that the offsets are about.

Nic

So is the Typhoon. But they’re not just for agility, also very good for trmming drag, fuel consumption, take off weights etc.

Or Typhoon. 😀

The Rafale can take off with full fuel + 9500 kg of payload from an aircraft carrier what more take off weight increase would you need seriously?

WRT drag, it can cruise at M0.9 at half throttle with a payload of 2x 2000L fuel tanks, 6 AASM and a few Mica missiles. Doesn’t seem too draggy to me.

Nic

The French are being somewhat economical in further developments compared to their contemporaries, though. The current upgrades seem slightly minimalist in comparison with the Gripen-NG and the future Eurofighter tranche plans.

No wonder they’re economical since.

Wrt Eurofighter it’s air to ground capabilities are very limited compared to the Rafale, hence the need for much more development
Wrt Gripen NG: it hasn’t even been developped :confused:

No thrust increase

No need except for the UAE, which recently realised that it wasn’t such a priority after all. French forces that use the Rafale don’t need it though.

no TVC tests or interest thereof

Why would the Rafale need TVC? It’s one of the most agile fighters out there.

no canted radar array or swashplate(just plug the new antenna in place over the space occupied by the old)…

“just plug the new antenna” is exactly why Dassault used a PESA radar in the first batches of Rafales, so they could more easily adapt an AESA later on. The plan was always to go AESA and the PESA was a logical step to ease transition (working/debugging software while waiting for the AESA modules to be cheap enough).

No canted array are worked on because Dassault plans to add side looking AESA radars in the wing roots to expand radar coverage.

Regarding the UAE, my belief is that the dispute may have been on the potential development costs for the upgrades they wanted(specifically the uprated engines with new air intakes and the larger nose and AESA antenna) which Dassault was unwilling to bear on its own. Given the Mirage-2000 deal these costs may have been considered unreasonable.

Want more goodies developed you pay for them. You don’t want to pay you go get more F16s.

Nic

It’s been said, but the second part (that Dassault can’t afford to compromise on profitability of export sales) is illogical. It shows a lack of understanding of the financial realities.

Firstly, that development money is spent. Dassault is not bankrupt. Therefore, there is no need to recover it. The technical term for this is a ‘sunk cost’, & chasing sunk costs is generally reckoned to be one of the classic reasons for commercial failure. The correct approach is to work on the basis of the current balance sheet, i.e. look at net assets & cash flow.

It therefore follows that any profit is better than no profit. If Dassault sets the price too high & exports no Rafales, it gets back none of its development cost. There is no required minimum profit per aircraft. Every euro above the production price is good for the future of the company. Even if Dassault sells the aircraft at cost, it should make a profit on them, because they will generate income for many years from support, sales of spares, upgrades. Therefore, Dassault should try to sell as many Rafales as it can, provided it does not make a loss on a sale – without taking into account sunk costs.

I strongly disagree with your assesment of the situation. Sure some profit is better than no profit at all.

But while Dassault doesn’t need to pay for the cost it has already sunk into the Rafale programme, it does have to pay for the cost of the future technologies it is developing for its next projects. Most aircraft deals include a lot (if not 100%) tech transfer, so making very little profit out of them would be suicidal because if you give away your tech, and you don’t have cash to work on next generation tech, you’re just going to erode whatever competitive advantage you own, and in the end go bankrupt.

Nic