Conscript armies are actually the best type of defensive army. Put very simply you want your entire population to know that a Grad and a 122mm ammo store are not the same thing even if a Grad rocket does have a calibre of 122mm. For foreign wars of conquest, or maintaining a global empire then a professional army is much more useful which is why the west prefers such an arrangement. Those countries that had real defensive policies like Finland and Sweden continue with conscription…

We all witnessed how well a russian conscript army faired when waging war against Chechenia. Didn’t they come back home with their tail between their legs? Didn’t they have to resort to large scale ethnic cleansing to win?

Ho wait ! Chechenia was not a small nation, Chechenia war was not an imperialistic war and Russia is not a global empire 😀 :rolleyes:

I agree with this view completely. F-16, F-18 and Rafale etc. have 7000-9000 max. payload capacity of which only 2000-3000 kgs is utilized in normal fighter configurations. The facility of such high loads is probably to deliver nuclear warheads, or very heavy cruise missiles only.

As a fighter in a normal profile, an F-16 or Rafale may NOT provide any advantage, tactical or otherwise over the Tejas.

Cough cough,
sorry but if 2 engines, IRST, LWS, MAWS, larger and more capable radar, datalink, more fuel, 6-8 missiles, supercruise :D, up to 2-3x2000l drop tanks and being on specs do not provide any advantage, then buy Mig21s

And nuclear bombs or heavy cruise missile are not he only load that justify a 9000kg max payload. You reach it pretty easily with 3 2000l droptanks, 6x250kg bombs, 6 AA missiles, max internal fuel which would be a normal far CAS configuration.

I think the relationship betewwn range and RCS is a power of 4 so to decrease the range by ten you have to decrease the RCS by 10,000.

I find very funny that the Sukhoi fanboys are ready to accept that the Su 35 has a signifcantly reduced RCS, such as 1m2 wahouh :-/, while denying this to the Eurocanards which were designed with features such as S shaped antenna from the onset.

The fact you must be able to compute your own signature is something that make me think that active cancellation is not the wonder, all around stealth technique some people would like to see but a bit more limited in its scope.
I long ago hypothesised that active cancellation would be used to eliminate radar returns from a few hot spots on the airframe, not to cvancel the whole aircraft signature. Aiframe shaping would not need to be as radical as on F117, F22 or F35 if you could concentrate the radar return on a few hot spots and reduce these returns with an active cancellation technique. The air intakes spring immediately to mind since S shaped intakes would not totally eliminate radar returns from the fan blades but reduce it, and could be designed to concentrate the signal in a specific direction. It would also be easy to dispose antenna in the air intake to monitor this return and measure its parameters (frequency, pulse shape, phase, repetition, intensity …). Active cancellation could then be used to eliminate this return using combination of DRFM and beam forming AESA antenna. One can note that Rafale has S shaped intakes and Spectra has 2 AESA ECM antenna just upfront of the air intakes.

That was only speculation. It has never been officially announced by any representative of Dassault, Thales or the french government. A thales representative started the whole affair by suggesting there were other techniques than fuselage shaping and RAM to design a atealthy aircraft. Then it was probably blown out of proportion in the specialized press. However, it is known that the french directorate for armement (DGA) worked on active cancellation and plasma stealth (like every other such agency). Is any of these techniques mature enough to be used on Rafale?

Thanks for the pictures Arthuro.

Brimstones on Rafale ! 😮

Puma are not produced anymore.

Do you know if the F1 had an operational datalink with any operator of the aircraft?