Rafael says it has been selected to supply the IAF with 164 Litening G4s.

[Abingdonboy]

the question is only how many LDPs IAF wants at the end, since you don't necessarily need a pod on each fighter.

There will certainly be follow-on orders by the IAF for the Rafale and LCA fleets not to mention from the IN who will want more LDPs for their growing naval fighter fleet.

Exactly, IAF will look on commonality between Mirage 2000 and Rafale, so selecting basically will lead to Rafale too (just like the SPICE 2000 most likely), unless the French dramatically increases the integration costs.

You would think that Litening on the Rafale for the IAF was a given now unless, like you say, Dassualt do such things but that is unlikely as I'm pretty sure the RFP said it was up to the IAF to choose which LDP it wanted to integrate onto the MMRCA winner.

(just like the SPICE 2000 most likely),

I'm seriously still hoping the IAF will integrate the SPICE 250 onto the LCA and Rafale- what say you sir?

 

[sancho]

You would think that Litening on the Rafale for the IAF was a given now unless, like you say, Dassualt do such things but that is unlikely as I'm pretty sure the RFP said it was up to the IAF to choose which LDP it wanted to integrate onto the MMRCA winner.

IAF can select the LDP, but Dassault can ask whatever they want for the integration. The French actually faced the same issue with the high integration costs of Brimstone missiles on Rafale, which made the integration not useful anymore. The reason might have been pressure from the EF consortium, to not make the Rafale even more capable compared to the EF, as it already is. The same then can apply to us and the integration of Litenenig to Rafale too, if they want us to take the PDL-NG instead.

I'm seriously still hoping the IAF will integrate the SPICE 250 onto the LCA and Rafale- what say you sir?

I would love to see that, once because it is probably cheaper than AASM, while being used roughly at twice the range and with the quadpacks, more weapons can be carried. For Rafale this would highly improve it's SEAD capability too, a single Rafale could carry 3 x quadpacks instead of 2 x AASM triple launchers, so twice the number of weapons, with more range, at the same weight. For LCA a quadpack on the centerline would be even far better than the solution with the twin launchers at the wings, they seems to have, because it would free wingstations for BVR missiles, but they might aim on basic LGBs in CAS and not on PGMs though.[/quote]