you may notice that even the two bomb pylons don’t have the same angle…

probably a separation issue

talking about the gun pod, considering that the recoil usually makes these unstable, it’ll be just for strafing, and, what’s more, not a precision strafing but rather raining lead over a more or less defined zone…

the upgraded F1 standard aircraft are one solution.another one may be to simply dedicate one year production for the FAA, the number of aircraft should be suffifent for the beginning and that would ease somewhat the french defence budget as well.

as for FAA preference, just send Ueli Maurer to work for Cameron, and the Rafale is a sure winner there 😀

Not really. It is the same burden by the overhead dived by a smaller number procured at first. The main cost of fighter production is the need of man-hour to do so and an adapted assembly-line. The F-35 program is just adjusting to that reality. 😉

In an European airforce you have the same AB, the same number of personal but the wing reduced to 40 fighter. More than half of the training hours are flown at the sim-domes of that AB. Just more than 1000 hours training were flown that year really. The cost to run that wing was ~100 mio $ and results in a flight-hour price of 100.000 $ for that fighter nearly. You can rise the number of flown hours by an increase of real cost and a nominal drop in cost per flight hour for that fighter. To stay realistic it is not a clever idea to rise the number of flight-hours for that purpose as it is not clever to rise the procurement of fighters to lower the cost share of the overhead by that.
When we sold enterprises our new software we claimed it will have an higher output per man by that. Less personal in need for the same work will bring money from lay-off of surplus personal alone. Within “few years” the software and its introduction is payed from that money alone and will rise the profit. :dev2:
The similar claim with every new fighter, when it allows the same number of flights with less personal. As long you are in need of a pilot/crew your peace-time training demand will not drop to keep the expensive multi-role fighter in the air. Just in a full scale war you may have more cost-effective missions by the capability to destroy ground-targets with fewer weapons.

So cost reasons alone will bring more and more UAVs next to a shrinking number fighters. All the former mismanagement of the F-35 program and some others as well will accellerate that trend. For the orbat of every country we have to add the number of UAVs too. 😉

not sure we speak about the same thing.

I was saying that the program cost overruns combined with the financial difficulties of the intended customers would probably cause the ordered numbers to decrease (as is already being envisioned by USAF senior officers). If the numbers of aircraft ordered are smaller than planned you will see the price per airframe increase as there will be less economies of scale in the production, leading to further probable reductions from the customers.

Not possible unless the customer is exceptionally stupid. The contract should specify the full equipment fit of the aircraft, as well as the price.

still, it was written that the Swis would upgrade their gripens as upgrades become available (the proposed aircraft doesn’t exist yet)

besides one thing I found even more suprising is the claim that they’d be built in switzerland… while, AFAIK the swiss closest thing to a fighter is the pilatus PC-7

So, on a simple footing, would this pose a problem if the Indians insist they want to build more of the Rafales for themselves?
I know that there are varying build numbers being quoted, but if the French only end up building a relatively limited number, can we assume that the production line longevity will struggle?
Of course any pending further orders that they are sucessful with would more than likely change that anyway?

I might add that, for as long as India want to produce more fighters for themselves, Dassault will agree (as they’ll charge royalties even if they don’t produce a single piece of equipment anymore)

However, when it comes to exports, that is another story, as said by another poster, the french state can use exports to keep Dassault busy while delaying the introduction in the french forces, (for budgetary reasons), so those will most certainly be kept by the french for the french assembly line. the possible exception being brasil which has been offered the south american market in the package, but there dassault probably considered that different nations were either likned too strongly to a supplier like USA or Russia, or just too broke to be able to envision a rafale buy (at least if built in France with “french price”

Now, considering that the cost to make the aircraft (not charging the development) is less than $80M in France, one may wonder how much cheaper it may be to be produced in Brasil, allowing it, maybe, to compete for a few markets in S. America

can’t speak about eurofighter, but with the dassault offer, the french offered pilot training, open french air bases, open french airspace to play (should also please those who complain about noise in the swiss skies), that’s already a lot…

emile said:

“Actually, related to air-combat in future, STR is more important than STR, the era of pure dogfights will never return.”

er, what did you mean, ITR more important than STR or the contrary? 😀

in any case, ITR allows you to change direction more rapidly (useful for scissors manouver for example), STR allows you to make a better flat turn, which, in fact, is quite easy to counter by out-of-plane manouvering.

Basically, imagine we both dogfight: if you make a flat turn in an aircraft that turns somewhat better than mine, I’ll do a high yo-yo (one possibility among others) and still come inside your turn if you keep it going, regardless of the fact that your STR is higher than mine