Delaying french deliveries is expected from any government, previous one or today’s one. But what was also true, was the fact that Sarkozy used the Rafale sale (possibility at least) as electoral argument.. it is enough to look at his attitude in Brasil with Lula (“ I sold the Rafale, basically“. Same with UAE who even made his communication for him ( “French government did everything necessary, it is dassault’s fault if the deal can’t be done” )

while all politicians are looking forward for their reelection, today’s statements are pretty much logical: trying to shove down the emiratis throat a bunch of rafales, regardless of their quality or emiratis real needs is not exactly the best way to motivate them to buy stuff from you…

Several claims have been made; one of them was that initially the Rafale fighters were operating in “safe” areas where no SAM threats had been identified. Libya is after all a big country.

It would be very interesting to hear a refutation of those claims!

claims made by…?

If the USAF and USN does not believe their newest RAM-covered F/A-18E/F, F-15E and F-16C (with massive jamming support) can survive against an adversary’s sophisticated IADS, what makes you believe Gripen will?

ok, sorry to burst your bubble, but the rule is always the same:

you want a new toy, you say you NEED it, every child knows the trick

the F-15 was the best a brightest fighter out there, bar none… until it was necessary to buy F-22s, then, suddenly, it was “an old and obsolete aircraft” which had to be replaced (by the F-22 of course)…

talking about the gripen, I can’t speak very much about it, but the rafale was supposed to be some useless piece of junk (according to pretty much everybody from the english speaking part of the world), yet, over Libya, the French went in when the USN considered it still too unsafe to be done by the Glowlers (according to an article published in a UK aviation magazine about a good year ago)… and as the french aren’t necessarily completely suicidal, methinks they had some good reasons to be confident about their hardware

“sensor fusion”… some use that term like some magical formula.. it simply means that sensors do their job and their findings are put into a single picture presented to the pilot.

for as long as the pilot gets a clear picture of what’s around him regardless of what sensor gave this or that information, you have “sensor fusion”

what is different is the amount of data sensors can gather (depending on their individual capabilities which are, obviously, classified, and the ability of the onboard computing power to manage that data) and the way to present it to the pilot. What we see today with the rafale, for example, is way better than what you could see on it ten years ago, and by the time the F-35 gets anywhere in any significant numbers, the rafale would have been improved by a good margin again. The only thing an honest person can say is that nobody on this planet can say today how it will fare compared to the F-35 once it reaches operational status in any significant quantities, anything else is marketing rubbish

if it has the angle from its own position (say, heading xxx° and xx° below “me” ) it can calculate the geographic position of the launcher pretty efficiently, efficiency being increased even more with the ground mapping it has.. but again, it is not unique, the rafale does it already and possibly some others do (or will in the upcoming years)

now that was a good laugh… by the time the F-35 reaches any operational service in any significant numbers, the “4th gen” fighters will all have been modernized and their sensor suites will be more advanced than what’s been talked about right here. Of course, if you compare the F-35 to the aircraft from the 80’s or late 70’s that haven’t been updated since they left the assembly line, it looks like star wars… if you compare to what other countries field today with updates current, it’s just another aircraft whose major advantage is the marketing around it…

it depends of the size of the bird… a sparrow may be “swallowed” pretty much harmlessly by the engine, but something like a goose will, basically, put it out of function.

Again, not to say that an air force will loose all its F-35 in a year or two due to bird strikes, but it does happen, and if you operate in a region where bird strikes with big birds are frequent, choosing a single engined aircraft requires the acceptance that you may loose several of these per year due to birds

+1 with mrmalaya

the main problem with the typhoon is the so called “partners” spending most of their time talking and arguing, wanting this or that, but in this order and whatnot… while the french keep pushing forward, with their timetable advancing steadily and fundings programmed and provided on a regular basis