Forum: Modern Military Aircraft

Maybe we'll hear something fromexercises in the future. When the IAF deployed its Su-30MKIs to France, the French flew with Mirages only. Rafales were flying in the area, but never came to the fight there. Somewhat similar to what the USAF Col claimed about Red Flag in 2008. It will be interesting to see what the Su-30MKI's Super-30 upgrade will include. Reportedly an upgraded or new radar, as mentioned before and a new EWS is planned as well, though not finalised yet.

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We'll have answers once both of these aircraft go into service with the IAF. I'm curious to see what roles they'll assign each aircraft. That will give us some idea of their relative strengths and weaknesses. The main question is, which aircraft are they going to put at the tip of the spear? The MKI or the Rafale? The Rafale is a more versatile aircraft overall but I'm curious to see which ones the Indians think is better from a pure A2A perspective.

MKI was meant to be India's heavy air supremacy fighter like our F-15 while Rafale was meant to be a medium-sized multi-role fighter fighter a la F-16 so the "tip of the spear" aircraft in terms of air superiority missions should be the Su-30MKI if their approach to fighting wars is anything like the US's.

Pretty penny for an F-16 type. Seems the deal is all about tech transfer. We should have offered them the F-35 and all the F-16 tech they wanted.

I believe that tacf-x is right on that. One needs to take into account that the IAF is scheduled to introduce its new premier air superiority fighter somewhere around 2020 with the FGFA. The Rafale will become a jack of all trades performing a wide range of missions, especially AG while providing a robust self defence capability and the ability to be employed with air defence and air superiority mission when the situation demands it. Against the current generation of Chinese and Pakistani threat aircraft like F-16s, J-10s and J-11s the Rafale should be good enough.

Perhaps, but against Russian aircraft like MiGs and Sukhois?

What about those Russian aircraft? No MiG-29 of any vintage is operated by the PAF or PLAAF and according some Chinese sources the J-10 is reportedly more capable than their Flankers which include outdated Su-27SK/UBK and J-11A, the J-11B with indigenous avionics, radar and weapons and the Su-30MKK/MK2. As said the Rafale should be perfectly capable to deal with this threat.

shingen wrote:

Pretty penny for an F-16 type. Seems the deal is all about tech transfer. We should have offered them the F-35 and all the F-16 tech they wanted.

My wish would have been allow Northrop to set up a Indian Subsidiary along with HAL - to design & produce YF23 for India. this would have given sense of control to us(India). Being produced by Northrop in India, would have given you Sense of control on YF23 technology. Even India is huge market... most probably for technology companies may not be for final products. Guess US is also looking long term partner in Asia.

Not been around on here for a while some familiar names still on the board good to see:)
I have a question, will the French allow SPECTRA export, the system is very good supposedly.

snypa777 wrote:

Not been around on here for a while some familiar names still on the board good to see:)
I have a question, will the French allow SPECTRA export, the system is very good supposedly.

I can't imagine anyone buying Rafale without it.

What else does it have besides pretty good range payload?

Or customers could go the Israeli upgrade route customer dependent of course:) I would either expect a downgraded SPECTRA or at least see the French upgrading theirs to stay ahead.
Shingen was that a general Rafale question? It`s an aircraft with relatively mature systems and combat tested, which is probably as good as you can get.

shingen wrote:

What else does it have besides pretty good range payload?

A strong airframe with reduced signatures, excellent aerodynamics and flight controls, quite good fuel fraction, unmatched payload capacity in class, good MMI, fully integrated avionics suite with modular core architecture, a world class EWS/DAS, excellent sensor fusion, more or less unique TV camera for visual ID at BVR distances and some unique weapons (MICA & AASM).

Better question:

What does it offer for the price?

What has been stated. On top of this the aircraft is available in land based single and twin seat variants, the later features a reconfigurable rear cockpit for training or combat missions and a navalised variant is available as well. All variants share a great deal of commonality and the range of missions which can be performed isn't matched by many aircraft at all. Considering that the French paid 1/5th or at best 1/4th on Rafales development opposed to the F-35 and that the price was kept stable at around 52-60 mln € fly-away with anual production rates of 11 or less aircraft over a period of more than a decade is quite an achievement.

snypa777 wrote:

Not been around on here for a while some familiar names still on the board good to see:)
I have a question, will the French allow SPECTRA export, the system is very good supposedly.

Hello mate, nice to hear from you again.. The SPECTRA system is combat proven and considered more mature than Eurofighters Dass.

Forum: Modern Military Aircraft

Su-30MKI vs Rafale