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NEW DELHI, FEB. 10, 2016: The Indian Air Force (IAF) has initiated the procurement of a fresh lot of 40 additional Su-30MKI air dominance fighters at an estimated $75 million apiece, reliable diplomatic sources disclosed to Arming India. The procurement is being taken up as a follow-on order to the 222 Su-30MKI fighters already contracted to be made under transfer of technology at Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL)'s Nasik division. Along with the initial 50 aircraft acquired in a flyaway condition from Russia in the late 1990s, the latest increment of 40 aircraft will take the total number of Su-30MKIs ordered...

Man, Boeing (NYSE:BA) just cannot catch a break. For a while there, 2015 was starting to look like the year Boeing defense got its wings back. In February, opining that "stealth may be overrated," U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jon Greenert began laying the groundwork for the U.S. Navy breaking up with Lockheed Martin's F-35C fighter jet, and buying a bunch of Boeing F/A-18s for its carriers instead. Earlier this month, the Air Force floated a trial balloon of its own. In a controversial revelation, the Air Force suggested it was considering buying as many as six dozen cheaper...

French Navy (Marine Nationale) Rafale M carrier-based multirole fighters may conduct combat missions against the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria from a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier as soon as January 2017. The information comes from French TV channel TF1 (video in French). According to TF1 this subject was discussed between US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and French Navy Rear Adm. Rene-Jean Crignola, Commander Task Force (CTF) 50. The US Defense Secretary was visiting the French Navy aircraft carrier Charles De Gaulle on Saturday. The reason why the French Navy would deploy its Rafale M aboard a US Navy...

The Dassault Rafale, France’s premier fighter jet, headlined the International Paris Air Show last week, showing off its state-of-the art maneuvers before a crowd of 300,000 defense industry leaders. While the air show ostensibly exhibited advances in aviation technology, France also brandished the Rafale as the centerpiece of major new diplomatic strides. Through a series of recent sales worth billions, most recently a $12 billion deal with Saudi Arabia announced Wednesday, the Rafale has become the backbone of Paris’s realpolitik economic diplomacy aimed at sustaining its global stature and capitalizing on recent rifts in the United States’ relations with its...

France’s booming arms trade has proved one of the few bright spots for the country’s struggling economy. But as President François Hollande heads to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, will there be a moral and strategic cost to the deals he might bring back? When Qatar agreed to buy 24 French Rafale fighter jets in a €6.3 billion contract at the end of April, it represented yet another major success for France’s arms industry, coming hot on the heels of further multi-billion euro sales of Rafales to Egypt and India.

There is no doubt about it, the French-built Rafale fighter is on a roll. Egypt suddenly sealed a deal for 24 of the multirole fighters in February, India finally consummated a reduced initial order of 36 jets, and now Qatar will purchase 24. After 20 years, the Rafale has gone from an export zero to export hero in a blistering 45 days. Each country that has bought the Rafale has done so for different reasons. India is looking to bridge the gap that will be left by retiring old MiG-21s and MiG-27s, and to offset delays in the country’s indigenous...

PARIS: The French presidency said Thursday Qatar had agreed to purchase 24 Rafale fighter jets, adding that Francois Hollande would travel to Doha on May 4 for the contract signing ceremony. Sources close to the negotiations had earlier told AFP that a deal - which includes a firm order for 24 jets with an option on 12 other planes

With Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s big announcement in Paris that New Delhi would purchase 36 Dassault Rafale multi-role fighters off-the-shelf (prêt-à-porter, if you will) in a government-to-government deal, the future of the $20 billion tender for India’s medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) that was being negotiated between France’s Dassault Aviation and the Indian government fell into limbo. That ambiguity was resolved on Monday, three days after Modi’s announcement, when Indian Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar clarified that the $20 billion tender would not move forward. Just like that, the “mother of all defense deals,” as India’s MMRCA project was known,...

After flying missions over Afghanistan and Libya, French Rafale fighter pilot "Sharpy" now faces fresh challenges on his new assignment against the Islamic State jihadist group in Iraq. "We are well-trained, we know all the procedures but you still need to get used to the territory," he said after landing his fighter on the carrier Charles de Gaulle following a nighttime sortie. French warplanes have formed part of the US-led coalition carrying out raids against IS jihadists in Iraq for several months. As in Afghanistan, the enemy is extremely mobile and often elusive. IS fighters embed in towns among the...

NEW DELHI-An Indian Air Force fighter jet crashed Tuesday, a day after the country’s military paraded its might in front of the nation and U.S. President Barack Obama during Republic Day celebrations. An air force official said the pilot of the single-engine, single-seater MiG-27 aircraft of Russian origin ejected safely before the plane crashed in Barmer, in the northwestern state of Rajasthan, which borders Pakistan. “The plane was on a routine mission,” the official said, without elaborating. The crash highlights the aging equipment of the Indian armed forces. The South Asian country has been seeking to modernize its mainly Soviet-era...

Even as three Rafale fighters line up in Bengaluru for eye-popping aerobatics displays at the Aero India 2015 exhibition this week, senior ministry of defence (MoD) sources say the proposal to buy the French fighter is "effectively dead".The reason: During three years of negotiations between Dassault and MoD officials in the so-called "contract negotiation committee" (CNC), it has emerged that Dassault's bid was actually higher than that of the Eurofighter Typhoon, not lower as the MoD had announced on January 31, 2012. Dassault had submitted a sketchy commercial bid, and when the CNC obtained details from the French company to...

Egypt says it has bombed Islamic State targets in Libya, hours after the group published video showing the apparent beheadings of 21 Egyptian Christians. State TV said the dawn strikes had targeted camps, training sites and weapons storage areas. Earlier, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said Egypt had the "right to respond" against IS. A video emerged on Sunday showing a group wearing orange overalls being forced to the ground and decapitated. IS militants claim to have carried out several attacks in Libya, which is in effect without a government. "Egypt reserves the right to respond at the proper time and...

BRUSSELS—French President François Hollande said Thursday Egypt will buy 24 of Dassault Aviation SA ’s Rafale in a contract worth around EUR5 billion ($5.7 billion), the first foreign order for the combat jet. Egypt will buy 24 Rafale and an accompanying frigate, Mr. Hollande said at a news conference after a European summit in Brussels. The French-made Rafale, which exists in land-based and carrier-based versions, has been in service with the French military for more than a decade, but repeatedly lost out to foreign competition and never been sold for export. The jet has seen action in Afghanistan, Libya, Mali,...

(Reuters) - Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has approved the purchase of 24 Rafale fighters, a Fremm frigate and MBDA missiles from France in a deal worth more than 5 billion euros ($5.64 billion), Le Monde newspaper reported on Tuesday. The arms contract could be officially signed on Wednesday or Thursday, Le Monde reported without saying where it obtained the information. Officials from Egypt's army and the presidency could not immediately be reached for comment. A French government official also declined comment. Dassault Aviation, which builds the Rafale, declined to comment. This would be the first export deal for the...

For the first time since January 31, 2012, when the French Rafale fighter was chosen as the future medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) for the Indian Air Force (IAF), it has been officially admitted that there are serious problems in negotiating the purchase with the French vendor, Dassault. the Indian Business Standard reports. Speaking to the media on Tuesday evening, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said there were “complications” in the negotiations, already on for almost three years, with the French side reluctant to meet commitments that IAF had specified in the tender. Parrikar mentioned that local production of Su-30 MKI...

New Delhi, Oct.18 (ANI): Indirectly expressing his country's surprise over the Indian Government and its defence establishment's decision to go ahead with its reported plan to buy 126 Rafale combat aircraft from France, Russia's Ambassador to India, Alexander M. Kadakin, said the Dassault Aviation-manufactured fighter aircraft could be shot down like a mosquito by a Chinese-manufactured or produced Sukhoi jet should there ever be a conflict in the neighbourhood. Ambassador Kadakin, who was attending an interaction between Russian and Indian journalists in the national capital yesterday, said, "We (Russia) are still very surprised that Rafale is being bought, because if...

Manufacturers of French arms are back in Cairo The Tribune offers a series of new industrial land conquest of French armaments. Egypt, which has offered this year for four corvettes 1 billion euros, shows again interested in the Rafale. Egypt and God will surprise to the French armament industry in 2014 in the absence yet of major contracts signed by more traditional customers in France (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Singapore, Malaysia .. .) For DCNS scored a real coup in Egypt thanks to a very efficient commercial "raid". In less than six months, the naval group sold in Cairo four corvettes...

Situation with the Russia-France Mistral deal can have negative influence on France's plans to deliver Rafale fighter jets to India © EPA/Marcus Brandt PARIS, October 6. /TASS/. The situation with the contract on two Mistral helicopter carriers can have a negative impact on France’s military export if the Mistral supplies to Russia are cancelled, editor-in-chief of the French military magazine Defense et Securite Internationale Joseph Henrotin said on Monday. Information saying the implementation of the contract can be suspended arouses serious concern by those who follows India’s position in the sphere of weaponry on France because the contract on the...

Dependence on Russian imports diminishing Russia is fast losing its dominance in Indian skies as the Indian Air Force is sticking to its guns on inducting 127 Rafale fighter jets from France and turning to the domestic military industry to supplement its requirements. Defence sources told The Hindu that despite an aggressive counter campaign by the British and Americans, the Indian side is firm about wrapping up the Rafale deal. The Rafale has made the grade because it is a safer twin-engine aircraft, which the IAF wants to fly for the next 40 years. Besides it has the teeth to...

Saab believes co-developing Tejas Mark II would end need for Rafale More than two years after India's ministry of defence (MoD) chose to buy 126 Dassault Rafale fighters for the Indian Air Force (IAF), the world's biggest fighter contract swings in the wind. With no deal in sight after 28 months of haggling with Dassault, two of the losing vendors -Eurofighter and Saab - believe they could yet come out tops. Eurofighter GmbH, whose Typhoon fighter narrowly lost out to the Rafale, still retains a senior executive in New Delhi. This is to allow Eurofighter - the official runner-up -...