There is no evidence you’ve seen of the contrary, too. So what ? Is that enough to dismiss the arguments you dislike ?
Nobody said the Rafale is a LO design, not even Dassault. Significant work has been done on RCS reduction where that matters, no more, no less. Some features are clearly visible to naked eyes, others are not, and the end result is said to be 1/10th to 1/20th that of a Mirage 2000.
The question is whether Eurofighter did such an extensive job in RCS reduction. They claim they did, of course, yet they managed to tell us that Typhoon RCS is 1/8 that of the Tornado. That put it in the F-16 league, with Mirage 2000, Gripen and Super Hornet doing better (to name a few).
It turns out that the 50 km range difference that was translated to 10x lower RCS reminded me of all that old stuff. Add to that many press releases that keep telling Rafale RCS is lower, and you begin to have a hard time to dispute what become increasingly obvious.
There’s no evidence per se, but there’s an increasing string of clues…
What is available on the public domain only tell us that the two aircrafts use very similar technologies and techniques to reduce its RCS.
The two aircrafts use serpentine S ducted inlets, frequency selective surface materials in the radar redome, radar reflector canopy´s, a liberal aplication of RAM throught the airframe and thats about it.
Trying to imply that somehow Dassault obtained such a massive advantage (a 10X reduction) from a team who had previously worked on a LO design (part of the MBB team that worked in Lampyridae ended up in the signature reduction department of Eurofighter) using identical techniques and technologies is, has i´ve said before, counter-intuitive.
About clues, there are severall articles in the specialized and generalistic press who contradict those “clues” that you´ve mentioned, i can remember multiple articles in the likes of air international, and AFM through the eighties, nineties and the new century that again and again stated that the Typhoon was designed with the lowest frontal RCS of every combat aircraft in service or about to enter service bar the Raptor, that includes the RAFALE, if you chose to believe them or on the articles that you´ve mentioned before, i think thats more a question of faith/preference than any realistic data.
Speaking plainly trying to guess wich of the two aircrafts has a smaller RCS using public available data its impossible, that data is nowhere to be found.
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