Roughly 1000 for RBE2 (undisclosed, the famous photo on internet was a dummy at Le Bourget 2011)

Same wasn’t true for the 48 batch 2 Rafales or the T1 Typhoons pre block as you were talking about European designs. And retrofits for the F-35 might be budgeted for block 3, but not beyond and one of the reasons for reducing LRIP quantities was to avoid costly retrofits for fixing bugs arising from premature production. And in contrast to LM European companies deliver aircraft at relatively stable prices and they did so from the very beginning, even while they had to cope with much smaller orders and production rates that are evena far cry from F-35 LRIP build rates. LM needs to build a few hundred jets first, then several dozen a year to “guarantee” a halfway stable and lower price. If LM had to work with funds and projected numbers that European manufacturers have to work with the F-35 program would be long dead. So much about apples and apples.

I’m afraid it’s no use trying… But bang on the button.

BTW EElinghtning, QinetiQ is one of the five plants in Europe able to build GaN modules 🙂

My two cents on the AESA element count.

The AESA element count is inversely proportional to the element output strength due to heat generation; you can put fewer powerful AESA elements on a radar dish, or more weaker AESA elements. This is the reason why the second-generation F-22 AESA dish has a reduced element count compared to the first one, because they now use up-powered elements.

The reason Captor-E has so many AESA elements for a dish of its size is because its AESA element has a weak output power, and it is highly unlikely that the Europeans will be able to catch up to Americans and Asians in the long run, because the ability to make more powerful AESA element is directly tied to GaN semiconductor fabrication prowess, which Asians excel at. While the most powerful AESA element used in F-22 and F-15C Golden Eagle are rated at 8 watts, Japanese and Koreans are lab-testing AESA elements rated 50~100 watts right now. With this much power comes the ability to break stealth via a brute force, ie the counter-stealth.

In case of Japan, they are counting on this 100 watt AESA element, along with other technology, as a bargaining chip to join the US 6th gen F-X program as an equal partner.

GaN semi conductors will be implemented to Spectra antennas in 2014… Any Asian country can say the same?

That do not work very well in the ground-clutter enhanced by own jamming. At low level the range of that is less than 20 km without jamming depending on the terrain. 900 km/h gives 15 km per minute. Not much time for a fire-circle to work. 1. dedection 2. IFF 3. track 4. start SAM 5. guide SAM 6. close distance to target. The whole problem starts, that the radar crew has to be on high alert and has to have an idea when and where what threat will approach for an optimum start of the fire-circle.
All that does not work in a similar way against AD with AWACS. The ground based SAM-sites will be alerted much faster, but it will not change much when the attacker will not pass close by well inside the performance envelope of the site. For that ELINT-work was done in advance to map areas for safe approaches to areas/objects of main intrest. A constant task for every serious force in peace-time to keep that updated. Just most modern manpads can be a “game-changer” sometimes.

Which where Rafale is at its best 😉

Look, noone afaik said Su35 isn’t an excellent fighter. And i think most of “Rafale fans” (including me) recognize it would be a challenge. But on the other hand, saying things like similar RCS is plainly ridiculous.

The real question is if India would be ready to pay for such a level of ToT.
I thought that the link was perfectly obvious but this kind of post imply that it is not, so, again, if you ask a company the transfert of their most secret assets, you must PAY for that.
You must pay so much that they will be in a good position (well, more or less) to develop the next generation.
Spectra alone means billions.

According to A&C, Dassault and Bharat Electronics agreed on a deal recently. 85% ToT

My point exactly. One used RAM on compressor face to reduce radar returns, other used S-duct. So in short, they followed different paths to same result: Both has reduced RCS inlet. Both has RAM around inlets and other critical areas, so thats parity too. My question stands, what did rafale designers do to reduce RCS that Su-35 designers didn’t?

They are indifferent.

I do not know real Rafale RCS (in dB), but… A certain level of observabilty was a requirement from DGA when project started. And fulfilled. So one could think that Rafale was designed (and shaped) with a relatively LO in mind.