Other news regarding meteor & rafale from Air et Cosmos : integration work should be over in 2016 but the first meteor deliveries for the french air force will take place in 2018 (200 units ordered). The capability will exist for export customers in 2016 nevertheless.

The reports shows some integration works with the rafale like pylon separation in a ground lab. Recently new meteor config have been tested with rafale M on the CdG. It was mainly ATG with meteors while previously it was only pure AtA config that were tested with the rafale.

I think some did not get the sense of my remark.

I perfectly know that F22 are not invulnerable in BFM and that several other type also scored some kills…Just that at this time like two years ago, the clown named Jon Lake jumped on this story saying it was only lies and that the french pilots were just a bunch of arrogant liars on several forums. He took for granted the F22 pilots comments and the french side was equal to lies.

Now that the typhoon scored some F22 kills he is suddenly less critic about the typhoon side…and by magic this time the F22 pilots are supposed to hide the truth according to his rhetoric.

Note that I am not discussing who is right and who is wrong between the typhoon pilots and the F22 pilots…I just remark that his attitude differ considerably when the typhoon interest are at stake.

For this reason I found funny to recall the mirage 2000-9 story as I remember how virulent he was at that time against this story.

I can imagine that if this story was about the rafale in the recent red flag story he would spend his time quoting the F22 pilots rather than the rafale pilots to show that they are making up the truth…

independently from what actually happened during Red Flag you can be sure that Lake version of the story will favor the typhoon like in every important occasion be it exercises or export competition.

rafale M and “Air” with GBU24 and damocles pod.

More concerning is rafale price compared to Gripen and to a lesser extent the F18SH in the Brazilian competition. But it seems Dilma and her defense miniser are trying to get a discount which implies that the rafale is nevertheless the favored option bared the price issue.

Brazil delays F-X2 fighter decision until end of 2012

FlightGlobal,

The Brazilian government has deferred selecting the winner of its F-X2 fighter competition until 31 December 2012, despite repeated assurances a decision would be announced by mid-year.

Disclosing that it has requested bidding companies Boeing, Dassault and Saab to maintain their offers until the year-end date, the government attributed its latest postponement to unfavourable global economic conditions and low economic growth in Brazil.

Local reports suggest Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff held talks with French counterpart François Hollande at the UN’s recent Rio +20 conference over a new proposal on the Dassault Rafale.

High acquisition and operating costs remain major stumbling blocks to any possible deal for the type, sources say, and the new proposal is expected to be a talking point again when Rousseff and defence minister Celso Amorim visit France later this month.

Brazilian air force leaders have expressed concern over yet another delay in a programme that should originally have seen the selection of a new fighter in 2000. Nominally, next year should see the retirement of 12 ex-French air force Dassault Mirage 2000C/Bs, acquired by Brazil in 2005 as a stopgap measure after delays affected its original F-X contest.

In addition to the Rafale, the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and Saab Gripen remain in contention for the F-X2 award.

Conversely to what the vast majority think I believe that this kind of dogfight exercises be it Typhoon vs F22 or rafale vs F22 is more telling about the F22 rather than the typhoon or rafale.

The fact that a quite significantly bigger aircraft with the inherent aerodynamic constraint of internal bays not to mention the stealth layout constraint can be more or less equal to the Typhoon or a rafale in a dogfight is very impressive.

The issue is that many has been “intoxicated” with all the mystic surrounding the F22. But in a dogfight you can’t bring the 5th gen argument anymore. It is just an aircraft vs another aircraft.

It might have been more impressive than Rafale (HARM is a true SEAD weapon, in a way that AASM Hammer is not) but because Spain did not replace all of its FJs with the Hornet, it’s not ‘Omnirole’ – a term that seems to be an artificial attempt to differentiate Rafale, when it’s marketing bol.locks that merely differentiates how the aircraft is procured (as a replacement for all other FJ types) rather than the capabilities of that aircraft.

The term « Omnirole » was chosen as a differentiator with mech scan radar aircrafts that could perform only one task at a time.

The second reason is that it was designed from the offset to be a multirole jet and to perform all kind of missions from the outset. That’s not completely specific but it was still found to be a valuable feature to communicate.

So that’s not complete marketing ********. You always communicate on your strong points. But that’s not completely relevant either compared to the SH blck2 and soon the F35. So the truth is somewhere in the middle.

The fact that it should replace all aircraft in French inventory is of secondary importance as far as the term omnirole is concerned. It is more a collateral effect.

I am sorry but to me the most disconcerting thing about the Swiss evaluation is how little edge both the modern Rafale and Typhoon got, compared to the old, old Hornet…!!!

What a sad state of affair in Europe…

I beg to differ, the difference is often quite significant. In some cases not as big as some would have expected but overall it is consistent.

Then what should be taken into account is that swiss F18 are still modern and powerfull machines…They are no F5. In fact an F18 is quite big. I think bigger than a rafale or a typhoon which inherently gives it some “relatively” good endurance for AtA scenarios. It has something like twice the installed power of a gripen which is not something to discount to have a rough idea of the scale/category of the machine.

Its electronics are not latest generation but “modern” by most standards and they have pretty good AtA weaponry.

typhoon small edge in engagement is due to slightly longer range AAM and perhaps better kinetics. Anyway the difference is small and the rafale came ahead in detection, acquisition and identification…Even with its infamous smallish PESA radar which quality has been praised by swiss test pilots…what a set back for the typhoon…

The only criteria where the typhoon has a clear edge is in “performance” even pilot workload advantage for the typhoon is small and even very small when you consider it has an HMS and a DVI which speaks volume on rafale cockpit quality.

Overall the swiss gave the rafale an edge in every type of their AtA scenarios and on a more general note it says that the typhoon don’t have any clear edge in AtA which gave Lake a hard time finding excuses.