This is why im all in favour of at least a 2 type fleet (eg Tiffy F35) so 1 technical problem doesnt ground youre entire airforce.

Anyway.

I’m not 100% sure of what its made of but off the top of my head but I’ll give it a go. The plumbing part (the pipe bit) is likely to be made of a metal, a type of tough, lightweight alloy. The pieces that surrounds it are, I believe, (may need a correction on this) something like carbon-fibre. Someone else mentioned that carbon-fibre may be too flimzy to take the treatment for air-to-air refueling. Not necessarily. If I may I’d like to turn the attention to Formula 1, or to be more specific, an F1 car’s push rods, (suspension, the things that hold the wheels to the chassis etc). These push rods are made of carbon fibre, very lightweight, very strong – expensive. They’re actually designed to take massive impacts from the side and still stay intact to a certain extent, yet still, an average built guy could easily put his hand on top of it and easily push down and break it with very little effort, they were designed like this meaning their strenght is consentrated in particular areas but also designed to break, too. Of course the re-fueling probe on the Rafale isn’t designed to break in the same way but the consentrated strenght is probably done in the same way – although in a “push ‘n’ pull” kind of way, while its actually locked onto the drouge. If the drouge gets stuck onto and can’t un-lock itself I imagine the probe is designed to break off in case of such situation.

You can wake up now I’m done…I feel like James May when goes off on a rant. 😀

.

Cant really argue with the above, I think the “Ball” may be stainless steel as its harder and tougher and less subject to pitting – however that is speculation.

I only doubted the fairing construction material as composites tend to be very good in one dirction at a time and potentialy this could take a hell of a side load, however as you say composits have come a long way and as i said im happy to be corrected.

As regards the whole Ravale v Tiffy thing.

I agree it seems to be getting personal, so i will also try to diffuse

Re the french pilot

– i dont think any one is calling Grand Claude (or whatever is name was) a liar –

I have no doubt the incident took place as he described – but he also stated it was the Excellent results of a particular day,

He did not say it reflected the entire flying programme.

I myself only try to suggest that this one incident does not prove one aircraft superior to the other ( a fact i would maintain the other way round).

Also the Rafale has been in service for a while – its pilots know what it can do, RAF pilots are in all probability still trying to get to grips with typhoon – hell if they are used to tonkas turning quickly probably confuses them.

As I said before Grad Claudes big day may be asmuch to do with flawed doctrine as aircraft superiority

regards

I don’t remember this quote exactly unfortunately (memory issue). I remember hearing from a rafale pilot that spectra is being able to locate radar emissions at far greater range than a radar would pick up the rafale in a rafale vs typhoon discussion though. I believe it was in 2009.

All things being equal that applies to any threat reciver and any radar

Any radar is detectable far in excess of the maximum range at which it can distinguish a return.

Edit failed to spot Erakes reply

[QUOTE=GoldenPawn;1740274][QUOTE=Lindermyer;1740247]

Probes are made of carbon / kevlar fibers on 4th Gen fighters , not only the fairing! 😉

Do you know this for a fact or is that supposition if so do you have a supporting document.
/ datafile please
Its a Genuine question its my experience that all refueling nozzles probes etc are metal both for the physical toughness and the essential electrical properties – if some one has developed a composite structure with the required properties i would be most interested to read about it.

until then and with no disrespect to anyone I will stick with past experience and my current knowledge of composites and work on the principle that the probe itself is metal ( or at least some of it is)

Edited to add
– Ive done it again ive been suckered in havent I –

[QUOTE=GoldenPawn;1740133]we are still looking for this on europhoon design , only the seize of thier IRST , or thier air intakes (not integrted to cell) alone get indications that europhoon wasn’t designed around RCS reduction!

[QUOTE]

Well well ofset the Typhoons IRST with the Rafales fixed refueling probe.

there probably isnt a great deal between the 2 – I for one would not dispute the Rafale having a lower frontal aspect (similar gen smaller airframe) if it wasnt for the fixed probe.

as For Spectra – it is not unique DASS and ALE (whatever the yanks have now) are all of a similar ilk (according to the literature)

Fine we appreciate you are a Rafale Fan, I myself think its a good aircraft, but it isnt the be all and end all of combat aviation

Hey Big Nose!! I means Scorps sweety, in this pic which of the two is nearest the camera? ’cause if it’s Rafale- then that’s a pretty stark & damning comparison of the radome sizes!!

…more ammunition for Team EF in Germany, post the nice media relations lady @ Eurofighter Jagdflugzeug GmbH the pic- but don’t call her große Nase.

Not that I want to get drawn into Goldenprawns trolling, but im not aware of any where else but here that the difference in radar size is disputed.

The Typhoon has a very large radar for its size whereas ( I believe) the Rafales is about averagr.

Note i am not getting into any Versus debate here both aircraft have there merits.

Hey Boom, good morning!

You replied :

First : most if not all of its requirements. was not an option!
All of our needs HAD to be covered, main reason for split!

The Rafale and the Typhoon are very different, mate.
The EF was to be an interceptor over Northern Europe.
Only later did the bombing and the rest got added.
The Rafale was intended from the start to be the one
fighter to cover all our needs.
The Rafale was designed naval from the inception, EF….
The Rafale was designed with discretion plus Spectra in
an “organic stealth” vision, the fat bottomed lass…
How long till the Nuke Typhoon? Cause ours is on the job.
How long till the SEAD Typhoon for next Lybia-type job?

If you want the reverse, Typhoon was to be in a sort of
hi-lo mix with Tornadoes first and then F-35. So why would
it get designed for those jobs? Very logically, it didn’t!
The closest bird to the Raffy is the SuppaHorny or the F-35.

There was no way those drawing boards would merge even
before industrial leadership gets trown in the equation.

!

Typhoon was always intended to be a multi role aircraft, although as you correctly point out it was not intended to be a Tornado replacement, it was however intended as a jaguar replacement.

The Nuke comments a bit disengeneous firstly the UK didnt operate nuclear strike squadrons unlike the ADA, but tornado and jaguar could drop nuclear bombs and secondly there is no longer any nuclear ordanance in the RAFs inventory so obviously the Typhoon is not nuclear rated as there is no requirement.

The Typhoon also has a very sophistacated ECM suite – (DASS was origionaly intended as base spec until some countries dropped out) in this regard reduced RCS and advanced ECM its propably six of one and half dozen of the other.

The split was over industrial workshare, design leadership and sales leadership more than any thing else.

The carrier requrement as you quite rightly pointed out was uniqly french, however this need not have been the programes death knell had the more political aspects been worked out the design could have been carrier capable (with benifits to the RN down the line with CVF) or the french could have gone american on the carriers. (MY OPINION)

I dont like to quible minor points but Generaly youre posting is ok, but you do seem to labour under the miss aprehension that typhoon was A2A and A2G was an after thought when clearly it was allways intended to fulfil both roles as a Jaguar replacement.

As regards a the results of a certain exercise, there is no doubt that the incident took place, there is also no doubt it was taken somewhat out of context and was not necasserily representative of the whole exercise. besides we should all know by now that the results of a scripted exercise do not demonstrate superiority or inferiority of a particular platform, (it may have shown a defficiency in someones tactics and doctrine though)

regards

If they arent going to be using any US fighter in the immediate or in the forceable future , why do they need the Aim-120?? The Mica is quite capable and even though the EF has the meteor as its BVR weapon the Mica is still good enough for the short to medium term and after that i bet the french would like to better it and india could be well placed in jointly developing with France the successor to the BVR missile..

Could be Im having a moment – i thought AMRAAM was a requirement