So maybe you could whisper to someone in charge over in Greece that
they should push for participation now and get a nice cut!

Good day all, Tay.

I wish i could. 😀 Thank you for the translation.

I gave it a last try before going to sleep and luck assisted me this time… Free translation:

“French proposal for partecipation in the replacement program of MICA IR-EM-VL

Proposal to Greece to partecipate to the industrial production of a new air combat missile which will begin development from 2012 and that will replace the MICA IR/EM will be submitted from France via MBDA, which will take the job of the development. As company members say “We are already thinking about MICA’s successor and we want Greece in the program since it will be using french aircrafts still for many years to come.”

Greek companies have significant know-how from their partecipation in the Stinger and mainly in the IRIS-T program and this know-how will remain only if they renew their involvement in a new project.

The discussion has alread started in France about the new short-medium range missile that will replace the MICA by 2020 and together with Meteor will make a duo, on which the french air power will rely upon. The subject was already put by the vice minister of Defence Cornut-Gentille, who stressed that if the successor program doesn’t start immediately, then at 2020 “we may be buying missiles from USA”. It’s calculated that for the conclusion of the program 12 years are required.

… (omitted part about MICA’s history)

According to french sources, the new missile must be capable of shooting down stealth aircrafts, such as the russian T-50 and its eventual chinese equivalent and also UCAVs. It will certainly be followed later by ground based version, like the MICA VL today.
And above all it must be effective from 2 to 50 km, but with speeds equal or exceeding Mach 6.

http://www.defencenet.gr/defence/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15425&Itemid=99999999

I hope we do get in the program. Fortunately, this will probably involve private companies, either Miltech or Intracom Defence. Because i doubt the greek PM would give a single cent for this in the middle of the crisis.

AWACS, assuming it even happened at all. Now stop trolling.

There are some things to consider here:

1) If the Rafales were 7, it is quite possible that the F16s were more. In any case, it is i think certain, that the entire opposing force (including the Etendards and Mirage) were more numerous. TASMO is about saturating ships’ defences, and to do that, you need a respectable number of aircrafts (2 Exocets per aircraft).

2) The Block 52+ has 30% greater radar range than the B50D. And with the support of the Erieye, they could have approached from any direction without emitting initially at all. Once close enough, the radar’s own range should be enough to allow for successful BVR shot.

3) The Etendard pilots know their carrier’s defences and the greek Mirage pilots know every corner and islet in Greece and they ‘ve been doing this for a long time. If they had their path open enough for the launch, then all it requires is coordination to saturate the carrier’s defences. In fact, in Greece in these days there is a pubblic conflict, with 2 retired Navy officers coming out to say that the FREMM is too big for the Aegean, that no ship can survive an air or submarine attack in the Aegean if targeted with determination and that instead Greece should go for corvettes and spend more on submarines.

4) As i said, i hold my reservations about the ratio, but together with AWACS and possible numerical superiority, i don’t see it impossible for the F16s to have cleared a path for the strikers… I don’t want to quote the words of an ex HAF officer a few years ago in TV (he was 2nd i think in rank when he was in HAF), but let’s say that in the specific task of interception, he had much faith in HAF’s abilities. Another pilot recently was even more optimistic about that. Taking in consideration that usually pilots do have a big ego, still, after 35 years of daily “Aegean Flag” with our eastern neighbours, where customarily our pilots are at least initially outnumbered (because unless there’s an obviously big formation the practice is to send 2 aircrafts with eventual reinforcements later. Then the Turks often send their reinforcements and we send ours and so on) and do often multiple interceptions in one sortie (in one interview a pilot said that his most stressful sortie was as a rookie when he had to intercept with his leader 5 pairs in one sortie), i think our pilots must have a pretty good degree of quickly adjusting to dynamic situations by now. I don’t think it’s impossible that the greek pilots guided from Erieye managed to punch a hole in the Rafale barrier enough for the Etendards and Mirage to launch, even though the Rafale is newer generation aircraft. Besides, this wasn’t the first time that the F16s B52+ have met the Rafale. It’s the 3rd i think. And as a matter of fact, greek pilots have also flew (about 30 of them i think) as backseaters with the Rafale, so this time they knew much more on what the Rafale can do than in the previous encounters. As a HAF’s “Top Gun” instructor said in a video “Here, at the end, pilots learn, that is not always the one with the most modern aircraft that wins, but the one that knows how to think tactically and has aggressive spirit”. As for the 6:1 ratio, only God and Defencenet know how reliable that is…

An IR Meteor? I wonder what tail chase range that would have. Problem with sensor range, though: it’d need cueing.

I thought about IR Meteor too, but i think it was saying it would have about the same range as the MICA, so this would rule out Meteor. In any case, it was quite vague, more like a not yet certain french plan. And i don’t remember much more. I don’t remember exactly who had this interest. I will see if i can find it again, but if it was in defencenet their search function is lousy.

November 14-20, Kalamata AB. Cooperation between HAF 362 Trainning Squadron and french 2nd Squadron “Nice” based on Cazaux AB. The objectives were trainning, exchange of views about operational trainning and enquiring contacts for further cooperation in trainning in the light of a possible future common operational trainning of the pilots of the 2 countries.

The flights included A-G low level navigation and air combat sorties.

http://fox2e-mag.blogspot.com/2010/11/120.html

Ah, you are right. When I came across it before, I thought that was a page of comments on an article, I did not realize that claim was part of the article itself. At any rate I agree that the claim is, at best, not supported by anything official.

My dear friend, Defencenet is heavily biased towards Typhoon (if we leave the russian aside). It depicts it as light years better than Rafale and the F35 as “flying saucepan with bombs” more or less. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had bloated or invented the ratios to show the Rafale in bad light (like they do persistently also with the F35 to ridiculous degree, by quoting Kopp or some US senator).

Other than Defencenet, i haven’t heard of other magazine coming up with this number, which is suspicious. For example when greek aircrafts went to Red Flag, about 3 magazines came up with the same stories and same “score” (+-1). So i could accept that (not withstanding that the conditions there are particular). But, now it’s only Defencenet AFAIK that makes this claim.

As we have already written a joint action with the use of Link-16 F-16 Block 52 of the 335 Squadron and 380 Squadron of ERIEYE/EMB-145H was crucial, and became a killer for the Rafale F3 with broken ground, which reached 6:1! This way was paved walkway to the Mirage 2000 to the emptied their deadly cargo a few miles away from the “Charles de Gaulle” (R91

AFAIK (unless i missed some other source), the 6:1 ratio is a claim of defencenet. I actually think that in Strategy page they machine translated defencenet’s article from here http://www.defencenet.gr/defence/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15252&Itemid=141.

I have written my opinion here, in the last paragraph:

http://forum.keypublishing.com/showpost.php?p=1659723&postcount=458

Are you seriously suggesting the Hellenic Air Force would just
http://www.haf.gr/el/articles/pdf/ae_89.pdf

This is a 4-month “airforce review”, which is pubblished by HAF’s Air Command. The trainning with the french group was in 2 stages:
1)early December 2009 (Pean 2009), 2) mid March 2010 (Medor 2010)

It does not mention anything about 6:1. The interesting parts are:

“The significance of the addition of link 16 to the inventory of HAF was shown during these 2 excercizes, where its excellent use by the crews of the F16B52+ and the Erieye were of decisive importance”.

In the scenarios the F16B52 flew against the Rafale F3, but also together with them against other formations of both french and greek aircrafts. In all cases, the linking via link 16 between aircrafts, but also between ships of the french navy was proven “deadly” factor for the opposing force.

The cooperation in particular of french Super Etendard and greek Mirage2000 was excellent and fullfilled to the maximum the expectations and the main goal, which was the destruction of the “enemy” naval force, using Exocet Block 2.”

It then goes to praise the Exocet, with enough range to be fired outside the ship’s SAM range and high resistance to jamming and anticlutter making it suitable to be fired against targets very near to the coast.

That’s all folks. As i said, the rest mentioned in this “strategypage” as posted by Jessmo, is most likely coming from machine translation of defencenet’s recent article.

Oh yes, obviously. Here’s another Greek magazine discussing it (pp. 36-39).

This magazine, is an amateur, internet only magazine, pubblished by some airforce enthusiasts who keep an aviation blog. To my knowledge they use second hand information, coming from other sources (such as greek magazines).

So the only “safe” information in here is HAF’s pubblication and i have some reserves when it comes to defencenet, since it dislikes the Rafale.