The Indian Air Force, in June, embarked on a trip to France to take part in the Grauda series of Air Exercises with the French Air Force. This time around the Singapore too sent in its Air Force flying the F-16s [Block 52 variants]. The latest issue of the Armee d'aujourd'hui has an article about the same. Can't read French - kala akshar bhains barabar :)
Click the thumbnail to view a larger-sized image of the article
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Of special interest was the participation of the French Rafale, with rumors circulating around the Internet stating that their participation was far less than what was earlier anticipated. Difficult to draw conclusions from this article, but the article says Rafales were introduced to in the exercise to "complicate matters"?. Also that the Indian Air Force flew on the aircrafts [twin-seater variants] and were mighty impressed with its performance.
 | More than 20 hunters can be hired on the same scenario, "says Lieutenant-Colonel Maurer. It even happens that hunters from other French bases just "complicate" the laborers, as the Rafale squadron 1 / 7 Provence of BA113 Saint-Dizier. The exercise area includes the Massif Central, a part of South-West and some sea off Corsica. |
| In the middle, from left to right: A French pilot has the Rafale a "colleague" of India. Drivers and F16 Singapore. The 105th Squadron of the Air Force Singapore is set on the French base at Cazaux. |  |
 | As pilots, they show "a great curiosity about French tactics and procedures," as the captain concedes Amit Vij, the 8th Pursuit Squadron of India. But Garuda gave two of them the opportunity to fly on the Rafale. Although a significantly smaller size than the Sukhoi, the flagship of the French Air Force "was very impressed," said Col. India to follow suit before his crew towards the tarmac sunburned. |
On a side note, with UAE now showing less of an inclination to acquire the Rafales to replace their Mirage-2000 EAD/RAD/DADs & the Brazilian decision hanging in limbo & no International customer to show for the highly capable aircraft till now, the French would now be even more eager that India's MMRCA contract be won by it. Gives Indian negotiators the much needed upper hand in extracting the best deal out of them, if IAF makes its preference for the Rafale known.
I also maintain a tagging blog for noting down news of aircrafts competing the MMRCA acquisition programme
mrcanews.blogspot.com [Current]
www.mmrca.za.net [old - now shifted to Blogger]
Godspeed
Possibly Related posts:
India’s Medium Multi-role Combat Aircraft program : A comprehensive summary
World’s Air Forces and their Flying Machines
Pictures from Yudh Abhyas 2009 Indo-US military exercise
[not quite] Suggested Reading for the weekend – 2009.11.28
Aviation reading [suggested weekend reading]