MMRCA rumors : rafale at the top ?

Do the indian and Brazilian air forces converging to the same conclusions ?
According to Mr Pepe Rezende, yes, definitely. The man is a former Brazilian journalist currently working for the Brazilian Senate's Foreign Affairs and National Defence Committee.
He recently shoke the aviation forums by revealing hard facts detailed in the brasilian air force repport for FX-2 contest. his motivation was apparently to stop some false rumors on this repport.

So what all this has to do with the indian competition. Well, it seem that Mr Rezende had the opportunity to talk with some indian air force officials about the MMRCA trials : The Rafale would have won the technical evaluation by succeding in all the tests asked by the IAF :

Mr Rezende :

"Rafale WON the performance tests. It completed all IAF missions using only half of F/A-18E/F flights. Rafale destroyed a target 50km far with a 2 meters margin of error. At performance point of view, it won all bidders, including in AtoA missions but, in my opinion, your [indian] choice will be a political one favouring Boeing."

Rafale C101 drops an AASM smart bomb

It is very likely that the 50km range strike he reffers to was a test using the AASM-IR smart bomb.

It is also interresting to note that the Rafale would have [once again] outperformed the typhoon during the Air to air trials : The planes sent to India were fitted with the brand new Thales AESA RBE-2AA which seems to work rather well against air targets.






He also wrote on Keypublishing about the Leh high altitude trials :

"According Indian officers, two planes failed: MiG35 and F/A-18E/F. Gripen Demo takes off with the required load (only two tanks, four air-to-air missiles and a cargo of 1900kg bombs). Typhoon and Rafale takes off with full cargo but EADS bidder failed at some attack missions"

Leh is the highest commercial airfield (3000 m) thus some aircraft can have difficulties to power their engine(s) on.