MMRCA Update

On April 27 2011 Indian Defense ministry shortlisted two fighter jets - Eurofighter Typhoon and Dassault Rafale for the $10.5-billion tender to provide the Indian Air Force with Medium Multi-role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA). Eurofighter and Dassault have been told to extend their commercial bids till 31 December 2011. This decision has come after two years scrupulous field trials by Indian Air force. On 27 May 2009 IAF completed its technical evaluations and flight testing and submitted final report to the Defense Ministry.

Both European fighters are state of art 4+ generation aircrafts and have given “Boeings, Migs n Martins” a serious run for their money. A closer look at these fighters:

Eurofighter Typhoon

The Eurofighter Typhoon is designed and built by a consortium of three companies: EADS, Alenia Aeronautica and BAE Systems, working through a holding company, Eurofighter GmbH.

Eurofighters’ Production is divided into three tranches .Tranches are a production/funding distinction, and do not necessarily imply an incremental increase in capability with each tranche. This aircraft has entered into service with the following Air forces.

Air Force	No. of Aircrafts
German Luftwaffe	143
British Royal Air Force	160
Italian Air Force	96
Spanish Air Force	73
Austrian Air Force	15
Royal Saudi Air Force	72

Dassault Rafale

Dassault Rafale is an indigenous French fourth generation aircraft. The production order envisioned three versions of the Rafale:

Design

The RAFALE features a delta wing with close-coupled canards. This helps to maximize maneuverability, while withstanding 9 g or -3 g and maintaining stability in flight. The canard also reduces landing speed. In-house research in computational fluid dynamics has shown the specific benefits of close coupling between the wings and the canards: it ensures a wide range of centre of gravity positions for all flight conditions as well as benign handling throughout the whole flight envelope.