What is this obsession with the rafale ? Why Y-20 starts another rafale thread again ?

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You’re the delirious one, claiming an ASRAAM has about half the range of an AIM-9X despite having 70% more fuel.

The link I posted is from the official MBDA ASRAAM page.

Also, what exactly do you think a >5km OTS shot at low altitude equates to at high altitude? Seems to me that’s a pretty demanding shot kinematically.

That’s just France refusing to admit that their ‘medium range’ AAM is really an SRAAM by modern standards.

This is the archived version of the original MBDA page.

https://web.archive.org/web/20131004061746/http://www.mbda-systems.com/mediagallery/files/asraam_background-1367919209.pdf

http://www.mbda-systems.com/mediagallery/files/asraam_background-1367919209.pdf

How come CAAM has >25% greater range than MICA VL?

You are wrong again. ASRAAM has more fuel than the AIM9X to reach mach 4 and being the fisrt to “hit”. Range advantage exists against other WVR missiles but it is marginal. ASRAAM is not a BVR missile otherwise it would have a datalink and would be marketed as such by MBDA who incindentaly markets it…as…a WVR missile ! (see link)

http://www.mbda-systems.com/air-dominance/asraam/

ASRAAM propulsor is about speed and energy…not range. It is burning its fuel too quickly to be an effective BVR missile…AND it lacks a datalink >> not an effective BVR weapon by any mean.

MBDA is a multinational consortium an markets the MICA as a BVR missile for your info. This not France. (see link)

http://www.mbda-systems.com/air-dominance/mica/

Nope. ASRAAM has marginally larger internal volume and a lighter warhead to carry, also a cleaner profile.

Take a look at the slightly longer ASRAAM-based CAAM vs MICA VL:

http://www.mbda-systems.com/camm-solution/camm/

http://www.mbda-systems.com/ground-based-air-defence/vl-mica/

you are not afraid to look ridiculous…No limit in stupidity !

You are quoting the Vertically Launch Mica range (MICA VL)

The Mica is an actual medium range BVR missile with a datalink and it has about 2,5 – 3 time the range of the ASRAAM. That’s why a fighter jet with a MICA-IR can remain out of reach of the ASRAAM/HMD combo. With todays sensor fusion and datalinks it will be hard to sneak undetected to get a shot with an ASRAAM on a fighter jet with a mica IR…

MBDA describes the ASRAAM as WVR:
http://www.mbda-systems.com/air-dominance/asraam/
MBDA describes the MICA as BVR:
http://www.mbda-systems.com/air-dominance/mica/

IR MICA with dual waveband imaging infrared seeker surpassing latest generation AAM missiles.
MICA outperforms other BVR missiles with its unique stealthy interception capability provided by its silent seeker.

This is the only page I scanned. And I think the statement is quite clear. This is unsurprising to all but yourself. Trying to combat HMD WVR without HMD is nigh on futile even against a non-parity fighter. Going against a high performance fighter with HMD WVR, without HMD is suicide.

In an age where everyone is progressively getting its high off bore sight IR missile and HMD — a missile like the MICA IR is the way to go : no need to enter in a deadly dogfight at short range which is like a russian rullet… The MICA IR neglects the advantage of HMD in a dogfight.

With the MICA IR you can fire well before the deadly merge at intermediate range…..Indeed there is a huge gap between the METEOR/AMRAM which range are between 80 to 120 Km and a short range WVR missiles which range are around 15-25Km.

The MICA fits nicely between the long range missiles like METEOR and AMRAM and the short range missiles.

If your EM missile doesn’t work and you need to go IR (EW etc..) you don’t have to wait the merge to shoot with the MICA IR. You can remain at a reasonable distance to avoid the HMD/IR missile combo.

They also mentioned the lack of HMCS as a weak point….. both the Swiss and French pilots at A2A exercises. Swings and roundabouts. It’s all about avionics and I don’t see the Typhoon being behind the Rafale in 5 years time, quite the opposite.

That remains to be seen, especially with rafale F3R standard coming in 2018, the Indian upgrades (scope to be confirmed) and the rafale F4 standard with deliveries expected in 2024 for French Air Force. You could also add a potential UAE order with their own upgrades which DASSAULT CEO expects in 2017 after French presidential election. Every program is evolving…

It’s a slot antenna, the antenna gains (or beamwidths, they’re two faces of the same coin) are within a couple of dB…Physcis…basic physics…

Beamwidth = angular resolution on your first contact.

Now if you want to argue that integrating multiple returns over time will get you better accuracy, sure. But that’s true of a RWR too so we’re back to square one.

I never implied such thing, stop applying your misunderstanding about how radar and RWR work and try to learn something instead.

A radar array sums the signals from the different elements. It doesn’t try to measure any phase difference because by definition all these signals are supposed to be in phase and what is not is rejected (that’s how the radar antenna gain is achieved). Direction of signal is deducted from the direction the beam was pointing to, accuracy of an individual measurement is limited by the beamwidth.

A RWR only process signal from 4 or 5 measurement points (so no meaningful antenna gain) but does so with a radio chain that is extremely carefully calibrated with matching lines, very low-noise amplifier and a timing reference that is well in excess of what is required for a radar. From a signal point of view, it is a much more complex piece of engineering.

Now you could try to measure phase difference between the signals coming from different elements of the radar array but you introduce a shifter on each of your measurement chains and by experience I can tell you that the error they introduce is higher than the difference you’re trying to measure… Not to mention that you get an awful lot of radio noise (1000+ wires all carrying the same signal, hope you don’t mind cross-interferences), thermal dilatation of the antenna is going to warp the backplate and change your carefully calibrated distance between elements and finally, putting ultra-low-noise amplifiers in the back-end of a radar dissipating several kW with the associated temperature rise and noise is a terrible idea.

Or to make the story shorter: AESA radar and RWR don’t work on the same principles and have vastly different requirements in terms of circuit performance.

Yes, that’s why there’s a shifter within each element (in PESA, the array is made of shifters and nothing else, in an AESA the array also includes transistors for emission and reception) that steers the beam.

A coherent signal is sent to each element, shifted at element level before sending, the echo is received and then shifted back at element level and the now-coherent received signals are summed. My comment about the “same phase shift” is about emission and reception (and then only in absolute value, i.e. the signal is shifted in the opposite way at reception), not between elements.

This double shifting is also why trying to measure phase differences between different elements is non-sensical, the shifters don’t have perfect accuracy (nor do they need to to achieve good enough performance) and the phase differences we’re talking about are well below the variations introduced by the individual shifters.

Those scores were achieved with pre-scripted scenarios to benchmark each aircafts in similar conditions ex for AtA (offesive and defensive). Sensor Fusion comes really into play against elusive threats or when you want to remain passive to sneak in undetected which was not necessarly part of the scenario who remained pretty basics QRA interception vs F18 and then a defensive scenario against F18s.

However if you read the full Swiss evaluation rafale sensor fusion is explicitely underlined as being one of the rafale main strenght. French pilots one several occasion also stress the sensor fusion as being a decisive

Dassault:

The powerful data fusion algorithms combine and compare the data gathered by all Rafale sensors, and accurately position and identify targets. It’s much more than simple correlation as it gives the pilot an accurate and unambiguous tactical picture. One of the key advantages of the system is its ability to identify and classified the type of target/threat, by using either the Spectra suite or the TV sensor of the FSO. When all tracks are positively identified, the system automatically creates a synthetic image with all enemy and friendly tracks shown in a clear and explicit way. Off-board sensor can also contribute data to the integrated tactical air picture, via the datalink. Wingmen or AEW aircraft can feed their data to the leader’s system, thus helping target-sorting and co-operation within the formation. Multichannel target acquisition/ tracking associated with smart sensor fusion key-enabler which will radically change the face of air warfare. This combination of multisensor technology and smart data fusion significantly increases mission success rates through enhanced crew awareness and improved aircraft survivability. With its multisensor technology, its advanced data fusion management system, and its remarkable Man-Machine Interface (MMI), the Rafale clearly stands in a category of its own and no other fighter in the world has such a wide array of systems at its disposal.

Thales:

All the Rafale’s sensors are closely integrated and all data is automatically fused to massively reduce pilot workload and significantly increase tactical effectiveness. “Our goal was to avoid saturating the pilot, explains Jean-Noël Stock, Thales Rafale Programme Director. This smart data fusion significantly increases mission success rates through enhanced crew awareness and improved aircraft survivability. This is a crucial advantage over our competitors.”

Captain Romain:

Cne Romain:

One must first know that France has a very high credibility worldwide in terms of jamming. So one should be particularly ill informed to think there could be a beginning of a gap in Spectra.
Spectra is a accomplished self-protection system that we are developping every day with programming, testing and with software and hardware updates: month after month ,Spectra is evolving.
In my opinion, i think we are currently using only 2/3 of Spectra capacities: We still have much work to do to optimize our jamming libraries and methods of use. Finally, just to give you an idea of what stealth is or isn’t : to be 100% stealth, one should neither be seen nor to let others know they are seen … For example, a stealth aircraft that would use its radar to fire a missile, would be suddenly no longer stealth
One of the great strength of the Rafale is here: we do not need to activate our radar to fire our missiles far beyond visual range ..

Corentin

Hello Captain,
Thank you for these clarifications! I am perhaps too curious but can you explain how the Rafale is capable of firing beyond visual range “passively”, and how far?
Do other airplanes of the same generation (EF, Gripen, F-18) use, to your knowledge, equivalent techniques ?

Cne Romain:

The Rafale merges the informations coming from its sensors to give a very reliable and clear picture to the pilot. It’s already a considerable advantage over previous-generation aircraft, including EF and Gripen. When the pilot decides to fire a air to air missile, the missile leaves the aircraft taking automatically into account all available informations.
When the radar is not used, the missile can use the OSF (a TV camera coupled with a laser rangefinder), the informations provided by another aircraft via the MIDS, a heat source detected by the OSF or a MICA IR, or finally a localization by SPECTRA. Faced with these sensors, stealth is useless and we know, thanks to our tests ,that our missiles are very effective in such context.

ATLC:

The Typhoon were inferiors.

Concurrently, November 16, the Rafale gave, according to the french pilot, a memorable beating to the RAF Typhoon – the most recent version – which were also deployed in the UAE for the ATLC. To put it bluntly, Lieutenant-Colonel Grandclaudon said the two air battles – battles with IR-guided missile and cannon – which opposed Rafale and Typhoon gave a score of 7 wins for the first and 0 for the second, the only Rafale considered as having been destroyed flew below the allowed flight floor ! Obviously this statement has immediately raised an outcry among British pilots, relayed by the media and the Anglo-Saxon specialized blogosphere, including claims that the Typhoon did not fly as such during the fighting, but simulated “red” attackers, MiG-29 and Su-27 in that case. So, the 1/7 Provence squadron leader made a point to recall that 2 of his Rafale were also”red chest” (MiG-29 index “Charlie”) when they shot down 4 “blue” Typhoon – flying as Typhoon – while being reduced to use virtual russians AA-10C missiles to be guided by the Rafale until the impact on their target, which forbade to shoot multiple targets at once . For Fabrice Grandclaudon, the limitations of the “red” plastron role don’t prevent a weapons system to show its real capabilities, because the pilots are taking advantage of the real human-machine interfaces and sensors on board, one of the Rafale has benefited from a refresh of its tactical situation by his teammate via Link-16. In other words, even if some of them simluated Su-27, the British pilots virtually shoot down were using the sensors and the avionics of their Typhoon and not those of a Su-27! And the french pilot to recognize, with great sportsmanship, that the Typhoon pilots who had been opposed to the Rafale the week preceding the ATLC were young and relatively inexperienced, as the French already benefits from lessons learned from 3 operational detachments in Afghanistan (one year of presence in all) and 4 of its pilots had participated in Red Flag 2008.

Some advantages that make the difference.

However, he heavily emphasized the performance of the french system in the field of arms data fusion, from his point of view the main reason of the superiority obtained. Instead of each sensor to display its studs (aircraft detected) on a specific screen, forcing the Typhoon pilot to operate an intellectual gymnastics , annoying in combat stress, to check if the plot of its corresponding screen of electronic warfare was or was not the one visible on the radar screen or IRST, the Rafale’s systems present to the pilot a single plot on a screen, the system automatically compares the plots provided by the various sensors on board and decides if it is or not the same plane. The french pilots have also appreciated the agility of the antenna of the electronic RBE2 radar – The Typhoon has for now only a mechanical antenna – allowing to refresh the situation in the whole volume monitored. But they insist, for close combat, on the perfect controllability of their Rafale, thanks to the excellence of FBW, to the extreme limits of the flight envelope.. To point the nose toward the target and to design it to the weapons system in the absence of a viewfinder-HMD while operating at very low speed. What are not necessarily capable of the main opponents of the Rafale …
Well obviously, one should not rejoice in excess. The extremely positive results of these meetings have been obtained in special circumstances. The pilots had been set specific roles by the commander of the COMAO device and were therefore not free to exploit in depth all the potentials of their weapons system. The results have been different perhaps in other circumstances (nevertheless, some time ago, another meeting between Typhoon and Rafale, in Corsica, was also turned into “massacre” at the expense of the first 8 losses to 0 ). But, simply put, the EC 1 / 7 pilots are particularly satisfied with their stay in UAE. Their demonstration has , aptly, made a strong buzz [noise] among the aviators of the region and troubled the Anglo-Saxons until now convinced of the utter superiority of their planes. A disturbance also compounded by the loss – virtual of course – of an F-22 gun shot by an UAE Mirage 2000-9 flown, this time, by a French experimented pilot. Really, when everything goes wrong … P

Swiss evaluation:

“The strong points of the Rafale were the quality of its sensors, such as the PESA (passive electronically scanned array) radar; the frontal optronics; and the EW (electronic warfare) suite, Spectra,” the report on the 2008 fly-off noted. “The good data fusion of all its sensors allowed to provide the pilot a very good situational awareness,” it continued. “The weak point of the Rafale was the lack of a helmet-mounted sight system,” the evaluators remarked.

The report praised the aerodynamic performance of the Eurofighter, notably its ability to supercruise at Mach 1.4. But the sensor data fusion and the EW suite were “weak points,” while range and systems reliability were noted to be “limiting factors.” Moreover, the report said, “the capabilities of the Eurofighter to fulfill recce and strike missions were rated as unsatisfactory.”

The report acknowledged that because of the Gripen’s design–it is the smallest of the contenders and the only one powered by a single engine–its “endurance, aircraft performances and aircraft weapon load were among the main limiting factors.” The evaluators said there was no sensor data fusion between the radar and EW suite, although the latter “was among the strong points of the Gripen.”

I would hardly call the gain of sensor fusion”marginal” as you would like to explain… Pilots, industry all tell about sensor fusion being a game changer vs legacy jets. It is now at the core of F35 technological edge…A rather nice thing to have.

Although this is getting more common I think one of the true innovation with the rafale was multi sensor fusion along with a state of the art defensive EW system. I can remember in 2008, 09 etc…how it changes the balance during exercices or international tender even against competitor who could bost bigger radarand better kinematics.

I agree that the F35 is progressively defining a new standard but one can say the rafale has been at the very top of modern fighter jets for a good decade between 2006 and rougly 2016. Now there is the F35 but it is not available to every one and the rafale remains exellent and relevant thanks to regular upgrades. In my books the rafale is still quite an impressive aircraft.