From Tmor on another board about how works Spectra :

In a book by HP Grolleau, a book about the CEAM (Centre d’Expériences Aériennes Militaires : Mont de Marsan, where the AdA plays with its new toys), there is an interesting quote by the EPIGE chef (Escadron de Programmation et d’Instruction à la Guerre Electronique = the Squadron in charge of programmation and instruction to electronic warfare) :

Avec Spectra, nous sommes rentrés dans l’ère des composants numériques, de l’interférométrie pour les détecteurs et de la technologie DRFM (digital radio frequecy memory) pour le brouilleur. sans révéler de secret, je peux vous dire que, grace à toutes ces avancées, SPECTRA est capable de numériser un signal intercepté et de le transformer de façon quasi-illimité pour le ré-émettre et ainsi creer un brouillage redoutablement efficace

Translation :

With Spectra, we’ve entered the era of digital components, interferometry for detectors and DRFM technology for the jammer. Without revealing any secret, i can tell you that thanks to all those advances, Spectra is able to digitize any intercepted signal and to transform it in a nearly unlimited manner so as to re-emitte it and thus to create a frighteningly effective jamming.

Where the Colonel was very critical of the French and somewhat about the Indians. It has caused a lot of issues and disecting in this very forum.

He was not critical about the rafale in fact. He just said that the frech did some ELINT spying thanks to Spectra which was regarded as a very “sophisticated electronic device”. I take it as a good point !

I (we Rafale fans) couldn’t agree more !

+1:D

An intresting read, but full of useless claims. Not a single glimpse about which Blocks of F-16, F-15 or variant of Mirage 2000 were used?
Nothing about the rules imposed. To find out that the Rafale have a low corner-speed is no surprise either is the behavior of a M88 versus a M53 engine. The deeper sense of that claim is to convince the home audiance that the tax-payers money is well spent at least.
The Rafale is a new generation compared to the F-16, F-15 and Mirage 2000.

But Sens, here they are mostly speaking about WVR gun dogfight so the block or version or even the RoE have little importance here…We are only talking about airframe performance at the beginning.

About BVR they talk about detection range of the RBE2 vs the RCS of the F15 and F16 so I don’t see what blocks are doing here.

Again it is not because they are quoting (french) pilots that it is automatically all lies. I agree that as always in this type of communication exercise, there is always some “shiny” put in the writing style but you can draw some useful info if you are cautious and pou know how to distinguish the “raw information” from the PR style. PR is not about lying but stressing your strenghts…Don’t think that there are lying to you… So saying “full of useless claims” is a bit harsh when “operational pilots” are quoted. If you have a specific things to contest tell it.

I would add that I am sure that many of the thing you (and every body) knows about fighter aircraft come from official publications.

a big “LOL” to this….:D

a french singer who made its video clip on the CdG with rafales and SuE….Quite unexpected !

http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=VVAJ0AY86xM

The depreciation of the dollar was certainly not the only factor but was according to dassault a head start for the F15. I don’t know if there is a MINDEF source about that. There is a few other articles speaking about the depreciation of the dollar which were posted on the previous rafale thread I think. Here those I have in my data base.

Rafale, the French fighter, scrambles for export orders
By Christina Mackenzie
International Herald Tribune

Published: July 16, 2006 Paris

Riddle: Which combat aircraft outperforms its competitors in dogfights, is frequently classed first on technical merit in international tenders, is capable of covering a broad spectrum of air missions and is competitively priced, but has yet to win a single export order from a foreign air force? Answer: the Rafale, the French fighter developed and manufactured by Dassault Aviation.

In development since the mid-1980s and in French naval carrier-based service since 2004, Rafale is a so-called fourth-generation fighter, a sophisticated multirole jet with advanced avionics and weapons systems, but less able to avoid radar detection than “fifth generation” stealth fighters like the Lockheed-Martin F-22 Raptor or the U.S.-European F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

Competitors include the U.S.-made F- 15 Eagle, in service in various versions since the 1970s, the F-16 Fighting Falcon and F-18E/F Super Hornet, the Eurofighter Typhoon and the Swedish-built JAS-39 Gripen, marketed in collaboration with BAE Systems of Britain.

Dassault and the French Ministry of Defense hope that exports may now take off after Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin declared operational a first French air force squadron of 20 Rafales on June 27.

“It’s almost impossible to sell a combat aircraft not operational in its own air force,” Gérard David, head of communications for Dassault said during an interview by telephone. “The doors are now open to Rafale’s export career.”
Within the French military, the Rafale eventually would replace existing air force and naval fighters and fighter- bombers, including the Mirage IV, F1 and 2000; the Jaguar; Crusader; Etendard IV and Super-Etendard.

“This is going to reduce our operating costs tremendously through rationalization of maintenance,” said General Patrick Dufour, director of the Rafale program at the Délégation Générale de l’Armement, France’s defense procurement agency.

Colonel François Moussez, a pilot who has flown 150 hours on the Rafale, said that two could do the work of six existing air superiority/defense and air-to-surface attack jets. “With the Rafale,” he said, “we can do simultaneous multimission management: air-to-air, air-to- ground, reconnaissance at the same time.”

Moussez said that in dogfight exercises, the Rafale had outflown F-15, F-16 and F-18 opponents, and in technical and performance evaluations “we have systematically won against the F-15 and the Eurofighter Typhoon.”
Yet it lost to the F-15 in competitions to sell to South Korea and Singapore. Moussez said it was outflanked in the former case on political grounds and in the latter case on costs, noting that the dollar had depreciated 30 percent over the period of the Singapore competition.

In competitions to sell combat aircraft, “the principal criterion is political. It has little to do with aircraft performance,” Moussez said.

Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst with Teal Group in Fairfax, Virginia, also says that politics play a major role in fighter procurement. “Aggressive U.S. foreign policy” was a primary cause of export wins by U.S. military jets, he said during an interview by telephone.

Bob Kemp, director of sales for the Gripen, was not so sure. “There is no doubt a political factor,” he said during an interview. But “the first thing is, the aircraft must be able to do the job, and the second is financial.”
The Gripen, in operation with the Swedish Air Force since 1997, has been sold or leased to three countries and is quietly adding more orders, partly because it is “half the price of our competitors,” Kemp said.

Pricing combat aircraft is notoriously complex, with deals often involving industrial offsets and seldom reflecting full aircraft development costs. While Dufour put the average cost of a Rafale at €50 million, or $64 million, and the Typhoon – a collaboration grouping Italy, Germany, Spain and Britain – at about £65 million, or $120 million, Kemp said both aircraft had been offered to Singapore and South Korea at about $95 million each, compared with a basic price tag of $45 million to $50 million for the Gripen.

Combat aircraft technology “costs what it weighs,” Kemp said. “The Typhoon is basically twice the weight of the Gripen – and costs twice as much.”
The Typhoon, although lacking air-to- ground capacity in its current version, already has one export customer. Austria signed for 18 aircraft in August 2003 and Britain has signed a preliminary agreement with Saudi Arabia to supply at least 24 Typhoons from the British production run of 89 aircraft, although no final deal has been sealed.

Meanwhile Gripen has sold 28 aircraft to South Africa, the first of which left Sweden by ship in early July for the Overburg test flight center near Cape Town. Hungary has signed a lease and purchase agreement with Sweden for 14 aircraft, of which the first five were handed over in March. And the Czech Republic has leased 14 aircraft, all of which have been delivered. Norway and Denmark have also requested information on the Gripen from Saab, its manufacturer.

French procurement officials, comparing the sales prospects of the Gripen and Rafale, said the Gripen was designed for a different type of mission. The Rafale, a twin-engine aircraft with a maximum takeoff weight of 24.5 tons, can carry 9.5 tons of weapons slung under its wings, while the single-engine Gripen, with a maximum takeoff weight of 14 tons, carries only 5 tons of weapons.

Kemp agrees. Buyers of the heavier fighters “pay for longer range and heavier weapons loads,” he said, fitting them for a strategic defense role that some air forces may find less relevant than it was at the height of the cold war.

Still, by 2030, many countries will need to renew their combat aircraft fleets including some, like India and Japan, that may face significant strategic challenges. Saudi Arabia may finalize its Typhoon deal at the Farnborough Airshow, and analysts say other likely customers in the near future include Morocco and Brazil.

Excluding the United States, Russia and China, the open export market is estimated by analysts at around 3,000 aircraft. France traditionally holds between 10 percent to 15 percent of this market. Based on political preferences and past performance, France could hope to export about 300 Rafales, analysts say.

Mr. Charles Edelstenne, chairman of the grouping of French aeronautical industries and space.

As competitors materials cheaper, monetary parity disadvantage us, with one euro to 1.4 or 1.5 U.S. dollar, our prices are increased by one third compared to U.S. competition and, in a purely artificial.

don’t think anybody suggest that the Rafale programme is bad. True is the Typhoon was eleminated earlier from several competitions and by that the Rafale was found to be the better suiting product (if you want to call that superiority do it). The conclusion that the Rafale won performance/technical evaluations against the Typhoon is a bit misleading however, especially when you see the quote “systematically won against the F-15 and Eurofighter Typhoon” because it was the F-15 which was selected in end. By that logic (Rafale must be superior to the Typhoon, because Typhoon was eleminated earlier) we must conclude that the F-15 must be superior to the Rafale. Suddenly other reasons are found for the Rafale lose, but the Typhoon of course just lost because it performs worse and is technically inferior. That’s a little bit one sidened view. Might also depend on how you interpret this or that. In Singapore for example it wasn’t just reported by journos, but also claimed by MINDEF itself that the Typhoon was eliminated on the grounds of time scales. EF GmbH couldn’t deliver the multirole configured Eurofighter at the schedule specified by MINDEF. You could conclude that the Typhoon lost on the technical ground it wasn’t multirole capable enough and by that Rafale won on the technical ground. But that doesn’t say anything about the aircraft in general and doesn’t prove technical superiority in every area (which some seems to conclude by that).
21st December 2008 16:03

I have to disagree, you know that competitions are not only based on “performance” but also include politics and economics… For instance it was widely reported by the korean press that the rafale won against the F15 in technico operational evaluation. But the fact that 36000 GI are stationed there has also its weight.
In Singapore it was publicaly stated that the depretition of the dollar by 30% has made the F15 a winner despite a rafale lead in technico operational evaluations.

After that you are free to believe it is all lies or bias, but if you put all the different sources together it starts to have its weight…there are something like 10 sources of different types and if you do some cross checking it has its coherence.

I find suspect that when it comes to the hard truth some people have their own “extremely requiring standard of information quality“…Here there are about ten different sources from independent journos, french paliament reports or firm officials.
If you dismiss a so wide variety of sources I am wondering what are your criterions and how you can consider an information valuable ? This is “sophistic” skeptimism from someone who don’t want to see the truth in my opinion.

Certainly a technical evaluation is relevant for a national need and it can’t be an absolute truth, certainly the typhoon suffred from underdevelopment but I have yet to find claims that the rafale lost (or that the F15 was superior) on technical grounds…I think that if it was the cas then Boeing would have make much more advertising. Surprinsingly there are about ten sources claiming that the rafale won.
The few people that I met from dassault confirmed this in informal discussions. (of course you could say that there are bias, but I genuinely think they weren’t). Besides in the dutch evaluation Edelstenne doesn’t deny that the rafale came second behind the F35…In this matter there are many sources including “specialist” ones.

Again I am ready to be proven wrong but I am only asking some evidences.

And I must agree with KKM57P giving RCS value is a nonsense as they are classified. Pure speculation.

I would see it similar. If both have similar weapons and information, the Typhoon can get to a much better energy height beforehand and after missile launch has a better chance to avoid the enemy missiles. Especially can the Eurofighter enter the arena at supersonic speeds.

Being generally faster and more maneuverable at supersonic speeds it can basically decide if it engages or not. Having this ability (and the correct tactical information of course, which we assume present) it will deny disadvantageous situations.
A WVR engagement would normally be denied. That would be an issue for the SH: it cannot deny the fight, it if turns 15nm before merge, it will be caught. So, the SH must accept the fight!
The SH has good instantaneous turn rate and can pull quite a turn. When for the unlikely case the aircraft drop to <400 KCAS the SH actually becomes the better aircraft.

In BVR I would doubt that any aircraft is stealthy enough to avoid detection.

But you shouldn’t forget EW in the equation…all this rationale which is pefectly logical on paper might be proven wrong…

A2G: From the basic performance the Eurofighter can be very effective, it just needs more black boxes stuffed with nice software code. The Eurofighter lifts the same payload and has some pylons to spare. With current capabilities the SH is of course far ahead.

It has a lot of store but their disposition is not ideal, in a LGB config it can “only” bring 2*1000 l drop tanks which is not that much considering the two powerful EJ2000 to feed. In practise it will suffer from a lack of “play time” over a combat zone, especially like in afghanisan where aircrafts have to circle waiting for targets. Here the “play time” is a critical performance factor.
In the storm shadow config it has only one 1000l drop tank. Not ideal for long range penetration.
It would be great if the typhoon could get CFTs. That would be a big improvement.

I would choose the SH block 2 with AESA EW capability for BVR over a typhoon.