Iran has unveiled its home-made drone, the Karrar which is capable of carrying a military payload of rockets to carry out air-to-ground strikes. It reportedly is a fast long-range UAV.
Iran has also inaugurated two domestically-built drones: The Ra’d (Thunder) and the Nazir (Harbinger) which will carry out long-range surveillance, and assault, and bombing missions (as far as the Ra’d is concerned).
Amazing rumours have spread for a couple of days regarding the MMRCA (Indian Air Force Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft) or the MRCA Tender which is an ongoing competition to supply the Indian Air Force with 126 Multi-Role Combat Aircraft maybe up to 189 fighter jets.
The Indians have considered 6 bidders so far:
Typhoon (European Eurofighter Consortium)
Rafale (French Dassault)
MiG-35 Fulcrum-F (Russian UAC subsidiary RSK-MiG)
Gripen NG/IN or JAS 39 (Swedish Saab)
Super Hornet F/A-18 E/F (US Boeing)
F-16IN Fighting Falcon (US Lockheed Martin)
As you can watch the video below, two fighter aircraft have been quoted as finalists for the last stage: The EUROFIGHTER-Typhoon and the RAFALE.
However, American and Russian media deem that such statement cannot be true. Official results should be announced soon. Well, wait and see…
Photo above: RAFALE La Ferté Alais 2010 – © Xavier Cotton PASSION pour l’AVIATION