eagle1I think you missed the point — my point was that Dassault demonstrated in India how they are good at “selling a car without tyres” in the sence that they are presenting a price during the competition that was very low and then later on when they were selected gradually started to releveale the “real price” of selecting the Rafale. This is not a comparison of the cost structures in different competitions but pointing to a strategy that was used in India by the French. I see no reason why Dassault would not try to use the same strategy in other competitions.
How well they “succeed” with such a strategy will depend on how well the customer is able to structure their competition, asking the right questions, etc. etc. I suspect the Swiss may do a more thorough process when looking at the details of the costings (after all they are Swiss!) and thus they should get a better picture of the real cost of each option than what they had in India or Brazil for that matter.
As for F-35 and Recce: Spudmanwp is one of our local experts on F-35, if you disagree with him it would be nice to see some links to back up your statements…
Loke, this is disapointing. There is nothing serious to support your claim, this is pure prejudice. Sure you could probably find a polemic like there are dozens in the press supporting any kind of theory (especially in india) but is it seriously proven ? It seems to me that you pick the piece of information that suits your view but without “distance” or critical sense. If Dassault strategy was deliberatly fraudulent it would not have gain the confidence of the Indian Gov for the Gov to Gov deal that came afterward…They could have chosen the Typhoon instead. And this is also downplaying the fact that you had professionals assessing the financial offers…with some basic due dilligence that strategy would have been easy to discover if true. It was their full time job, it is not like Dassault was selling rafales to a random dude. It is also plain Naive to think that there would be Dassault the bad guy on one side and the other competitor would be “pure”. This is so Naive and infantile.
As for reconnaissance Reco NG is in a completely different category than inbedded F35 sensor. Both in functionnalities and raw performance. Just the sheer size of the Reco NG optics would give you a clue compared to the F35. It can numerize from low or high altitude (tactic or strategic) a city like Paris with submetric precision in a few minutes. Every thing is geo-referenced, tens of thousands of high def pictures are automatically combined taken from different angles following rafale’s path. You get Google earth view of huge areas from long distances and transmited via datalink to the command center. For that you need a proper heavy duty pod (1ton for Reco NG and 5m long), with (very) powerfull optics plus all the software.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_RP5H3mmLY
https://www.thalesgroup.com/sites/default/files/fiches_produits_aeros-gb-2015_0.pdf
eagle1SH has been produced in larger numbers; however perhaps more importantly many of the components are shared with other products; also, on a technology level technologies are shared with other product lines; in addition there is more competition in the US defence industry than in the French, leading to greater efficiencies.
As for the Brazilian eval: we learned from the Indian MMRCA competition that the numbers presented by the French were very, very optimistic, this is one of the reasons why the MMRCA was cancelled I believe (The Indians realized it would be much more expensive than what they anticipated on the basis of the MMRCA competition). I would be surprised if something similar was also not the case in Brazil. For various reasons I believe that Boeings numbers were closer to reality both in the Brazilian and Indian MMRCA.
It is a good point though that there can be synergies between France and Switzerland, so perhaps the difference will be less than what one would expect..
The story you linked to yourself was claiming that SH is in the race…
As for performance, the F-35 will score at least as high or higher than Rafale. For Recce pod: AFAIK F-35 will not need one, the integrated sensors will be more than adequate. Hardware and software upgrades will be needed of course however since the F-35 will be the main fighter a/c of the USAF, USN, and US Marines (and the UK, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, etc.) you bet that over the entire life of the F-35 it will be equipped by the best sensors money can buy, and at quite affordable cost.
Only Gripen will be able to compete on costs, however Gripen will be in an entirely different league when it comes to performance. If they keep requirements low then Gripen will meet them and will probably win. However if requirements are increased then Gripen will be out; Rafale may still be in but my guess is it will still be more expensive. Let’s wait and see.
SH has been manufactured in greater number but it is also bigger aircraft. As for MMRCA I don’t know to what rumor you are reffering but that was not the cause of cancelation, if irregularities were proven you could be sure that Dassault would not have been picked later…I think you are mixing with the cost formula the Indian used in their context. It was complex and anybody could change a parameter to give a different result. Yes in the end buying 126 jetfighter and building them in home is expensive, but that would still be expensive with Typhoon, SH etc…
But most importantly the structure of the former MMRCA tender is completely different than with Switzerland. India required to replicate the whole rafale Supply chain locally…Apple and oranges comparison you make. The only valid comparison from a neutral point of view came from Brazil and found the rafale & SH total life cycle cost equivalent. SH was more expensive to operate but cheaper to buy in the first place. Given the synergies with rafale AfB in France, I would give the rafale a clear edge in the cost department compared with the SH.
Also remember that SH did not compete in the previous competition for a reason. Boeing withdrew the SH when looking at the RfP.
As for F35 you are wrong with reconnaissance. As good as F35 sensors are, it will not compete with a dedicated heavy duty pod like the RECO-NG…It has functionalities & capabilities the F35 simply does not offer. If you talk about recce light then perhaps yes…As for the air defense role I am skeptical about the F35 about how well it can perform an intercept. Only an evaluation would tell. Since the swiss are not planning to penetrate Russia or China’s airspace, eurocanards seems appropriate and even more capable in some scenarios.
eagle1Madness, French mindef announces on the Television this morning that Qatar may sign for 12 additional rafale on Dec 7th during French President visit (& other goodies). Typhoon, rafale & F15, that would be a potent air force altough the point it to buy political clout and avoid isolation due to the tense relation with UAE and SA.
eagle1In the subsonic arena, the F-35A out-climbs & out-accelerates the F-16, and while it may take a few secs more to clear the sonic hump vis a vis lightly loaded Viper, the F-35 has a far better fuel fraction for the supersonic run. And nobody’s ever criticized the F-16’s interception capability at these ranges. The salient point is that the F-35 flies clean while the Eurocanards will all launch with EFTs.
Only a test evaluation would give a definitive answer. Only the rafale and the Typhoon succeeded scoring above the minimum threshold back in the days. But then LM would need to provide a solution to allow aircraft testing. And there are other test scenarios as well that would not automatically favor the F35.
eagle1A poll on a news site is hardly going to influence the decision…?
SH and F-35 did not participate in the previous round competition, so how do we know where they will end up?
The main issue with Rafale and Typhoon (at least from my understanding) was the high cost. I doubt they have managed to reduce the costs significantly since the previous competition. I may be wrong.
According to the Danish competition the Typhoon was more expensive than the F-35. The SH was closer to F-35 in cost, however in the Danish competition they had specified only 2-seat versions of the SH which are more expensive to operate than the single-seat SH.
So unless the SH fail to meet the technical requirements it should be ranked above the Rafale and Typhoon due to lower costs.
F-35 will be ranked first on technical specifications, and it will be cheaper than either Rafale or Typhoon. The question remains; will be “sufficiently cheap”? Dassault tried to argue that a smaller nunber of Rafale could do the same work as the specified number of Gripen. LM can use the same argument, however with a smaller delta in costs it will be more likely they will succeed. Politics may stop F-35 of course (if it is perceived as “too agressive”). The SH could be a compromise between cost and technical requirements if politics prevents F-35 from winning.
Gripen will most likely be cheaper than F-35 and SH, however will the delta be sufficiently large? I doubt it — perhaps if India orders Gripen they will be able to reduce the costs, but without a sale to India I am not sure the delta will be large enough.
Of course I may be wrong; perhaps the SH will not meet the technical requirements, they may well be at a higher level than for the previous competition. If that’s the case then also Gripen will be out and it will be between the F-35 and Rafale, however I doubt they will put the bar so high as to exclude the SH (although this may happen to Gripen which was very close to fail on meeting technical requirements during the previous round).
Loke,
Why do you think SH would be less expensive than rafale ? If I recall well, during the Brazilian evaluation Acquisition costs for SH was indeed a bit lower albeit not by a huge margin but operating costs were higher. Total Life Cycle cost was pretty similar. Not too mention also that in the rafale offer France would certainly offer to share its rafale support facilities to the swiss due to the proximity of the two countries & main rafale AfB just a few minutes of flight from swiss border – 15 minutes at cruising speed ? (like in the previous competition + training airsapce etc…). there are many potential synergies to leverage in order to optimize costs. Secondly, I thought that the SH was not included in the previous assessment as it was deemed “too big”. I am pretty sure to have read it some years ago.
I don’t think the F35 wouls score automatically better as Switzerland is not planning to invade China etc…In a defensive role the FR35 is not an ideal platform to scramble & intercept a foe. It depends of the technical evaluation & criteria. If the F35 does not have the kinetics to perform an itercept in a test scenario properly, it will not succeed despite its stealth & sensors. Same for reconnaissance where it does not have a dedicated pod like RECO-NG. If the frame of the previous competition remains I would not say it is the favourite.
eagle1F35 is probably irrelevant for Swiss AF.
F35 is exellent if you intend to work & integrate in an international NATO lead coalition, one can argue that it will be still good stand alone but it has its limitations for the swiss.
For the sky policing role, which would be the most realistic scenario of use for the swiss air force, the F35 is a compromised airframe compared to other sleeker designs. I doubt that Swiss AF is planning to invade China etc…Which makes F35 capability to penetrate first with stealth & connectivity with NATO assets less relevant.
Gripen, rafale & typhoon will be the favourites in my opinion with gripen and rafales as front runner. SH might be a candidate but is a bit of a compromise for the sky policing role as well, the less draggy F16 would make more sense even though it could be regarded as an older airframe.
eagle1About rafale RCS you can find a good rafale documentary which is available on YouTube :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7RYZovAj54
Bruno Revelin Falcoz, the father of the rafale, states directly that Rafale frontal RCS is equivalent to a smal bird which puts it in the VLO category. That would be for a “clean” rafale of course.
eagle1Overlap is not big at all and even for rich Quatar this would not be the main driver for going for three different types. Paying for an upgrade would have been way cheaper anyway. This is more a speculation from a journalist rather than an actual quoted/sourced news. The weakness of the article is that it completely miss the geopolitical aspect of the deal and doesn’t have a word of the current situation of Quatar vs SA and UAE. Justifying the decision to go for three different types on merely technical grounds is misleading and inacurate. Quatar foreign Policy has always been about buying influence through military equipment but not only…Sport for instance or media through Al-jazeera. The journalist, probably some kind of aircrafts romantic seems to be overfocused on aircraft comparisons when this is probably not even a concern for Quatar. Keeping every western country happy (which play a role as diplomatic intermediates) in the current diplomatic crisis in the Arabic penninsula is much more valuable that this anecdotical overlaping of capabilities that only aviations nerd would care about.
eagle1The point of slightly overlaping capabilities is weak…And this is certainly not the primary reason to go for a split purchase. Quatar is willing to buy influence, especially given the diplomatic situation with SA and the UAE. When you are buying from US, France, Europe top tier Equipment you can expect a diplomatic leverage as those nations are involved to try to smooth out the crisis between all parties. Geopolitic is central here…Aircraft capabilities are anecdotic in this case.
eagle1La France a vendu 63 vieux Mirage F1 à la société de services américaine Airborne Tactical Advantage Company (ATAC). Le contrat est estimé à 21 millions d’euros.
eagle1There is a trade-off for the internal bays & fuel fraction and that manifests as a larger transonic bump (relative to a lightly loaded F-16) and not in the form of ‘subtle’ nonsense about unreasonable AoAs and whatnot.
Trade off cannot be only in a larger transonic bump, that’s plain stupid. Of course it has an impact on its maneuvrability. The F35 has good AoA control but it better has to as it will reach those AoA much faster in an hypothetical WVR dogfight loosing energy at a faster pace than jets without internal bays and with a smaller fuel fraction.
Everyone plays its strenghts. The crowd of 4th gen jets will have an advantage in energy management while the F35 will try to compensate with its slow speed nose authority. Every design choice is a matter of compromise.
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eagle1Wrong, it reached high AoA because the pilot wanted to do a post stall display. Those nose pointing are not possible at normal AoA, high speed regardless of what aircraft you talking about. Secondly, the nose pointing rate are much faster than normal turn rate, the trade off is that aircraft must dump speed.
Again it is more subtle than that. In some case yes, the intention was delibarate to reach AoA to showcase F35 abilities in that particular domain but in other instances you could easily see this was rather a constraint.
You can’t have it all, there is always a compromise somewhere for any jets. Having internal bays and high fuel fraction must have an impact somewhere. but again engine and FCS did a good job to limit impact even if still visible.
eagle1There’s no such thing as a high energy high AoA display. If you want to go high AoA/post-stall, you need to shed speed, there’s no way around that. And if you shed speed you lose energy. So saying that it ‘loses energy too quickly’ is a contradiction in terms. It is supposed to dump speed – that’s where the nose-pointing ability comes from.
And just for the record, the F-35 recovers speed as well as any other fighter out there. Whether you liked it or disliked it is only a commentary on the routine planned, the aircraft itself did exactly what it was expected to (the plan for the manouvre display was released well before the airshow).
It is more subtle than that and again I am just sharing my perception of things while being aware of the other discussions here. All things being equal (in terms of flight path and speed) The F35 reaches AoA when most other fighter jets without internal bays (and with a smaller fuel fraction) would fly normaly at reasonnable AoA and therefore retaining energy. While acknowledging its good nose authority control at low speed, its rather good TW ratio I noted that it was constrained to go in AoA to match other 4th jet maneuvrability. It could prove effective if the manoeuvre is succesfull but if not the F35 is falling in the sky and need quite some time to build up energy again.
All in all I think F35 engine and FCS are working hard (and rather well) to compensate a compromised aerodynamic (internal bay and fuel fraction). However you can still noticeably see the limits of this formula as you can’t change the law of physics.
eagle1I’ve seen first hand the F35 display today at the Paris air show. My opinion, I’ll try to be honest.
On the positive note the engine is impressive in dealing with a somewhat “fat” jet due to the internal bays and high fuel fraction, the take off was nice and it could accelerate fairly quickly although it looses energy quickly too as it rapidly reach high AoA in many of its agressive maneuvre.s Then it has indeed good nose pointing ability at slow speed. All in all, given the compromise of being a stealth jet it did fairly well, above my expectetion which were quite low in the first place.
Where I could spot some limits as mentioned is that while it has a powerfull engine, good slow speed abilities and a good FCS it looses quite a lot of energy to maneuvre agressively with those high AoA. So after one agressive maneuvre it had to build up speed which resulted in some “inertia” or “dead time” during the display waiting for the next agressive maneuvre. It felt heavy and vulnerable during those moments. In comparison the rafale display felt more dynamic and energic in this regard as there was always someting happening with cleaner trajectories and maneuvres overall.
I was also pleased by F35 TW/ratio but found the roll rate a bit bellow average.
That’s my perspective, I enjoyed watching the F35 display today, very interesting.
eagle173 new Rafale F4 ?? Does that mean the procuring number of domestic Rafale will be increased (from 225 to 253 or so) ?? Or some of the new Rafale F4 will come from the upgrading Rafale F3R ??
http://www.ttu.fr/laeronavale-a-besoin-de-plus-de-rafale/
Not enough rafale M says the Navy, they want more…Perhaps that should lead to more new build airframes.
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