actually, it’s 2m, which is 6.5ft…. (a bit longer 😉 )

as said in the article, it’s strange they don’t want to reveal what they have… unless one considers they have nothing to show except the powerpoint stuff they sold to the USAF and are trying to put things together.

during that time, they’re using money to integrate new engines into the civilian versions, as saidat the end of the article. maybe they’re playing the same game as LM? let the government spend money until they can say: “we’ve spent too much to stop it now.. we have to keep going…”

gotta love such articles… basically, that SAAB guy tells us that indians are an incompetent bunch of idiots… they had a list long like my arm, and then some, of requirements, and they’d eliminate saab just because they misjudged its availability.. yeah right…. 😀

I’d say, it’s lucky for saaab I’m not among the top india’s deciders or in a tomorrow article there’d be the answer: “I’m afraid saab executives have misjudged something: our competence…so we’ll explain to them that we don’t work with people who, basically, call us “idiots”… from now on, they they don’t even have to bother proposing any of thei prroducts for any future market in india…”

if i were india, i wouldn’t want to operate the same aircraft on my carriers for the Navy as the Airforce would have for the MMRCA….

I personally think its an oversimplification to say that what is good for the airforce is good for the navy. Maybe in France, but not in the UK, and not in the US.

oh.. and why so?

because the generals don’t like to see similar toys in the other branches? one type (for once successfully operating in both services with the same airframe), is exactly what the US wanted to do with the F-111 to reduce costs (goal missed) and try to do again with the F-35 (goal already partly missed as less and less parts arre common, not to speak of costs that skyrocketed and nobody can say when, if or how much they may come down one day).

Indians would get an effective fighter, capable of doing perfectly more or less anything they may want it to do, and have the capability to spare money through one spares stock instead to multiple ones. They’d also spare money through upgrades they’ll search to develop, as they buy fighters with tech transfers and in the case of the rafale, any upgrade they develop could be applied to the entire rafale fleet regardless of the service using it, which is simply not true if they choose different platforms, requiring more spending to develop, adapt and apply upgrades they’d be interested in

about putting all the eggs into one basket:

air supériority:

PAK-FA

light fighter:

LCA

Medium fighter/ground attack

Mirages and ?

It’s already three different providers, and adding a fourth one to do the job besides the mirages befor taking over would force them to have double assets for everything, while sharing at least a part of the assets between similar aircraft (from the same provider) may reduce the overall costs.

What’s more, they may soon plan to acquire a naval aircraft, and there, if they take the rafale (basically, almost 100% commonality with the “air force version allowing for further reductions in costs) it would be a very simple process… they can even buy the M version directly (or the “N” if they want two seaters), as it can obviously operate in both situations giving them the flexibility to reassign tyhe airframes as they feel necessary). If they go for a Typhoon they’ll have to, either, make a whole new competition or pay huge development costs to get navalised version of it.. in any case, it will be a lot higher price to pay to get a naval capability

Does your Rafale/French bias have to come into every topic? :rolleyes: I do understand why you are so desparate for the UK to go Rafale though! I’ve no doubt BAE are quite aware of the marketing trick Dassault will be planning to play too, and so will be lobbying hard against the Rafale. I suppose one option could be to have a procurement made by the UK, but with a fund created of say £10 billion, which if Dassault used the contract to rubbish Typhoon, would be given 75% to the MoD and 25% to BAE systems, which should keep Dassault well in line 😀

I see no reason to go Rafale instead of F35C at this point. The UK has made an investment in the F35 and we should continue with it unless there are extremely strong reasons to change. All I’m hearing fan boys who like a different type of plane because of their nationality or whatever, and highly dubious cost comparisons based on opinions about non-existant aircraft or sticker prices.

strange how some people immediately consider “bias” some propositions. He simply pointed out that you could buy a platform that’s already operational, doing its job well, and could integrate anything you might have the idea of using quite rapidly (especially as some of the things are already integrated/planned to be integrated) as well as in UK forces.

what’s more, you’d have a platform with which you’d be fully independant in what you do, which, with the F-35, simply is not the case. Even talking about the “investment” is somewhat flawed, since you don’t get what you expected in the first place (be it as aircraft and the independance and sovereignity it’s supposed to bring you, or be it in jobs expected – it’s only matter of time before the US cut the F-136 for good, as they don’t have illimited budgets anymore)… so you keeping paying more and more to get still what you didn’t expect, basically, you’re saying, “well, since we wasted x billions, we don’t want to have wasted them for nothing.. so let’s keep wasting some more”… some may say, “since we’ve wasted so much already, why keep doing it? let’s use the money that we still have for something that’ll be worth it in the first place”

On the typhoon competition, you may be right, but again, there’s no naval version of it, so, what the FAA gets is obviously not going to be a typhoon

that’s where the copmputing power comes into play.

the lower the frequency and the more false returns you get (facilitating the jamming) but if you increasi the computing power behind it, you can increase your ability to eliminate “noise”, and the “solid objects” become clearly visible.

basically, the higher frequency and the more power you need to achieve any significant range. that’s why fighters are limited in their radar output: thay have to generate very high power output to get significant detection ranges. but higher frequencies mean lower wavelength, and that is easier to beat by “shape stealth”.

lower frequencies allow for lower power output for same ranges, but give less precise picture (you get basically anything in the air with the aircraft you look after). the interest is that the wavelength increasing becomes less and less manageable by “shape stealth” as it bounces on the object as a whole, rather than small parts of it, rendering “stealth shaping” useless for defeating it. the difference there will be made by analytical capabilities of the platform (computer, basically)

@ sanem, you got it pretty much all right, I’d say ^^

acutally, the lower the radar frequency, the less stalthy the aircraft is, but you need more computing power to manage the returning signal.

now, all todays radars use quite old chips (with the time needed to develop software etc, the hardware gets pretty outdated)… on can reasonably bet that hardware developed in the next 10-15 years, using todays chips shoudl have sufficient calculating power to manage echose from today’s stealthy aircraft (basing their stealth on shape)… which may be the end of their stealth for good