eagle1Looking for some serious sources with realistic comparable estimates I found this
39 000€ for a Navy rafale (source french navy from secret defense blog)
http://secretdefense.blogs.liberation.fr/defense/2007/07/39000-euros-lhe.html
35 000€ for the air force variant
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dassault_Rafale
Now I am a bit surprised and skeptical by announced Typhoon costs, perhaps someone can give further information ?
73 992€ for a typhoon more expensive than the tornado(source der spiegel)
http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/vorab/0,1518,714332,00.html
also a Q&A synthesis from british MP also states that tornado is cheaper to operate than the tyyphoon
Question.
11. Why is the limited capability Typhoon being operated over Libya at all and at such huge expense (more than £80 million in three months) when we are told by MoD/RAF that the Tornado GR4 is such a capable and reliable Close Air Support vehicle – with a much lower cost per airframe hour?
Suspected Answer.
12. There is probably more than one answer:a) There are not enough serviceable Tornado aircraft to do the job properly.
b) The presence of Typhoon in the Libyan Theatre is a Public Relations exercise by the Royal Air Force to attempt to provide some justification for the existence of this very expensive fighter aircraft.
http://www.phoenixthinktank.org/2011/06/the-compelling-cost-of-land-based-air-operations-over-libya/
from the same source :
The cost per flying hour of the Typhoon aircraft has been stated in parliament as £70000 per hour.
http://www.phoenixthinktank.org/2011/06/the-compelling-cost-of-land-based-air-operations-over-libya/
eagle1This thread on this forum is about speculation so EElightning is right to ask the question 😉 time will tell but that sould not prevent us from making pronostics. I feel that some are affraid to be proven wrong so they don’t want to take a risk in making a pronostic.
I take this risk and my speculation is the following :
-rafale is a smaller aircraft with smaller newer engines for a starter. The lattest iteration of the M88 to enter in service next year is all about costs of ownership.
-Then the rafale has less moving parts which means less complexity less maintenance and less risk of failures. (fixed intakes, fixed probe, no dorsal airbrake).
-It is designed with a higher life span in terms of hours than the typhoon.
Then there is the question of synergies :
-with the M2K fleet
-with a possible rafale M fleet with the indian navy. Not bad in terms of strategic perspectives.
eagle1Not so certain about that Tmor. I am not saying that “sensor fusion” is an exclusive concept for the rafale just that in some situation you can have less synthetic information available and thus having more “mental” effort to make.
I believe that when two officers are consistent whith each other it does hold some weight, especially when it come after actual confrontations.
@scorpion : I believe we are going to disagree on this one. I would like nevertheless to precise that I am not saying that the Typhoon has no sensor fusion at all or no possibility to display syntetic information in some cases. Just that the overall “sensor fusion” and information digest seems to be better with the rafale. I don’t believe Grandclaudon and captain Romain are wrong, just that they were misiterpreted and that their analysis were taken to the extreme : sensor fusion vs no sensor fusion at all which is not the case. for them their is a real significative difference and I believe it is the case.
eagle1You distorted the meaning of my sentence in order to make a rethoric argument which fails to adress my wole post above. (post 1301 & 1306)
It is well explained above. Re read it.
eagle1Tmor,
You are quoting A&C and it says ” better sensor fusion (thus better situation awareness)”
Which is consistent with grandclaudon and cpatain romain claim. We might misunderstood each other on the MMI. I believe it is only to be interpreted in relation to the sensor fusion (less synthetic presentation of datas). So if you want you can scrap MMI and just leave “sensor fusion”.
eagle1If you don’t know the slightest detail you can hardly understand how it works in the first place!
that’s wrong. You can understand how things work without knowing all the details. There is plenty of example in every day life.
And in our case are we speaking about professional fighter pilots who are true specialists so believing that they would not be able to understand how another system works is wishfulthinking.
Having done this myself a couple of times over the years I know that praxis and I also know the relatively modest scope of such discussions and briefings. In most cases even a halfway informed aviation enthusiast could give you such a briefing. If you don’t experience the MMI yourself it’s rather difficult to judge about it. You can study it as well, but that takes a lot of time and appropriate material to do so. That’s why pilots learn a lot in the simulator and later in the real aircraft following intensive years of preparation in the field of aviation itself and the theory training they receive in advance during their type conversion training.
When you talk to your peers it is another story, especially after a debrief about practising against each other for instance. You can easily grasp that a discussion between professionals is not the same as with amateurs as we are.
The comparison with the sort of briefing we could have both you and me in a cockpit is dubious.
Here we are not debating about the symbology being of a slightly different color or this particular switch being placed in different place in reference to your simulator story…We are speaking about different standard of sensor fusion.
To make an extreme exemple : you don’t need an hour speach and hours in a simulator to understand that a mirage F1 sensor fusion and MMI doesn’t even compare with the rafale.
That’s the same idea with the rafale and typhoon. Grandclaudon and captain Romain focused their analysis on the main properties of the sensor fusion and MMI. No need to debate if the color of that symbol is more appropriate or not, I mean that’s not the point.
According to them and after having confronted the typhoon they gave their analysis of what they thought made a difference. They did not started to make “anecdotical” comparisons but made a synthetic summary of some key differences in capability.
eagle1Scorpion,
I quite disagree on one point : the fact that french pilots would have no idea or an ill perception of how typhoon MMI works.
They don’t necessarly need to know the slightest detail about typhoon MMI to understand how it is designed and how it works. It is absolutely normal for pilots to try to understand how pilots from another country works with their aircraft. There is some natural curiosity and a gallant practice is to have a tour and a briefing in the cockpit of the foreign aircraft. Pilots speaks after debrief at the mess etc…
Just to make a parallel, I know what are the main difference with our competitors methodology and approach (in relation to my job). I might not know everything but I have a fairly good understanding of their strenght & weaknesses. That’s about it.
You don’t need to know all switches functions etc to claim that your MMI and datafusion works differently and you think yours is better. Especially coming from senior officers including a squadron commander who had plenty of occasion to approach and assess the typhoon in various exercises.
For once we have a detailed analysis and not only “raw result”. It is interesting to notice that both grandclaudon and captain romain are consistent which each other on the sensor fusion for instance.
For the second point, yes I was thinking of AtG duties versus BVR duties. Just to show that BVR is not the sole criterion in aircraft comparison like some would like to think. (time passed of debating BVR vs its anecdotic impact in lattest conflicts). And I am not downplaying BVR just putting it in persepective.
Funny to think that the typhoon that was designed around BVR fights in mind will perhaps not be employed a single time in that role in its carreer. Ok I am speculating but there is some truth : investing billions and billions in a system that will probably never be used in its intended role while the rafale is proving its added value in real conflicts and marking History. (Ok it’s a flaim bite !)
eagle1I would like to say that we can debate for ages about BVR tactics etc…
What I see is that when you look at actual results and even more relevantly pilot analysis (at least for the french side : grandclaudon or captain Romain in the open press) there is no typhoon edge. To be more “diplomatic” and taking into account that scores can cary depending of the situation bla bla bla … I would dare to say that the picture is not as clear as one would like to believe.
Another point I would like to stress is that we are always debating about BVR in a typical mine is bigger than yours discussion…How many BVR shot were achieved in past years ? I am not downplaying importance of BVR just pointing that for some it is the Alpha and Omega of modern warfare.
When I assess a fighter jet performance I look at the global package of capability offered. And in my opinion if you look at all the kind of tasks the rafale can achieve you really have bang for your buck. And it is avalaible now.
eagle1I think that you misinterpreted my post scorpion. I am fully aware that we miss “hard data” to make definitive claims in that regard.
To somewhat overcome this issue I just brought the fact that this passive BVR feature is more advertised and used (even operationnaly in Lybia vs SAM sites) by the rafale which seems to indicate that this feature is more developped with the rafale. That’s all. I would add that some of my conversations with rafale pilots reinforced this perception.
eagle1About the debate of the rafale being the only aircraft being able to do silent BVR kills and to answer scorpion I would say that to date as far as I know the rafale is the only one using quite extensively this technique. I mean as a standard tactic. We could hear example from the ATLC exercise or from captain Romain.
It seems that the Typhoon counts more on its powerful radar and its kinetik performance.
As I understand it is two different philosophy in this BVR realm.
eagle1Vnomad said:
“The latest variants of the R-73 have ranges that can be classified as BVR (40km according to these folks). So the MICA-IR by itself doesn’t isn’t unique.”
A critical difference between the two is the data link and Lock On After Launch capability of the Mica. If you don’t have this your IR missile will not be a practical and true BVR missile.
eagle1I am saying this with no intention to be offensive : both rafale and typhoon fans can be emotive, and they are in this final round of the MMRCA competition ! Accusing the other camp of all villeny is misplaced. And that is true for both sides. I can spot as much emotion in the Typhoon camp.
eagle1Some reasons for Dassault not to undercut their unit price and diminish their margin :
-Synergies with the M2K fleet
-Lower operating costs
-Possibility for the IAF to use the same aircraft as the Indian Navy (Navy tender)
-Already well known and appreciated supplier
-Less risky option for the IAF : actual price and performance is already known and tested.
-Still cheaper unit cost despite huge sacrifices made by the competitor.
MoD Begins Calculations to evaluate Life Cycle Cost of aircrafts for MMRCA
Written by Ganesh, Arjun
Wednesday, 09 November 2011New Delhi: The Indian Defence Ministry has initiated the process of calculation of the Life Cycle Cost (LCC) of the two shortlisted aircrafts – the Eurofighter and Dassault Rafale – in order to determine the lowest bidder and the ultimate winner of the medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) deal.
On November 4th, commercial bids from the two firms were opened in the presence of their representatives, by the Contracts Negotiation Committee of the Defence Ministry. Though both firms were notified about the cost per unit of each aircraft, confidentiality clauses prevent the figures from being revealed.
According to sources, the per unit cost of the Dassault Rafale is understood to be around 5 percent lower than the Eurofighter. However the final decision will be made on the basis of Life Cycle Cost of these aircrafts, which would be operated for around 40 years or 6,000 hours. The offset and technology transfer proposals made by the firms may also influence the decision.
http://machinist.in/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3934&Itemid=2
eagle1@Scorpion
-Perhaps the IAF doesn’t care the synergies with the M2K-fleet.
-Perhaps the IAF doesn’t care the possibility to operate a common aircraft with the indian navy.
-Perhaps the IAF doesn’t care having an aircraft having all its capabilities available from day 1.
-Perhaps the IAF doesn’t care opting for an aircraft whose systems were not tested because they are not yet developed.
-Perhaps the IAF doesn’t care paying more even though rafale unit price is said to be marginaly lower and that operating costs should normaly favour the rafale.
-Perhaps the IAF doesn’t care adding a new supplier for its already long list of fighter jets type.
But if you add all these reasons my opinion is that it does matter. Especially if aircrafts are close technically and in terms of price (unit price). Common sense would tell that rafale is a more natural, comfortable, less risky solution that offer good possibility of synergies. You can say it is speculation… Certainly that’s what this thread is about, but still I do believe it makes more sense and I do think IAF and Dassault is well aware about it.
eagle1Fair answer scorpion. Of course we can only speculate at this point but I can’t help thinking that when the indian MoD decided to sign the M2K upgrade deal they did not thought of the MMRCA deal. Hey they spent years negotiating that one ! More likely than not they must have talked of the MMRCA deal.
The potential synergies are also to put in perspective of the indian Navy tender. Doesn’t need to make a long speach about the advantage of having a common aircraft with the air force.
On top of the potential synergies with the M2K-5 fleet (in terms of costs and ease of use) the fact that the inidan rafale is already fully developped or almost is another point that can go toward the perception that the rafale is the most natural and less risky option of the two for the IAF.
This more “comfortable” perception might push for the rafale if the technical and commercial offer are eventually close.
My bet is that Dassault is fully aware of this situation and did not feel the need of making as big sacrifices as the Typhoon consortium.
as for the 1421 modules for the typhoon according to DSI I mentioned it last february, I don’t remember the exact issue hoping that another french poster know (post 253) :
http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?t=108583&page=8
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