Why is affirming the commitment of the countries involved towards ensuring a satisfactory deal for India in the event of the EF’s selection, a desperate move? It certainly doesn’t go against the process. After all Sarkozy has been advocating a Rafale purchase as well.

If the decision is too close for a clear winner on technical/financial terms to emerge, they might leave the decision to made politically, in which case such a letter might help. Unlikely I admit, but not impossible.

If nothing else, it would work towards assuaging those sections (if any) that are worried about hurdles due to infighting within the consortium. There was certainly nothing to be lost by sending the letter. The Indian govt. can toss it in the bin if it likes, or recycle the paper at worst. No harm done.

again, there are rules in this sort of proceedings. there’s a precise date at which the biddings are opened. it is done so in order that there’s no intervention of the bidders after the bids are known (especially the concurrent’s ones), meaning, you make your proposal and the customer chosses from that. The rule is that you must not intervene after as it would flaw the process, so the bidders start with equal chances for everyone.

now, in politics rules are regularily bent, it’s nothing new, but as india stated that this would be fully transparent and honest process with no politics involved and until now, they stuck to it. Sending such a letter NOW (when both bidders are supposed to shut up and wait) is a clear try to shift the process from the way it is supposed to work. That is why it looks so desperate

Further, how realistic is air recce with human piloted aircraft? How big was been the chance to survive a recce mission for Irak pilots at beginning of the war 2003? (No, I hope there will never been a war)

well, it still is important, even if drones can do a good bunch of that by now… the problem still remains, they are slow (so, easy to intercept if they come too close to some sensitive area) and satellites can’t see everything (despite what movies sometimes show us :D)

In the 1990s’ the US even asked the french to do some recce for them with the Mirage IV after the SR-71 was retired, from what’s I’ve been told by a former mirage IV pilot

the two deals being so different (india to produce its own fighters with full ToT, while UAE buy ifigters “made in france”, the price doesn’t include the same thing, thus, it is necessarily different.

now, the india deal can work both ways. it can mean, for the UAE, that dassault doesn’t need such a big margin and can lower the price, but it can also mean for dassault a bigger cashflow and they can consider they have no need to reduce their margins just to start selling the rafale…

anyway, it’s always the same story, the buyer wants a lower price and the seler wants it higher… we’ll see..

Wanderlei, relax, Vietasian posted that crap back in 2004… he’s probably not even around anymore 😉

I don’t think so. what use of a handful of fighters? what they need is suffient number of competent, yet affordable fighters that they can also afford to operate and maintain correctly.

already talked about. look at the date, it’s mid-november news

you probably wanted to say “dollars”…

for india, anything, imported or not will be also priced in rupees anyway, methinks 😀

Merry Christmas btw 🙂

MSphere, you forgot the integrated nespresso machine so the pilot can talk directly to god sometimes… 😀