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siegecrossbow

Field Marshall
Staff member
Super Moderator
Is it difficult to switch serial numbers on the tail? If 101 is shot down, can't they just paint 101 on another aircraft temporarily and show it isn't shot down?

If Rafale were produced and maintained by India then maybe yes. But Dassault is in charge of the maintenance. If you switch up the serial number then it is going to complicate the history on a particular aircraft and probably violate warranty.
 

_killuminati_

Senior Member
Registered Member
If Rafale were produced and maintained by India then maybe yes. But Dassault is in charge of the maintenance. If you switch up the serial number then it is going to complicate the history on a particular aircraft and probably violate warranty.
That'd be switching in the records. I'm talking just the paint job, temporarily. If anything, it benefits the image of Dassault
 

4Tran

Junior Member
Registered Member
So they didn't ordered the Rafale with Metoer, originaly in MRCA contract?
That was wonderful procurment.
They probably bought the entire Rafale munitions package, so Hammer, SCALP, and Meteor. But it's very common for this kind of purchase to put all its money into the sexy planes, and not enough into the consumables. For example Taiwan bought over a hundred F-16s, and the AMRAAM is the most important missile for that platform. So do you know how many AMRAAMs Taiwan has? It's 200!

I can only conjecture, but I suspect that India was in the same boat so their stockpile of Meteor missiles is very shallow. We didn't see any Meteors on the aircraft downed on May 7, but we shouldn't have expected to begin with. The Meteors would have been carried by the Rafales the cover mission, and Pakistan said that they only targetted the Rafales that performed strike missions.
 
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