Posted on 01/31/2012 4:06:20 AM PST by IndianChief
A scroll on the home page of the Times of India says that the French Rafale has beaten the Eurofighter for the 126 (and prolly many more) plane MMRCA deal.
Dang man-i shall never forgive you from the bottom of my heart for this insult!!!!! One thread I wanted to post for your years and you snatch it from under my feet.
But, knowing my views on the competition-I’ll just say YIPEEEEEE.
As for the selection, I hope we have made the Frogs grovel in terms of ToT. Personally I preferred the Rafale because the French are not prone to squeamishness about their equipment going to war, unlike the rest of continental Europe.
Yep-this was/is an opportunity to take full advantage of desperation among the Euro-nations. From what I’ve read over the last couple of months, the French would have been likely to offer a more lucrative strategic package (cooperation in missiles, submarines etc).
However this is technically not a contract award since the price negotiations phase remains. So either the French can screw up there (something they have been good at) or rivals cry about impropriety. Though that is not likely.
BTW-here’s the official TOI report.
LOL.
Very good choice. Very clever.
Indeed. Given the commonality between the B and M Rafales, it also presents leverage against Russia for future MiG-29K purchases (since India is building two carriers in addition to buying the upgraded Gorshkov)
And ofcourse - no political strings.
Anyways, good choice by India.
I think there’s one more point which gave the Rafale a definitive advantage over the Eurofighter.
It’s essentially the only combat aircraft that France is investing in so it has been assured of support, come what may. The Rafale configuration on offer to various countries now (India, Brazil, Malaysia and Switzerland earlier) is the same as that which will enter service with the French military by 2013-14.
Compare that to the Eurofighter which has been thoroughly let down by its primary user base; integration of munitions has been tardy and there is little agreement between the four consortium members on how the Tranche-3 configuration would look. The idea that South Korea/Japan/India would become consortium members was presented and bank-roll the programme was a pretty lousy one.
I thought of you as soon as I saw the breaking news on Yahoo. I hustled over to FR to see your thread
I thank Indian Chief for posting this.
However my dear friend Sukhoi, you have done a “mahvelous” job (as the Bostonians would say) in keeping us here in the US updated on this contest
Please keep the information flowing and as soon as you see another news item with somewhat different information, please DO start a thread. I want to post on it and recognize the great job you do reporting on South Asia issues, especially the military ones.
I have learnt more about the Indian military from your news links that I could have ever from the web, where a lot of information is either out of date, or jingoistically biased (on the Pakistan or India military forums)
Well done all!
On the topic of the selection, I am dissapointed as I continue to believe that the USA should have won the contest if they entered a better plane than the F-16IN
More details on the story
http://www.defencetalk.com/frances-dassault-rafale-wins-126-jet-indian-contract-40215/
And pictures of the Rafale Aircraft
http://www.defencetalk.com/pictures/g3227-rafale-bc-france.html
This is also good from a strategic point of view vis a vis China. The Eurofighter consortium with the British in it are more likely to heed to American demands not to proliferate technology to the Chinese than the “exceptionalism-minded” French. With the economic plunge with no signs of abating for them, I wouldn’t be surprised if they started making noises about lifting the arms embargo against China (which is a sham already - a lot of technology is going from Europe to China).
With this, India gets some kind of a lever if not a veto against transfer of aeronautical technology to China. Snecma and Airbus are already in China and to a large extent, helped build the home-grown Chinese aerospace industry.
Thank you for the compliment!!
The US would have had a very solid chance to win if the F-35 programme progressed according to initial expectations-entering service on time and meeting budget expectations. Not to mention making concessions on technology restrictions. The French may tend to be snobbish and arrogant, but they have done a decent job in developing the Rafale and meeting most capability milestones.
The French have screwed up every other potential foreign Rafale sale (UAE and Morocco immediately come to mind) because of their inability to negotiate a price.
Hopefully they can negotiate an acceptable deal with the Indian government. I seem to also recall a recent spat over price with some IAF Mirage upgrades.
You know what is really ironic? The Rafale was reported to be the first plane to be eliminated months back - and now look! Just a couple of weeks ago it was said that the Eurofighter had won before the source-less rumor got squished. It just goes to show one shouldn’t believe everything one reads. Once again, India made the best choice.
I think the Rafale ‘elimination’ rumor came up a couple of years ago (2009?) and the French supposed blamed Lockheed Martin for spreading it.
http://ajaishukla.blogspot.in/2009/07/frances-dassault-targets-lockheed-in.html
There has been a lot of skulduggery associated with deals like these in India where governance and decision making always involves a lot of nonsense and occasionally some prudence. To credit of the government and the IAF, the MMRCA deal had been pretty prudently handled.
Both the UAE/Morocco negotiations were essentially political in nature where the Rafale was the only bird being considered so Dassault most likely tried to dictate terms and flopped. In their defense, the jet’s higher cost and lower production volumes (compared to American aircraft) means that they won’t be flexible beyond a point.
The one advantage with the cumbersome Indian process is that the Rafale is technically still only the preferred bidder-the Typhoon and others can lurk and roar back in. So that would force them to concede ground.
The Mirage upgrades, as some commentators in India and abroad have opined, was probably linked to a possible Rafale deal. Otherwise, the French would never have gotten the contract for such a small number of aging jets when there were significantly cheaper Israeli alternatives on offer.
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