USS H.W. Bush is in a working up period. The French contingent is in carrier qualifications on the ship (or were). The ship just arrived in the UK for an exercise.

The Truman is on its way to the Med, there was no carrier in the area at the time of the strike. Someone must have forgotten to tell a certain world leader before he lit up Twitter. Not often that there are no carriers in: Med, Red sea, or Gulf in recent years. Consequence of having 9 carriers available (1 in RCOH and 1 undergoing PSA and not going to deploy for 2+ years)

B-I-O, very disappointed that you didn’t differentiate the “smart” tomahawks from the regular ones.

And 4chan is slipping as a source doesn’t everyone know that that the USN opens up every VLS canister for inventory so reporters can count before the ship leaves port?

You didn’t read GoI letter regarding the Rafale contract then. It is 103 million USD (2016) per aircraft without any India specific modification. Those mods add 1.7 billion euro. Here is the breakdown:
https://www.livefistdefence.com/2018/03/rafale-deal-first-full-details-of-frances-e4-billion-india-offsets-plan.html

And no, an F4 will not cost the same. Some of the development cost will be passed to future export customers, like the Swiss. If an F3 without the Indian mods is roughly 103 million, and Qatar’s 12 are similarly priced, you can fully expect on per airframe basis Swiss Rafale F4 standard will be north of that.

Rafale F4 is entirely paid by France and is already the basis for future export prospects. The Swiss wont have to pay for F4 development. As far as productions rates are concerned, apart for the F35 it will be rather low not only for rafale but for Gripen E, Typhoon, SH by 2025. I don’t see any significant gap especially when you consider that the rafale is already quite price competitive vs Typhoon and SH (cheaper or similar costs) with already a lower production output. The reason is a bit less simplistic than your initial reasoning : costs structures are totally different.

Not entirely true, what we have seen in recent export deals on the Rafale is that a portion of the development costs are baked into the contract on a per unit basis. Each Rafale is costing India roughly 103 million USD (Rs 670 crore in 2016 value) without equipment, weapons, or India specific mods (like HMS). Comparing that to the 2014 Senat cost for the Rafale at 68-74 € (76-83 million USD 2014). India is paying roughly 20 million USD in dev costs per aircraft.

It’s doubtful that Dassault can offer a contract to the Swiss below what France actually pays to develop and build a Rafale F4. The French taxpayers and government wouldn’t look to kindly to taking one in the neck for Dassault to score the export order.

Repost T-VIP check previous page.

Exact same sentence can be made by replacing the word “Typhoons” by “Eagles” and/or “Vipers”.

Cheers

True, and that exact thought came to my mind when writing that. But I think we both know what the difference is, don’t we?

Neither the F-15 or -16 were supposed to serve into the late 20’s for their primary user (with the exception of the “E”)

Neither, they’ve already ordered 36 Rafale. Invest in maintenance and support for the types in service and on order. Continue Su-30MKI upgrades, buy several more Rafale squadrons, and fill out the forces with Tejas.

Su-57’s aren’t going to be export ready for at least a half decade. The co-developed FGFA derivative is looking more like a pipe dream.

India’s long and strange journey with Dassault on the Rafale should give pause to anyone thinking an F-35 deal would proceed swimmingly.