While the article itself is discussing the situation in Europe as a whole and the French side is mentioned, most of the parts you marked in bolt and apparently discussed below the quote are related to the Typhoon. So why don’t you post it in the appropriate thread?

Because it’s part of Rafale news to discuss about related development and export potential as well as its place in Europe and I believe it’s relevant to do so by having a glance at it most direct competitors in this case the EFT.

In addition while I believe Robert Wall to be British, it seems anything that would be posted on the appropriate thread about EFT news would be seems as bashing or Anglophobe from me and I would like to spare the sensibilities and not offend some by giving them a choice, since the simple mention of Rafale is enough to get some angry, I’m sure they won’t be paying too much attention at this thread.

Europe Poised For Gradual Updates To Fighters

The list of European militaries likely to benefit from these export-driven enhancements is long and includes the Swedish, French, British and German air forces.

For the core air forces operating the Eurofighter Typhoon, the issue of both near- and long-term upgrades must still be sorted. For example, the British and German air forces, as well as Italian and Spanish users, have all expressed interest in upgrading the fighter’s radar with an AESA, although they have not allocated funding for this endeavor. Instead, they have relied on industry self-funding much of the early development because of the need to keep the combat aircraft internationally competitive. While hoping to have a raft of Typhoon upgrades available by March 2018, the U.K. so far has failed to address when key elements of those enhancements—such as the Storm Shadow cruise missile and Meteor air-to-air missile—will emerge on the fighter.

Germany, for example, which is unwilling to buy more Eurofighters or to fund enhancements that would enable them take on additional roles, also is financing an upgrade drive for its Tornado fleet. The plan is to keep the aircraft operational until 2025—not just in its strike role, but also as a tactical reconnaissance asset and suppression of enemy air defense system.

The situation is more settled in France, at least for now. Partly because of France’s determination to secure an export order for Rafale, the government moved to finance upgrades to the twin-engine fighter in order to make the system attractive in international competitions. That push, more than the needs of the French air force and navy, drove Paris to allocate funding several years ago to ensure upgrades to the REB2 radar, optronics (electro-optical) system and electronic warfare equipment (the DDM-NG). The F3-04T standard is due for qualification this year, ahead of delivery in 2013.

The French navy and air force can also look to further upgrades beyond 2013. The government has placed an order for Meteor air-to-air missiles that should become available around 2018. Also in store is a targeting pod enhancement, adding video capability to Damocles.

One big unknown is how the outcome of the French presidential election—the second and final round is due in May—will affect long-term budget plans. The pace of introducing some of the upgrades into French forces could slide.

In addition, France will face another series of Rafale upgrades in the next decade as military leaders seek to prepare the backbone of their combat aircraft fleet for a major mid-life modification. Thus, the shopping list is long and still includes radical ideas such as adding conformal radar arrays to provide enhanced sensor coverage and radar-cross-section reductions.

As far as I know, Holland will keep the same trend with military expenditures that Sarkozy had, so I doubt we will see any major changes if he’s elected.
Second point how come France was able to fund all the F3-04T upgrades by cancelling 2 aircraft deliveries and with four countries the EFT isn’t able to fund even half of that despite massive cancellation ?!

EDIT: PS: Also the author seems to confirm some suspicions about Germany reluctance to upgrade the EFT in favour of the Tornados…

Eurofighter Typhoon Hits New Milestone

The Growler is much more designed to provide protection of allied forces by suppressing enemy air defences in the first place. SPECTRA is more designed to protect the aircraft itself, rather than protecting multiple formations over a wide spread area. SPECTRA might be able to protect some nearby platforms under the umbrella. It’s not known whether the AdA was the sole AF able to operate without Growler protection, it was the sole AF which was willed to take the risk. It’s not known whether Growlers were around all the time either when non French fighters were operating in the area.

I’ve no doubt the Growler with its external jamming pod has far more coverage and power. However the Rafale was able to protect itself and the Mirages 2000Ds before the degradation of the Lybian air defences. It demonstrated suppression capabilities via jamming and destruction capabilities with the AASM.
It seems obvious to me that the Growler weren’t used for each missions but for the most dangerous one. And while their exact deployment isn’t known, it is known that the AdA refused their protection because they felt confident SPECTRA was good enough for the job in that particular situation.

ELINT & SIGINT are electronic recce capabilities. ELINT is used to map enemy radar systems with their position to generate the enemies electronic order of battle, useful for latter mission planning, while SIGINT is gathering intelligence on the signals itself, useful against unknown threat emitters in particular and to update your threat and ECM libaries. The SPECTRA is in this case more or less unique as the EW systems of other aircraft don’t pose full fledged ELINT/SIGINT capabilities, at least not from what’s known, which isn’t everything available however. I think that the AASM is a valuable key enabler for the Rafale as a very flexible stand-off weapon it’s certainly going to enable safe mission execution which otherwise requires more specialised weapons such as ARMs etc.

While I’m sure most of the ELINT/SIGNIT work had been done by the C-160G, satellites and other assets way before the Rafales and M-200Ds went into Libyan airspace, Rafale did demonstrate ELINT/SIGNIT on its own plus SEAD/DEAD when coupled with the AASM with 60km+ range.
While the Hammer is capable I wasn’t talking about it on its own. It would have been useless in DEAD missions had not the Rafale been able to detect radar emission with enough precision to cue the AASM on target.
I’m sure SPECTRA + any other stand off missiles/bombs could have worked in a similar fashion.

Eurofighter tries to spoil the Indian MMRCA Rafale deal

TMor

Yes, yes. [SARCASM MODE]Apart from mentioning Rafale’s lack of a TRD, the issues with airframe obscuration and the difficulty of obtaining true spherical coverage. And apart from my point about the importance of software and mission data in EW performance. That apart, I just repeated what Scorpion said….[/SARCASM MODE]

I’m sure you’ll be able to provide sources, diagrams, studies and other proofs to back that up right ?

Mercurius had it right, I’m afraid.

Please do tell…

Pride in Rafale is entirely justifiable. The pretence that the aircraft is unique, or perfect, is not. I’m happy to say that Typhoon has no truly unique features either.

So far most of the comparison has been done against EFT, not the rest of the world. But since you’re talking about it, the Rafale is unique.

Shiv

We don’t know, conclusively.

But we think it was down to immaturity of the software load at the time of the evaluation.
We think it was down to mission data constraints, either because of a deficiency on the German aircraft, or perhaps because of what the consortium was willing to show. We know that performance of certain systems is often constrained during evaluations. For example, during one recent eval, ASRAAM was limited to five miles range.

Yeah poor Germans, it always seems to be their fault…

We do know that Typhoon has similar abilities to precisely locate targets passively.

“Precise” might be a little bit exaggerated, but anyway.

The lack of a TRD is a clear disadvantage. A TRD is not a universal panacea, but in some circumstances it’s the difference between success and failure.

Says who ? Do you have any thing either historical or else that can prove that ? Last time I checked TRD is but one way to get the job done.

Dassault did spend serious money on the Swiss eval, with an 80+ sortie work up. All indications are that EADS spent much less, with no pre-deployment work-up, for example.

More guessing…

I doubt that any export customer can guarantee getting the full RAF mission data and threat libraries (for example)

Completely irrelevant and nothing to do with aircraft performances per say. Threat libraries are handled by military intelligence and the decision to share them or not will depend on political decision, mutual defence agreement, degree of cooperation and thrust etc.

You harp on about Rafale’s ability to find targets using RWR, ESM, and IRST, while ignoring the fact that Typhoon can do exactly the same. You then ignore the advantages conferred by Captor (and especially by Captor E with repositioner) when you get to the actual engagement – a subtask where even the Swiss eval rated Typhoon ahead of Rafale. And it’s not great to detect, acquire and identify the target if you lose the engagement…..

The only fact we know about CAPTOR is the greater FOV. Nothing else and strangely the Swiss evaluation did mention its long range advantages or anything special about it… There was a mention about the RBE though…

Mildave

I seldom agree with anything you write, and conflating SPECTRA and Growler is ridiculous. But in identifying SPECTRA’s Elint and Sigint capabilities, you do underline one of the system’s key strengths compared to DASS, for example.

I never said SPECTRA is a equal to the Growler systems, but it would still be fairer to compare the two than with DASS.

The main mission of Growler is to provide detection and jamming against all known surface-to-air threats across the full spectrum of EW.
Rafale did exactly that in Libya and AdA was the only air forces able to operate without the protection of the USN F-18G (going as far as refusing it even when it was available).
You can only do that if your aircraft has ELINT/SIGINT capabilities (+ stand off weapons like AASM and a two seater is far better) which are not just a key strength compared to other systems, but a whole new world apart. A self defence suite + a few LGB isn’t going to cut it.

I understand Shiv1971 argument that the IAF may have different tactics than NATO countries, however it has already been pointed that airforces have to adapt their tactics to their hardware, and I doubt the IAF has any tactics that NATO hasn’t seen (either because they’re doing the same or because the Soviet were doing it, and India is pretty close to the later…).

On the radar range, if EFT could possibly see further and be aware of another aircraft presence, Rafale could also be aware of that aircraft presence by SPECTRA at longer range and start manoeuvring itself or other assets to investigate and get a proper lock via any numbers of ways.

You need to take into account jamming, decoys and your enemy tactics (and even the earth magnetic field) to know how effective and at what range you’re going to be able to detect and ID a threat. How resistant to degradation by the enemy your radar is will be far more important than the range’s number you’re able to put on a PR presentation.

I’ve found that claim although I do not know how credible it is.

According to a calculation by a senior EADS radar expert, the Captor-E, which will use 1,426 T/R modules and is scheduled to be integrated onto the Eurofighter Typhoon in 2015, is capable of recognizing the F-35 at around 59 kilometers away.

If true it mean that IR technologies that are now able to detect aircraft between 40 to 80 km on average are becoming far more effective than radar.

It’s only theoretical but I believe radar performances (without enemy degradation been taken into account) will be roughly equal at ranges up to 100km. Beyond the efficiency of the cooling pump, the power output and the quality of T/R modules used will be far more important (increasingly) than anything else including the size of the antenna and the number of T/R modules present.
Although I haven’t been able to find exact numbers that would allow us to see if the EFT has a significantly bigger nose (feel free to provide them), the quality of the cooling pump is what is going to set the CAPTOR and RBE-2 apart. 200 or 300 more modules on a antenna does not translate into more range. It may be higher reliability, better multi-modes etc. or nothing.

DASS might not have SIGNIT/ELINT capabilities but that doesn’t mean it cannot protect the EFT properly so the Rafale would not have a sure kill even if it was able to fire first and vice versa.

In the end one would have to compare the two aircraft as systems with RCS + RBE-2 + SPECTRA + Link 16 + Satellites + sensors fusion + tactics VS RCS + CAPTOR + DASS + Link 16 + sensors fusion + tactics in order to compare their effectiveness in the EM field.