I don’t think the cost to France is under dispute. From the article under discussion –

In January 2012, when Rafale was declared the winner, its price was quoted between $60-65 million (Rs373-Rs400 crore).

I’m fairly certain that’s the flyaway cost being referenced.

er, $60-65 million for a flyaway cost is just ridiculous.. early 2012 that would mean about 40 million euros, which is nowhere near the price of the Rafale. That sounds a lot like a desperate try to discredit the people negotiating the deal right now… a such price may eventually be considered viable once you removed the all the offsets benefits from the price of the aircraft (say, for a $120 million aircraft, if you have 50% offsets, you may consider it costs you 60 million…) but then, that would mean only that now, they quote the full price without counting the offsets anymore

Looks pretty obvious that that article is just hot air, nothing else

don’t worry… one thing all recent conflicts have shown is that if your opponent really has something to defend itself, nobody goes there, stealth or not… it’s only endless discussions… 😉

no-fly zones are decided only if the politicians (who want to be reelected) can consider it a viable option from the political standpoint…

and as for penetrating dense defenses, the Rafale is developed to use advanced ECM suite and, if necessary, go in at treetop level. It’s equipped to do so in automatic mode, which allows to fly extremely low and fast, and there, you have pretty good chances to be outside of the view of most if not all defenders. Unless the terrain is perfectly flat, your enemy won’t be able to track you for more than a couple of seconds at most

a ground based laser still has a few problems.. even if powerful enough to reach a range of, say, 20-30km, it can only shoot at targets above the horizon and you can’t use on a large scale (unless you put these everywhere on the battlefield, including enemy territory)… as a result, you still need weapons to be carried (airborne) over the battlefield.

Providing progress is made in power generation allowing most aircraft to have an active anti-missile laser suite, you might render missiles pretty much completely inefficient, except maybe the largest ground-based ones that may have enough mass to carry sufficient shielding to last until the impact, but then, such missiles can’t turn that much, allowing the aircraft, if they’re agile enough, to outmaneuver them.

Stealth, as such, as of today, allows to get closer, but, again, as signal treatment progresses, detectors may be developed to use lower frequencies (as the noise that makes them too imprecise today may become manageable with more computing power), which mean longer wavelength than an aircraft skin can absorb (someone talked about L-band radars?), and therefore the stealth aircraft of today would again stand out against the background in the eyes of the operators of these detectors.

As for the use of gun in a dogfight, if you have lasers able to destroy multiple missiles launched at you from various directions, who knows? maybe that once you get close, they’d be able to destroy or seriously damage you opponents aircraft as well (providing you get really close and maintain close distance for long enough)?

from my (somewhat tired after new years eve…) memory the F-15 was denied to export except a few particular cases… japan for being pretty much alone on the frontline facing China, Israel for its particular status (and strong lobbies) with the US, and Saudi Arabia for facing Iran or something along these lines..

basically, that’s one “theory” I’ve read.. another one was simply that it was just too costly to be considered by anyone except a few who, either benefited from US help (Israel and Japan) or had the bucks to afford it (Saudi Arabia), but it was proposed elsewhere, like in France (as shows this pic, of the F-15 in French colors:

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, where Dassault produced a local version of a heavy fighter (Mirage 4000) which, in the end, proved to be too costly for them as well and lead to a smaller version which is the Mirage 2000

well, obviously, your problem is not the “understanding of english”, but simple “the understanding”… anyway, for as long as you post nonsense like asking for proof that something “can or can not be” you obviously have a problem… and you’re, also obviously, the only one around not to see it.

for once I have to agree with hopsalot… judging engine performance on an airshow display and considering a youtube video as “source” may sound fine among 10 years old kids, but above that, there aren’t many people to buy your so-called “arguments” JSR…