France Still Mulling Dual-Mode Brimstone

The gun will always kill.

Amen

At a quick glance I refer you to French Strategy and BW on his more Rabid days over at strategy page (although im sure he was just trying to wind up herald) I will hasten to add that although somewhat blindly devoted to Rafale he does concede typhoon has good points.

You can hardly compare personal fan’s opinion with official statement by PR representative, ministers, publications etc. The recent rant from Cameron is a example of such behaviour. One would expect more professionalism from such people.

This is where I started the conversation today Im not aware that anyone has claimed that typhoons Radar is better than Rafales in anything but range.
I agree with youre previous regarding unknowns such as software and components and any EMI/EMC issues, but we have similar if not the same engineers, similar access to technology which is why im happy to assume similar capabilities. please note i dont catagorically state Typhoon Does have better range, I state that having a significantly bigger radar should bring an advantage in some areas. i will be horrified on Typhhoon if it doesnt as it would be poor engineering

Computing and electronics are quite complex fields, and I can tell you from experience than when working on large and complex software one cannot be sure of anything until it is released and the customer start been unhappy… Look at most of recent games or Microsoft releases etc. Despite spending a lot of money on testing teams, beta versions etc you always get a lot of bugs when they’re first released that are then worked on. ETF suffering from questionable management and on and off funding is disastrous for the development of any technology. It’s especially true nowadays with the importance of computers and IS technologies.

Now while it’s true that EFT has a larger antenna, nobody has of today been able to tell me the exact difference between the two and how large of an impact such a difference would be. Now assuming that both aircraft get engineering, sensor fusion and EM management right, and assuming the difference in aperture can be significant enough then I would give the EFT the edge.

released bits of Tech evaluations are not a good source to the layman as they tend to display x is better than y without context eg as you cited the swiss Typhoon scored badly on AESA because of risk.

From my careful read of the Swiss evaluation I don’t see how the result can be said not to be clear. Every summaries and subsection are quite clear about their preference. However we don’t know how they got those result exactly in the first place. But that shouldn’t be a excuse to dismiss it completely unless it can be proved that what was released was altered in any ways.
While it is true that the CAPTOR-E may have suffered because of risks factor what is the excuse for the CAPTOR-M against the PESA RBE ?
In the end I’m only using this report to politely say that unless one here is a intelligence and electronic warfare officer or a pilot, we don’t even know if during evaluation the full spectrum of the radar capabilities are demonstrated.
In the end we simply don’t know. It would be better to say both aircraft have the sensor that answer best to their actual mission requirements.

I disagree but then again different airforces may disagree with 1 or both of us

We agree on that. Mission requirements define the aircraft. Each air forces will set their own requirements. I do however notice the actual trend is to build AESA radar optimized for agility, VLO target detection and multirole usages rather than pure range.

But all of these competitions wanted a multirole aircraft perhaps rafale is simply a much better multi role aircraft (It Is) but this doesnt prove that typhoon isnt superior at A2A or has very poor range or cant drop bombs at all which is what some people appear to think.

Well… Currently EFT cannot drop bombs. Some of the RAF EFT can because of “special” modifications. By the end of this year it should be another story though. But then crews will have to be trained so I think first operational squadrons will be circa 2013-2014 for the most enthusiastic predictions.

EFT doesn’t have poor range compared to other aircraft, and in AtA configuration more than most, but in AtG it will have less range than Rafale.
Whether it’s superior in AtA is a question than has no answer. The aircraft with the more fuel, missiles, more experienced pilot and a lot of luck will win the day.

I suspect it is in some areas, but its how you apply hyperbowl.

However as I have said before this claim (Joust) was never for the Typhoon it was for typhoon and meteor in combination. I know it got misinterpreted by others and has been used as a stick by various fanboys of all ilks.

Rafale,s score was so low in the table as it was rafale/Mica.

If it was re-run today now that rafale will get meteor Rafale would be a lot higher up the table and a damn sight closer to Typhoon.

Did you know Meteor seeker is a derivative from the Aster seeker which itself is a derivative from the MICA seeker ?
The point is that simulation is moot and has no value at all except for propaganda. EFT should be a little less talk and a little more actions, then I’ll be happy to hear their claims. Until then, let’s all have a good day.

On topic

Is there any word on progress for the OSF IR replacement and is India going its own way on this or will they operate the same system as the french forces.

Regards

I believe whatever happens, Thales has a JV with Samtel that would produce the Indians IRST for their Rafale.
The FSO NG should be ready this year IIRC but I haven’t heard much about that.

http://www.defense-aerospace.com/article-view/feature/126031/**france-readies-rafale-upgrade-for-2012.html

Which is misleading since the only situation where “all things could be equal” is in a lab.

Which is why trying to compare both sensor on the fly isn’t very serious business.

Whilst i get your point it is also reasonable to assume that Rafale and Typhoon AESA will be of similar tech levels. so a not assumption of equality in modules and processing lends an advantage to the larger array, its simply physics, but i will conceede that if they make a hash of typhoons AESA

They might be of similar generation but the truth is “WE SIMPLY DON’T KNOW”. CAPTOR-E is an evolution of CAPTOR-M, I don’t know if it’s going to be that easy to replace or develop. I believe only Tranche 3 will come with the option to replace the front end with an AESA antenna. So obviously as of today we’ve no idea what that means. New architecture ? New power distribution system ? New computers ? How will they interfere with each other ? What kind of chips will be used ? How reliable are they ? What about the software (the most important issue IMO) ? Complex software require a lot of investment. Is the consortium ready to invest as much when most country that would be very interested for export are now gone ? We will only have some answer to these questions circa 2018, not before.

Additionally the only time a radar will work exactly as advertised is in a lab so its a bit moot to state its not quite real world.

We completely agree. I would had the only time a radar work as advertised is in PR publications.

Well one could argue that it appears to be the other way around from the typhoon fans point of veiw.

I’ve never read a single publication from Dassault, Thales or anybody else saying the RBE 2 was better than Typhoon. Forum is something else. One could also say that you reap what you sow. If you spend more than 10 years claiming something that’s hardly true don’t be surprised if it comes back to bit you in the ****

however I would disagree there is plenty of unwarrented criticsm of both products by detractors who do not support the other aircraft.

The only criticism I’ve heard time and time again was mainly from ET fanboys, based on ET PR and the defence press in general. Such a post from 2009 resume the views of ET fanboys and the US/UK press that have been said time and time again for as long as I remember. Note the irony that at the exact same time the Swiss were writing a very different report…

Yes and no as its the overall package that is asseseed it is possible to be deficient or excellent in some areas and be average in others.

Exact. But whether taken separately or in a package, ET claims have been proved false. While I don’t believe in 400km radar playing Mini AWAC’s for fighter aircraft the radar is still a very important and major component. No aircraft can get to a final in competition with the likes of F-15s, F-16s, Typhoon etc if it has such a handicap in term of sensor range and capability and underpowered engines.

Notably how many competitions has the typhoon been eliminated from
because of the lack of a2G integration and lack of confidence in this happening.

Lack of confidence in other capabilities or not, I don’t see a single competition were ET shined thanks to its superior, long range radar.

I think my point was is it isnt a defficiency of the Rafale ita an advantage of the typhoon.

We all know and agree that the PESA was a stop gap measure never intended to become the main sensor of the Rafale. It only lasted for so long because of budgetary reason. Yet if the PESA can find a way of been rated higher in the Swiss environment, how can you still talk about the advantage of Typhoon as if it was a done deal ?

1)Apples oranges Typhoon as you are so keen on pointing out still has a mechanical radar, which obviously does not have the same functional capabilities as thr rafales PESA .
It may still out range it or have other advantages.

Fact is range isn’t as important as it once was and certainly not enough to impress anyone.

2 we dont actually know what the criteria were for the competitions so perhaps any advantage offered by the typhoon was considered superfluos and therefore not worth paying for.

Really ? Second in AtA only to the F-22, marvellous radar, marvellous high speed manoeuvrability, marvellous TWR, marvellous AAM, marvellous self protection suite, will eat Rafale for breakfast… Yet the only constant in most of the recent competition was the Rafale. How come ? Rafale vs F-15, Rafale vs F-35, Rafale vs SH, Rafale vs ET…

Note both Aircraft passed the indian technical assesment so clearly the rafales radar and engines are not crap. conversly you also need to accept that the typhoon is not a complete dog either.

And I do. A accept that Typhoon as of today is doing what it was designed to day as good as any F-15, Su-27 if not even better at time. However since I keep reading about ET superiority against any other aircraft but the F-22, I’ve to say well let’s see if that’s actually true… And it isn’t.

At the radar antenna the received power PE is dependent on the power density at the receiving site se and the effective antenna aperture AW.
PE = Se · AW
PE = received power [W]
AW = effective antenna aperture [m²]
http://www.radartutorial.eu/01.basics/rb13.en.html
In other words cut the area in half and you also cut the received power in half.
From this we can derive that to compensate for half the area, it takes twice as much output.
But in reality it takes more than twice the output to compensate, since higher power increase noise, in addition to offering poorer directional accuracy and being more in-discrete.

If we buy the assumption that radar is merely for guiding a missile, and max theoretical range of radar need only range of max theoretical range for missile,
-what happen if we also assume EW degrade radar by 50% ?

The introduction of true BVR missiles like Meteor also greatly complicate and decrease usefulness of AWAC’s, since they now have to stay far behind,
or be lost.

You do realize your article is only applicable for M-Scan right ?
You also realise that if the enemy counter measures is capable to degrade your main radar by half then, there is little chance in hell your even smaller less powerful radar on your AAM is going to be effective ?

The question as such isn’t whether or not size matter since we know and agree that it does. The question is how much do you need to start gaining significant performance increase in accordance to your system ?

The answer is we do not know enough about ET and Rafale or other aircraft architecture to know for a fact that 1300 module is better than 1200. In theory it should all things been equal. In practice computer speed and power, electric power and reliability, heat, software etc will all contribute.
We know the differences between M-Scan and ESA architecture and we know that if AdA was trying to compete on pure range’s performance they would have fitted the RDY-3. We know that RBE has never been publicly criticized by any country that has evaluated the Rafale, except the UAE (that makes it the exception and not the rule) and that the RBE wasn’t a problem in many finale against larger sized aircraft like F-15 and Typhoon.

It is accepted that the RBE do not exceed the CAPTOR but only ET fanboys are going as far as talking about Rafale undersized radar leading to less performances etc. Russian aircraft have often had strong radar with very good pure range performances, that doesn’t mean Western aircraft are necessarily in a disadvantage.
ET simply tried to outperformed the Su-27 by been fixated with doing better in all field. I’ve no doubt the long range CAPTOR will prove extremely effective against Russian long range heavy bombers…

The Air Force is not looking at price. That’s not our area of concern. What we want is QRs are focussed on technical aspects, latest technology
Air Marshal PK Barbora, Ex Vice Chief of Air Staff

The USA has been rocked by the elimination of the F-16 (always a long-shot due to its operation by neighbouring Pakistan), and even more so by claims that the Super Hornet failed to meet India’s technical requirements. Boeing officials were certain that the US Navy’s main strike fighter would be toughing it out with the Rafale and Typhoon when the shortlist emerged, and the Department of Defense’s reaction of being “deeply disappointed” was a massive understatement.

There are other comments by Indian officials, I’m sure you can find them yourself. There is a reason why the US is now lobbying the F-35…

the plane has never fared really well in comparisons and evaluations made in India

Hum… I think I must start to reconsider my opinion about French politicians… They must be so damn good !:D

Must be Carla… It has to be 😉