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Old 31st Jan 2012, 15:48
  #9 (permalink)  
Reinhardt
 
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Qatar
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Ah, ça fait quand même du bien...

Yeap, a winner had to be at some moment.

The Bloomberg article is full of mistakes :
Biggest one is that the Rafale is not due to replace the Mirage 2000 - even if it's part of the anglo-saxon strategy to say "ageing Mirage 2000"
A very big contract of modernisation has been signed with french industry a couple of months ago for those Mirage 2000, new avionics - and new missiles , more than 500 MICA all-sectors, multi-sensors. The french avionics companies Thales and Sagem did the modernisation of the indian Jaguars in the 80s, and also of the Sukkhoi 30....
Before the Mirage 2000 deal of the end of the 80s, there had been the big contract of the Jaguar, mostly with the british (as Dassault never acknowledged paternity of that aircraft, which was originally a Breguet product...)
Before, 110 Mystère IV had been bought (sorry for those who don"t know what it is - yes, it's another Dassault aircraft) and they fought gallantly during a couple of wars with sub-continent neighbours...
And even before, 104 Dassault Ouragan (sorry for the sam eoneshad been bought at the beginning of the 50s...... and also 30 Breguet Alizé for the indian Navy carriers in the 60s...
The Rafale C (Air Force) and M (Navy, from french aircraft carrier) have been operating for a couple of years over Afghanistan, and more recently over Lybia.
A small Rafale squadron is based by the Armée de l'air in UAE.

And now, back to the bottles...

Last edited by Reinhardt; 31st Jan 2012 at 17:28.
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