how much profit still has to be seen. apparently the budget envelope UAE have put on the table barely pays the construction costs, from what’s I’ve read on another forum.

Can’t say whether it’s true or not, but if that is the case, I can understand Dassault that doesn’t want to sell if the money coming in only pays the construction of the aircraft… there’d be no profit except printing in a brochure: “exported”

and then, all potential customers would want the same deal, so not much gain from there either

Anyway, we’ll see soon enough 😉

ok, I should have said “french internal politics”

not a bad idea to remove the GAU-8, but about the “quad pack of Bk27” it would probably still be overkill for a few pickups…

maybe even smaller calibre guns (eventually under (or inside) the inner part of wings, allowing for belly landing just in case), but with loads of ammo. for strafing attacks against a toyota or some hut, even 0.5cal MGs would be enough.

however, removing the weight of the gun up front would need some redesign to balance the aircraft back into something flyable 🙂

well, for now, dassalut is still making money (mostly out of their falcon line, that is certain), so they probably have a good idea what they’re doing and what they need.

Right now, it seems that the Typhoons proposed are thos ethat partner nations can’t afford, which means that the eurofighter consortium won’t be making any money either. dassalut on the other side has the French gonvernment that is committed for the orders, so they won’t loose money even if they don’t get any of export deals.

What’s more, if they’re asked to give full ToT, they may feel that it is worth a certain amount of money. It’s not just about selling fighters, it’s about giving away your know how… the US don’t do that for example (which is why the F-18 was out in brasil and probably also why american fighters were eliminated fropm MMRCA market, and why the F-35 has about a snowball’s chance in hell to get that market as well)

@ J-20 Hotdog

it’s the germans who are in charge of selling the Typhoon on this market, and they most certainly calculate in euros as well, before converting to dollars (which is probably the currency used)

if you’re to use diesels, better stay with turbines… more modern, reliable and you can get more power for a given weight.
in both cases you’d use the same fuel as fighters, so no need to multiply the supply lines for avgas.

If you put a T56 engine on an evolution of the skyraider, for example, you would get all the power you’d need, and putting a 5 or 6 bladed prop on it your noise level should remain at an acceptable level… sort of “super-skyraider” which might be interesting to study (for as long as you don’t let the engineers start their crap all over again and try to imagine a 7th gen fighter out of it for half a billon dollars apiece 😀 )

I didn’t say “they will take” but that it may be funny if they did. Simply talking about the possibility to see the two fighters confronted with each other in real operations

no, but they tested the rafale, and spent a good amount of time negotiating for it. Switching at the last moment for another aircraft they know close to nothing about would be strange, at least. If they really decided to put the rafale under pressure or envisioned another buy, I’d rather see an f-16 with a whole bunch of latest tech gadgets to make it the most modern f-16 in service ever…

That request looks to me like an improvised attempt to put dassault a bit under pressure following the India’s bids which may give them the impression that Dassault made a bigger effort in India than for them (maybe forgetting that India would have to build their own fighters after the first 18, while UAE would buy the aircraft made in France, which makes the two deals very different…. )

you can integrate any weapon onto it if it wasn’t done already… it’s up to the customer to make its choice.

The only weapons that are “part of the package” are those already cleared (basically, integration done, so the customer has only to buy them and use them), for the rest, it’s not the aircraft manufacturer that can propose it, but the customer who chooses to add it or not