Typhoon is the best choice here. Because:
1) Typhoon Tranche 3 will be out soon and that will be a true multirole fighters as Bernhard Gerwert said in his interview.
Well, Tranche 3A is the same as Tranche 2 so no biggy there. Tranche 3B is the one that comes with all the goodies like AESA, advanced missiles and it is still stuck in limbo.
Budget pressures halt Eurofighter Tranche 3B talks, says Cassidian boss
"There is nothing on the agenda this year or next year," Zoller said during a financial presentation at Cassidian's Unterschleissheim headquarters near Munich on 28 March. "
Our governments have no money," he added. "We have to see whether we can shift those discussions and firm commitments to a later date."
http://www.flightglobal.com/article...ofighter-tranche-3b-talks-says-cassidian.html
2) Typhoon means stronger strategic ties with 4 European states.
What kind of strategic ties do you expect to get from those 4 European states? Except for the UK, the rest are a bunch of disarmed peace doves. The UK is a disarmed hawk who doesn't realise her new role in the world.
3) Typhoon means we maintain undisputed air superiority in mainland Asia for at least next 20 years on a medium level alongside Tejas MK1 and MK2, Su-30MKI, PAKFA and AMCA.
Typhoon may bring you air superiority over PAF and PLAAF, but it isn't better than Rafale with 9:1 wins over Typhoon.
4) An opening to more outsourcing from EADS in military department.
You know the outsourcing was cut from 50% to 30%? Biggest problem with offsets are, they do not have to be military. They can write them off with commercial offsets and EADS getting most of its business from the commercial sector will give you mostly commercial offsets. Set up a support and call centre for Airbus would just about fill that requirement.
5) Germany is the keyword here. A chance to develop stronger ties and interoperability with German tri-services; the only NATO significant country with whom we haven't had any serious war drills.
What are you going to train with? Germany is disarming so fast, they will be less than Spain in a few years. They really aren't interested in more alliances, they don't like being in the one they got.
6) A victory of EFT means EJ-200 becomes Mk-2 Tejas's prime engine; As we can see that Snecma has started over-pricing us for the Dhruv engines.
EJ-200 lost to P&W, they are out of LCA. Mk-2 will be using Snecma engine cores. Snecma don't even make helicopter engines... that is Turbomeca. The price of Shakti hasn't changed. The price of redesigning Shakti to fit a single engine LuH requires a completely new transmission with a new price. India don't like it so they can either pay or find a new engine. Their loss if they don't want a standard engine across all helicopters.
7) This could mean a changed perspective on the state of J&K that Europeans have maintained as a "disputed" zone. Strategic package.
Um... yeah. Unlike a deal with a single country like France on the P5, there is only one country on the P5 in that consortium being UK. UK has to split its shares four ways with four countries so the economic leverage with them isn't nearly as great as it is with France who has all her eggs in one basket... India. Europeans don't even care about Kashmir except for the instability it causes in South Asia. MMRCA won't change their position being a neutral one.
8) NO Strategic or technical strings attached compared to the ones that we're seeing that US provides with its products whether free of charge or bought.
You get the same from Rafale... difference being, you have to deal with four countries who rarely agree with each other as opposed to one.
The only issue here is that per aircraft, Typhoon is killer expensive. But we could bring that cost down if we manufacture them in India itself via HAL.
And you would bring down the cost of Rafale made by HAL. Either way, Rafale is far cheaper to buy, maintain and operate. It has fully developed capabilities which have already been funded. EF consortium don't want to pay for a 2016 upgrade that is still in limbo... IAF can't wait that long.
