I thought the USN recently ordered some more SH?

Also the SH may win in Japan.

It may also win in UAE as the RAFALE has a very bumpy road ahead..

If I were IAF perhaps I would consider the following:

Get a deal for UAE Mirage 2000-9 + some 150 Rafale. This may be more attractive than going for 200 Rafale, because:

1. The Mirage are available today and IAF desperately needs more a/c, today.

2. It will take time to produce and integrate 200 Rafale. By the time they have done that they should already have started receiving the first FGFA and the AMCA should not be too distant. An Indian Rafale would be a true 4.5 gen fighter jet however it will not be a 5. gen.

This could be one added advantage of going for Rafale, if India can get a good deal for the whole package.

Of course one could go for Typhoon+UAE Mirage as well but there might be less incentive since there is less commonality between the two.

What is the commonality between Rafale and Mirage2000?? except MICA.
engines? avionics? radars? wing spars, landing gear struts? because all those who favor the Rafale are talking endlessly about commonality..

1- Dassault tried to blackmail them with 44 mln dollars M2K upgrade offer.
Agreed. Greed.

You think a 125 Rafale package would cost $25 billion? By the way, I think the popular figure of $10 billion for 126 MMRCA’s is now history. I suspect that India has delayed the competition for too long for that old figure to be possible now.

3- At the moment the Rafale is taylored to French weapons at first which are much more expensive vis-a-vis US weapons. Example,MICA is massively inferior to AMRAAM but costs more .

Sounds like a fair assessment to me. Is MICA really so inferior to AMRAAM? (I ask because I don’t know)

Wouldn’t that be the case with any other supplier? But I gather Dassault risks being greedier than other monopoly suppliers might be.

http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=4485090

The final revised offer ( after 2 billion dollars discount) to Brazil for 36 fighters was 6.2 billion dollars for fighters alone plus 4 billion dollars for maintenance..

Yes , AMRAAM is combat proven and outperforms MICA in all flight regimes
and its much cheaper since it is produced in great numbers.

Yes, the dependence will be the case with all other suppliers but there is a difference. The dependence on Dassault is extremely expensive..

2. And if that is true, I would say that Dassault took very dangerous, or even very stupid, tactics to try to export its Rafale. Any potential foreign customer will ask: “If I have to pay 44.0 million USDs per figher, which is more than enough to buy a brand new MIG-29K or Tejas, to upgrade my old Mirage 2000 today, then how much shall I have to pay to upgrade a Rafale 20 to 25 years later?? A price that is enough to buy a brand new F-35??”

I think Dassault has already lost INDIA because of this…Even more stupid would be to say ‘ If you buy the Rafale, I will give you a big discount from Mirage upgrade price’ which is tantamount to blackmail..

Awaiting the UAE
DSI special edition , August 2010

As you can see: neither radar or EW on Rafale was capable of competing with F-16.
Put another way: How’s your 15 year ole computer doin’ these days ?
still bleeding edge ?

On 1+ ton agile missiles, refer to Newtons 2nd law of motion

Is it true that the UAE were not very impressed with RAFALE’s new AESA because even the APG-80 of F-16 Desert Falcons which became operational in 2005, has more range, and better interleaving of modes/more modes ?

You have to make a comparison based on how many engineers in France are working on radars with how many engineers in Selex UK that are working on radars. You can’t make a comparison based on a world wide workforce, because are really Dutch and American Thales engineers working on French radars and are willing to give the French access to it? Unless a radar is co-developed between let’s say Thales Netherlands and Thales France..

I mean defence secrets are defence secrets..

Absolutely.. Thales underwater systems in the UK for example developed a super advance,highly classified sonar system for HMS Astute class subs capable of detecting ships from vast distances ! developed by British engineers for the British MOD’s eyes only.. The mother company in France can’t get its hands on it..

that is your opinion, but I seriously doubt they’ll just make a check and hope…

We can also consider the fact that dassault is selling an aircraft and its follow up (if there’s one) won’t arrive before decades.. today’s fbw technology will have evolved a lot by then, so, selling it won’t be such a big problem for dassault which may consider much more interesting to get some cash.

Last but not least, unlike the US, there’s little chance france vetoes any export in south america for brasil-made weapons based on the rafale, be it “Brafales” or anything else 😉

Sorry I can’t follow this logic. . If this is the case, the US Congress could easily approve the complete TT of the SH which is considered yesterdays technology vis-a-vis F-22 and F-35.. Rafale on the other hand, represents
the creme de la creme of French Aerospace Technology ,so it would be much easier for the Americans to hand over the SH to Brazil because unlike the French,they already have the future technology available, the French not !