AERO INDIA: The Dassault Rafale’s First Public Appearance In India


Photos by Shiv Aroor

8 thoughts on “AERO INDIA: The Dassault Rafale’s First Public Appearance In India”

  1. I know it might be off topic but does somebody have any idea what is the need for MMRCA.
    Why not produce more Su-30MKI at home, no need for tech tranfer or anything? I know they are heavy and we want medium but not when medium is coming at THREE TIMES the price.
    None of these offer anything that Su-30MKI doesn't.

  2. @Sona:Su-30MKI might share the Su-30 multirole heritage, but it is actually a long range air superiority fighter, more in the veins of the Su-35. It has fairly limited 'multi-role' capacity.

    What the MRCA is supposed to provide is a fighter that can full-fill every mission, air-to-air or air-to-ground without having to make radical configuration changes, all while retaining the 'fighter' tag. Their mission is subject to change on the fly, no pun intended. The aircraft that comes closest to fitting this description in the IAF inventory is the Mirage 2000, which has very limited air-to-air capacities, and is scheduled for retirement in the next 10 years or so.

    Incidentally, the IAF dropped the 'medium' tag, given that the F/A-18 and the Eurofighter approach Flanker-class weight. So the MMRCA is really just the MRCA.

    And finally, the Su-30MKI isn't as cheap as one is led to think. The most recent version costs roughly $102 million per bird. Don't trust the Wikipedia figures: it lists what was estimated to be the flyaway price of the Su-30K, not the MKI.

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