Cool !!
Does it mean that aircrafts like the Mirage III or the F106 would also be able to do that ?
Or what is special in the Draken (aerodynamic, engine, air duct) ?

I must say I agree fully with Feydakin. The Jaguar M was not fit for carrier use and attempts to blame Dassault are just lame, especially for french people that have readily access to material in french on internet. With a 10sec search on google, I could find a site that gives the history of the Jaguar M, including an interview with one of the test pilots stating the objective reasons for the cancellation of the project; and a comparison between the different aircrafts in competitions:
http://frenchnavy.free.fr/projects/jaguar/jaguar_fr.htm
http://frenchnavy.free.fr/projects/jaguar/daniel-pierre_fr.htm
http://frenchnavy.free.fr/projects/jaguar/concurrents.htm

Among the technical reasons for Jaguar M cancellation you can find:
– heavier than the land based version => reduced performances
– heavier => greatly underpowered
– underpowered => higher use of PC => low range
– primitive navigation and weapon system
– necessity to modify the carrier (longer catapults, water-cooling the anti-blow screen, reinforcement of the flight deck)
– plane suffered extensive structural damages due to the accelaration during catapult launch
– corrosion problems with the NIDA material employed in the plane structure
– aging problems were foreseen

To alleviate these problems the Jaguar M would have necessitated extensive modifications: a new wing + new reactors + new weapon system (essentially a new plane), resulting in an expensive and risky test program ; in addition to the modulated PC that was developped and subsequently fitted to land based Jaguars. All this had to fit within the program cost for just 100 planes. And you still had to buy ~20 Jaguar E for training, that could not be embarked on carrier.

With the same money you could buy ~80 SEM or ~30-40 A7 Corsair II. If the Corsair had been selected, with attrition reserve and training aircrafts, that would have left maybe 20 airframes for equipping the carrier.

The choice was probably not difficult.

the program has been postponed again

http://www.zaman.com/?bl=hotnews&alt=&trh=20061213&hn=39156

is the reason about the engine being of french origin official ?

In that case I think that exactly justifies why Turkey should not be in the EU.

Although Dassault stated in the past that the manufacturing rythm could jump from 1-1.5 Rafale a month to 10-13 Rafales a month at short notice.

Finally I found the sentence from C. Edelstenne about Rafale production rate. He was speaking of increasing the production rate from 3 planes/year to 22 or more. My numbers had more to do with wishful thinking :rolleyes:
It is dated from 2002 though.
http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/12/cr-cdef/02-03/c0203017.asp

I think they now produce 1.5 plane/month (16-18/year). Could probably double that rate.
http://www.boursier.com/vals/FR/dassault-aviation-quel-avenir-pour-le-rafale-news-203129.htm

Originally Posted by KKM57P
PESA can’t use pulsecopression!
The RBE2 (PESA) is a passiv device and passiv is always a Frequency Scanning Array!

Wrong, it can be based on phase shift not frequency scanning.

Anyway, the pulse compression is probably created at the transmitter level, well ahead of the phase shifter lens …

I don’t think you can say the Rafale is optimised for all around stealth. The Rafale and EF2000 RCS reduction features are all concentrated in the front sector.
Since they were limited in order to not degrade the aerodynamic performances of the planes, they would probably give little or no advantage if not coupled with sound tactical measures such as terrain following and stand off (deported) jamming. They might be efficient at extreme radar range helping the aircrafts when sneaking between missile positions but probably not at realistic engagement ranges (NEZ). Could they influence the outcome of an engagement by active missiles that have such small radar seekkers though?

IMO the Tornado is just a bad aircraft.
In the air to air arena, according to M2000 pilots that have fight against Tornado in exercices, all you need to do is to stay at something like 50,000ft and the Tornado F3 will not be able to engage you because it will have to stay 10,000ft lower and can not impart enough energy to its missiles to reach you. If it comes close, it is a sitting duck due to its low T/W ratio. Its only advantage is when diving from high altitude in full AB with aft swept wings, it is real fast and cannot be followed (but never as fast as an IR missile).

The Tornado IDS low performance at altitudes limits its deployabiliy in congestioned airspaces, reduces its operational range, and keep it in the SAM threat enveloppe.

Definitely not great.

what’s funny with Garry is that if occidental cruise missiles are to be used they will be completely ineffective against any target defended by russian AD systems.
On the other hand, any target defended by occidental AD system, included the best defended one: the US CVBG, will not have a chance of surviving against russian cruise missiles attack.
:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: