M. Beesley is also employed by Lockheed which is selling the aircraft and, as such, his job is also to show the aircraft under positive light.

While he’s a highly qualified and respected gentleman, he’s a professional who does his job (give arguments to sell the aircraft) as well…

fact is also that the F-16, should it fight an adversary, would jettison everything it doesn’t need… the F-35 would drop its bombs to gain weight, but couldn’t drop any fuel it doesn’t need at that point and if its at a weight disadvantage, it can’t do anything about it.

the same goes for any other aircraft with external storage.. they can always drop external stores to be clean and as aerodynamically efficient as they can be. Does that make the F-35 a bad aircraft? no… but the huge advantage it’s supposed to have (as its defenders want to believe) against a fully loaded 4th gen fighter is nonexistent, unless the 4th gen has no idea he’s attacked and keeps its stores

obviously, since argentina had them in 1982 ^^

anyway, be it UK or France, you’re talking about military powers way above Argentina’s reach… and, it as a navy, or in ground troops, France had the means to retake the Falklands back, maybe even more so than the UK that was reorganizing its military at the time, if my memory serves well, and had to “improvise” somewhat with what they had (Vulcans were just retired days before having to bomb Port Stanley, with improvised aiming devices, for example…)

My logic is simple and straight … Better a plane which I own then the imaginary one. Options I have already listed, rest do the calculation yourself.

Who said it is The best in world, it is what could fulfill our requirements and hopefully affordable. We are not a oil rich country, where buy things to show off.

who said it? well, I’d say you did (India), through the tests performed. MMRCA was an open tender, and every aircraft manufacturer that is worth speaking of presented its best offer available, and you picked the two eurocanards which, if one thinks just for a second, were pretty much certain to cost more than any other proposition (so costs obviously weren’t part of the tender at that point)… now if you didn’t pick the two best performers, on which basis was that decision made then?

people said “no rafales” as france wouldn’t sell them…

but rafales were on offer for Brasil with the possibility to build them locally and sell them to all latin american market (which would include Argentina, obviously)

now, about those british subs that, in case of invasion, would block anything coming out of Argentina.. you’re on the other side of the planet, have no supply line to speak of, no port to shelter in, and your subs would go around there with impunity? chances are that the first time one of them fires on a ship, all anti-subs assets would go after it and most certainly sink it (you don’t hide a couple of hundreds of tons of metal that easily)

add some sufficiently long range aircraft with sufficient provision of antishipping missiles (rafales with exocets, Su-30 with Kh-31 for example) and what do you have? a remote place where no ship would be able to come even close.

in fact, the only thing the brits could do (providing Argentina builds sufficient projection force to take the islands and patrol the seas around it) would be a nuclear strike, which, on another hand, may be “a bit complicated” to manage after it happened…

I wouldnt say questionable at best. There were huge software increments that make of it a very efficient radar. For ex. The radars opposed to last gen spectra during joint warrior were more or less useless, BUT they were not incremented radars, with stronger ECCM. So easy to troll, but the painting is wy more complex.

welll, what should also be said is that as every country considers its radar specifications as classified, you can be sure that, in an exercise, nobody used its capabilities to the maximum as in real war… neither the radars against spectra, nor spectra for its jamming capabilities

in the end, one can only say that in the modes employed they managed this or that, while still not knowing to what extent the opponent used his own systems, unless the requirement was to keep it shut, of course… which, again, means little

I only mention UAE report that Rafale is not powerfull enough for loaded operations in high temperature environment. and you can see from the video the amount of smoke coming out from afterburners and very high flames. That airshow is at small place
you cannot see any big afterburning flame or smoke. that is surplus power.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FvezCyw1HY

they operated in afghanistan, rather high altitude and temperatures, operated over Mali/Tchad, were tested by India in “high altitude/warm” conditions, and it performed perfectly in all of these situations… what’s more, UAE dropped that claim since then…