eagle1@Brad Piff
indeed Rafale A achieved mach 2. Current rafale does Mach 1,8 due to the design of the air intakes that had to accommodate stealth requirements and thus scarifying on top speed.
eagle1enough budget was allocated to buy any of the three contenders.
Of course when you don’t follow the choice of your airforce after a thorough phase of tests you will bring this type of arguments. That does not mean those arguments are not valid but those arguments are not “performance” related as this was the job of the swiss air force unlike sign suggested.
The core reason is certainly political after all the issue the swiss had with France and Germany over its banking system. Choosing the gripen is an act of independence toward its to powerful neighbors. Add to that a “context” of crisis that would make less politically acceptable the purchase of a more costly aircraft and you have very good reasons to go for the gripen which in the end is still a good choice for switzerland considering their low threat environment.
eagle1So if your a middlewage and you looking for a car. You want preformance, you will still not choose Ferrari, due to the fact it costs to much and is too many hours in the shop, and a tuned Nissan GT-R will do and is alot cheaper.
So the evaluation was not in vain but preformance isnt everything. All things are weighted and Gripen was the best deal.
Don’t be ridiculous…Do you think Swiss air force would recommend the best aircraft (rafale) but knew they can’t afford enough of them to do the job ? Just think a second ! They had well enough money allocated/voted to buy the rafale or typhoon. In terms of performance vs costs rafale was rated n°1 and it could do the job better with fewer aircraft than with the gripen.
The reason for gripen is political when both France and Germany are pressuring switzerland over its bank system and issues related to tax fraud. Buying swedish was more politically acceptable as it is also a somewhat neutral country.
eagle1I believe that many too easily discount F35 performance. Its stealth and game changing sensor suite makes it in a totally different league than Typhoon and SH in that competition…Despite all the PR claim from competitors (especially Typhoon Gmbh) it will be the best bet to counter future threats.
There is certainly a pro US bias in Japan but in these case I view the choice massively based on F35 technological superiority, there is not even the need to look for the US excuse especially from Japanese who are big “technologic” fans.
eagle1Charles Edelstennes refused to take part in the Japanese competition as he did not want to be a rabbit for US competitors.
A new very nice video of rafale solo display team :
eagle1Twin seats is more adapted to complex missions like deep strike or CAS, especially with the wealth of real time informations coming from the different sensors and decoupled AtG and AtA work. Even with the best MMI there is a point where the human brain cannot compute all informations fast enough especially in a strong stress environement.
Single seats work fine but you will need on average more experienced pilot or more training to tackle the most challenging missions for an equal result.
In the case of the US with way more than a thousand F35 you can more easily take advantage of the numbers of aircrafts to perform more complex mission and you can count on its stealth.
For intermediate countries like france each aircraft is a vital asset and you have to squeeze the maximum from each aircraft hence the need of twin seaters. In fact France has quite the same approach of Israel which also have an emphasis on twin seater to perform daring raids deep behind ennemy lines.
eagle1SuE are not duer to retire before 2015 if I am not wrong. Those pictures are very recent : a few days old.
eagle1
eagle1most of the work and challenge will be the software rather than the hardware.
they will need to develop a whole new set of softwares to become operational with an AESA. Nothing impossible but the task should not be underestimated.
Starting from a mechanical radar is harder than starting from an ESA as far as software development is concerned. For instance PESA already support track while scan features or complex mode interlacing. You just have to replace the PESA antenna with an AESA one and you can already operate your new radar quite efficiently. You could do it with a Mech radar as well with a little bit more work but you will not be able to really take advantage of specific (A)ESA capabilities.
eagle1If the F18-rafale mix was inferior to the F18-gripen mix then the rafale would have not been recommended by the swiss air force. It is as simple as that.
Political, industrial or financial criteria pushed for the gripen but that was not due to operational considerations. Swiss air force know what they are doing and it would be naïve to think that they simply recommended the best performing jet but knew they can’t afford enough to do the mission. Just think a second…
eagle1Loke,
Nothing more to add to your comment and I think that we are sharing almost if not the same analysis for the swiss case with one little nuance : swiss report said it could do with less rafale. But ok I think that the gripen choice makes a lot of sense for switzerland so no problem.
eagle1One precision for Jackonicko :
4,7% inflation figure is for the rafale F3 that was supposed to be definitive one when the program was launched, so yes the rafale program is a success in that regard. It is not only Edelsenne that are quoting this figure but all independent observer like in the french press (at least the specialized press).
The F3+ standard development has mechanically inflated the unit cost for the french tax payer but when you think about it there is nothing shocking to it : an aircraft must be upgraded time to time to remain competitive. The latest figures you saw are just an update taking into account the F3+ standard development costs and acquisition costs.
So neither of you is wrong actually. Edelstenne just quoted the F3 standard costs while you are quoting the F3+ standard costs. The latest standard was not included (because not known) in original financial objectives.
eagle1On a pure operational efficiency point of view the rafale was the clear choice of the swiss air force given the missions they have to tackle. The rafale despite being more expensive could do better with less aircrafts according to the swiss operational evaluation.
The operational evaluation was tailored to swiss type of missions requirements. In the end the swiss air force choice was the rafale. So on purely operational criteria the rafale was considered more efficient.
Other political/industrial considerations pushed the politics toward a gripen choice but that was not based on “operational efficiency”. The final political choice makes sense in swiss case because they don’t face a big threat to say the least. So any “modern” fighter could make the cut.
Just that benchmarked against the type of threat the swiss are facing the rafale was considered more efficient, even with less aircrafts. But some could rightfully say that those types of threats are too “hypothetical” so a cheaper albeit less capable aircraft will make the cut anyway.
eagle1Swiss air force very clearly recommended the rafale as the best option. The better performance allowed to do more with the rafale with less aircrafts than with the gripen. It is the swiss operational evaluation itself that came to that conclusion.
If the gripen was considered more efficient within the same budget swiss air force would have recommended it.
Swiss politics decided to look at the price argument only without looking at the overall operational effectiveness.
eagle1Feeding Spectra jamming librairies from space :
Operational French Elint System Slated for End of Decade Start
Spacenews, Dec 17KOUROU, French Guiana — French military officials on Dec. 16 said the four-satellite electronic-intelligence (elint) system they plan to operate beginning in early 2012 will be the last of France’s in-orbit elint demonstration projects and will be succeeded by an operational system at the end of the decade.[…]
In a briefing here the day before the launch of the four Elisa satellites, the officials said after 15 years and four different elint satellite demonstrator projects — all judged to have been successful — France is ready to proceed with an operational system with or without European partners.
Caroline Laurent, head of space and information systems at France’s arms procurement agency, DGA, said the Elisa system, which was scheduled for launch late Dec. 16 from Europe’s Guiana Space Center spaceport here, will identify ground-based radars and other telecommunications sources in higher frequencies than its predecessor, Essaim.
The four Essaim satellites were launched in 2004 and were operated, flying in close formation in low Earth orbit, for five years before being de-orbited in 2009. Essaim followed two one-satellite elint demonstrators, the Cerise and Clementine satellites, launched respectively in 1995 and 1999.
[…]
Laurent said that Ceres design studies, which have already begun under a minimal budget, would accelerate in 2013 and that a contract for the construction of a three- or four-satellite Ceres system would begin in time for a launch by 2019. She said France is determined to build Ceres with or without partner nations joining the program.French Air Force Gen. Yves Arnaud, who heads the French Joint Staff’s space office, said here that French expertise in optical satellite Earth observation gained from the Helios series of reconnaissance satellites since 1995 has given France a piece of an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance system. Elint, he said, is another piece.
The goal of the Ceres elint program, Arnaud said, is to provide French Rafale fighter jets with up-to-date maps of ground-to-air radars. These radars would be part of a catalog assembled by Ceres and then updated by both Ceres and Helios data.
“What we would like is to give our Rafale pilots a library of data on ground-to-air radars that would be assembled by Ceres and Helios,” Arnaud said. “Ceres and Helios would work together. Helios would identify the location of a radar, and Ceres would then fly over it to determine if it was still active, and to learn more about it. Similarly, if Ceres identifies a previously unknown source of radar emissions, optical reconnaissance will be able to tell us more about it.”
This kind of mapmaking capability depends on more than just satellites in any event, but the satellite component is indispensable, and cannot be provided by Elisa, Arnaud said.
[…]
http://www.spacenews.com/military/111216–french-elint-end-decade-start.html
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