TooCool_12for maybe UAE simply weren’t all that much interested in the first place… which, after lybian conflict may have changed…
discussions restarted and “on a miuch more reasonable basis” according on this article:
basically, first round the french were pushing to sell the rafale, and the emirates, not especially interested let them come and asked for lots of stuff to be added and developed for “their” version..
after the lybian conflict, it is them who came and asked for the aircraft.. dropping a whole bunch of requirements they’ve put on in th efirst round of discussions, like the 9t engine, for example, obviously not really needed; the today’s tone is rather like: “would be nice to have, but isn’t necessary”, basically
about now the Rafale team expects to conclude the sell before the end of the year…
I say, wait and see, but such sale may also sparkle a bit of interest in other markets as well
TooCool_12fnooo??? you mean: “they lied to us???”:confused:
😀
TooCool_12fbah, UN is what “the big guys” want it to be…
Then only permanent members of the security council that didn’t actively take part in that action were china and russia, if I’m not mistaken, and somehow, I don’t see them being too picky about “democratic gonvernment” in Lybia 😉
the others wanted Gaddafi out, and got it
basically, it will probably soon be a “free for all” to get most out of the business with new lybian leaders
TooCool_12fthey have a few modernised mirages F1 that have defected (two or three) and may eventually, in the beginning get some used ones from France who’s retiring the type (allowing to have some decent fighters for starters (air policing, etc…)…
after what, well, it will be all about business, wait and see 😉
TooCool_12fthe numbers have to with the fact that you can’t just put fuel in the aircraft and hang weapons under the wings and take off again.
today, all the complex systems on board require frequent verifications betweeen flights, and that’s the case for all the modern aircraft
from there on, considering that the carrier had only 18 aircraft on board, it had to rotate these… and when you look at ground based ones, their availability isn’t any better.
from what I’ve read, NATO had about 200 aircraft involved in that operation, CdG had 18, which is less that 10% of overall NATO aircraft involved
with these 18, they accomplished strike missions, air refueling missions, recce missions, air superiority missions… and doing all that, they did 11% of all strike missions (only a part of their job)
basically, that’s why I said that they did quite well.
TooCool_12fMaybe I was expecting too much, but given the carrier’s proximity to its targets I would have liked to see more sorties per plane per day. Instead CdG’s aircraft were flying at about the same tempo as their land based counterparts, even though the land based sorties last much longer, 5 or 6 hours.
That said, CdG certainly did bring a few valuable capabilities that can’t be measured in terms of sorties flown, such as combat SAR helos on standby for NATO pilots and medical support for 17 NATO ships.
you should bear in mind that there were only 18 aircraft on the ship, while ground based ones were in much higher numbers.
yet, it did about 11% of all NATO strike missions alone
TooCool_12fEU does not have steller record in India either for customzied products.
4 years haggling on price of M2K upgrade. with 10 years implemention. at almost twice the price of competition.
9 years to deliver diesel sub? at price that is 4 times the competition.
forever negotiation to deliver Snecma help for Kaveri.
not so much freedom with Turbomeca engines.
50% offset?. just raise the price of end product by 100%. and upgrade price by 200%. and increase implementation time line of offsets by 300%. so the value of money invested not so much. i highly doubt in current credit conditions any aviation firm have that much money for investment.
Today i see in news German gov looking for EADS private investor as Diamler wants to offload that business.
India has Aircraft Carrier ambitions. So next generation 5G fighters for India Navy would be either Russia or US. There is no chance of EU fighter.
so why invest in some thing that would not be more than 10% of inventory at given time. It is not diversification.
actually, with the rafale, they may get quite a capable fighter fo rthe navy as well, but it’s not (net) on the table 😉
TooCool_12fThe problem for ECD is that there is no guarantee for its 40 year upgrades. Funding squeeze will pretty much rule out any major upgrades. so they are likely to be obsolete rather quickly.
france only has the Rafale, and plans to keep it (no US designs unless there’s no other option), so, it will continue to keep it up to date as much as possible
and as India wants to built iits own ones, they will also be able to upgrade them as they feel fit too/
the EF is slightly different as financing upgrades depends on the will of several nations (a couple of which already have decided to buy the F-35, which mpay leave them with another option than upgrading the typhoon), yert, the same argument stays: India want to produce their fighters by themselves, so, upgrading, as long as they pay for it shouldn’t be a problem even if other typhoon nations don’t go for it
as for availability, the ECD are in production right now, and all nations involved would welcome any external buyer to monopolize the production and allow them to delay their own buys.
Basically, if they order any ECD in, say september, they could probably start getting their first ones before the end of the year (unless they ask for an equipment that’s not integrated yet, of course).
TooCool_12fThe PAK FA is going to blow both the Eurobirds out of the air and I guess so will the J 20. Then again the J 20 is likely to form the elite of the PLAAF and has to be deployed on several fronts (Taiwan,Russian and Indian) so IMO the PAK FA in the proposed numbers will be good enough to counter that particular threat. The Su 30 MKI should counter (with its proposed updates) the newer PLAAF Flankers as well.
That leaves us with J 10 on the China front and J-10/F 16/JF-17 on the PAK front for which buying another expensive twin engined type is a bit of overkill and may not be able to reach the numbers required to counter these threats. If we go the MRCA way the Gripen or the MIG would have been ideal choices, and if we cancel the MRCA the M2K-5 and Mig 29SMT/M will be good enough to counter these threats as well. Now if the LCA MK2 ends up as capable as we hope it will be, it can progressively take over from the Mirage/MIG.
The money saved can be used to have better AD coverage/ More Tankers/ AWACS etc. A few more AWACs will certainly make up for the lack of uber long range radars.
May be its all about access to Meteor !
Considering the eurocanards as “almost obsolete” (your pak-fa comment) is a bit premature. One essential point in air to air combat is in the electronics, and in that area, we still have to see the real capability of the pak-fa while the eurocanards are already quite good in that area.
It sure does look good on paper (even excellent, I might say), but in the real world it’s just a bet on the future development (needing financing and a lot of work) against people who already demonstrated excellent combat capability and are already improving with financing of progress already planned and voted by the political deciders (in france’s case).
It’s also what the ToT is all about: learning what they need to know, maybe just to be able to make the pak-fa the aircraft they need…
TooCool_12fI can prove you’re wrong:
Extra 300 isn’t a fighter, therefore it doesn’t fit the subject 😀
jokes aside, I fully agree with you 😉
TooCool_12fin the end, if germany is the “eurofighter partner” selling the EF and france the rafale, they can just leave the dollar out of the game (especially if its value changes rapidly) and give their prices in euros…. for once the comparison may be “stable” in time, as both contenders use the same currency. As long as indian currency doesn’t go like the dollar, it would give everybody involved a clear view of the total price
TooCool_12fTooCool_12fIndia has stressed more than once that the proceedeings will be fair and won’t let interfere politics, or anything else not directly related to the advance of the competition as it was announced to go.
if they go back from their decision (shiortlist)and let companies come back in forever (what will prevent others to do the same?), the first thing it will mean is that they are unable to go through the process they defined as they defined it… not a very serious image they’d give there
TooCool_12fer, it’s written “catapult and skijump”… did they invent some new sort of catapult or what? didn’t know you could fit one on a ski-jump deck? :confused:
TooCool_12fas said, le rafale 90% commonality is due to the fact that all airframes are “naval” airframes”, which have been stripped of some equipments and had lighter landing gears installed for the airforce.
navalised typhoon would need heavy structure rework and its commonality would go through the window… at best, it would have avionics commonality, but from the airframe PoV far from that
it’s always fun to look at costs in dollars when the euro/dollar parity varies so much. it would be much more correct to apply the currency exchange rate at the moment of spending…
today we have 1€=$1.43 or something like that, but for example, in 2001, there was 1€=$0.89 and for the most part of the 1990’s, the value of the franc in dollars wouldn’t necessarily make these spendings so important either
if you want to calculate the cost, you should include these variations as the cost paid at the time was much less significant in dollars than now… otherwise, if the euro suddenly falls to, say, $0.50, everything will cost a lot more in europe but suddenly you’ll have the same calculations showing that the rafale has become a very cheap aircraft,
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