the Thales Group has swallowed a lot of companies from all across the world.

Like all good corporation.

However when Thomson-CSF paid £1,300 million to buy Racal Electronics plc and became Thales in 2001, they also bought any products made by Racal Electronics plc along with any brevets and other blue prints they own.
They restructured the company the way that served them best, decided which programs to keep, which were redundant and to cancel or transfer to other office and laboratories.

Now as of May 2011, who has the ownership of the PIRATE system ? Thales.
Who is in charge to update, integrate the system ? Thales.
Who is in charge of marketing the product abroad ? Thales.

Was Thomson-CSF + Racal Electronics plc = a simple merge with both having ownership like for MBDA ? No.
Thomson-CSF + Racal Electronics plc = Thales, and Thales = french defense industry.
Who are the two main share holders of Thales ? French state (27.0%) and Dassault Aviation (25.9%) = 52.89%;

Shareholders bound by a shareholder agreement

http://www.thalesgroup.com/Group/Investors/Shareholding/

So, back to my initial statement: Thales could have use its expertise gained from the PIRATE in order to upgrade or replace the Thales FSO, but it must not have fit the bill since they are going for a FSO-NG which will take some time to fund and develop.

I never said the PIRATE was build in France, but now since you want to know, it is built by a french owned company. Why ? Because Thales UK is own by Thales groups, which is own by french. And so from what I remember from my maths classes, if A = B and B = C then A = C.

So conclusion everytime they build a Typhoon, and Thales UK put something on it… I let you guys guess the rest.

I suppose you missed this part.

Thales, in addition to acting as the technical and design authority, will also provide the complex Optical and Data Processing sub systems for this cutting edge Electro Optical sensor from its Optronics facilities in Glasgow and Staines.

http://www.thalesgroup.com/Pages/PressRelease.aspx?id=4767
(Notice that the link is from Thales website… And about your argument about Thales UK… Do you really think that McDonnald France isn’t McDonnald ?)

http://www.thalesgroup.com/Group/Global_Presence/

Thales Headquarters

Tel: +33 (0) 1 57 77 80 00
45 rue de Villiers
92526 Neuilly-sur-Seine Cedex
France

FRONT SECTOR OPTRONICS – PIRATE, FSO

Detect enemy aircraft while being undetected and immune to jamming

Our product :

-PIRATE Passive InfraRed Airborne Tracking Equipment

-FSO Front Sector Optronic

http://www.thalesgroup.com/Pages/Solution.aspx?id=2722&pid=6900

The Rafale is unique in being designed around a single missile, MICA, …. and it can attack 8 targets of them with MICA at the same time

http://weapons.technology.youngester.com/2009/09/frances-rafale-is-part-of-set-of.html
http://www.fighter-planes.com/info/rafale.htm

The bleak state of the F-35

http://www.dodbuzz.com/2011/05/19/the-bleak-state-of-the-f-35/

Top 10 list of F-35B flaws and fixes

http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/the-dewline/2011/03/top-10-list-of-f-35b-flaws-and.html#comment-8880669

With PIRATE being a dedicated IRST which is much more capable than an IR seeker on a missile such an integration would be redundant. I think the main reason for the MICA IR integration into the Rafale and the possible integration into the M2k is largely owed to the lack of an adequate IRST sensor. The one incorporated by the OSF is reportedly obsolete and doesn’t perform to the satisfaction of the AdA/MN. That’s the reason why you don’t see an IR channel being part of the improved OSF-IT. Though Thales appear to be working on a new IRST for the next evolution OSF-NG slatted for batch 5 Rafales.

Rafale was designed from the beginning even before the present FSO became “obsolete” to integrate and sensor fuse the MICA IR.
Since Thales is producing both the PIRATE and the FSO, it’s safe to say that the french want more than what the FSO and PIRATE offer.

Thales UK to supply infra red search & track for tranche 2 Typhoon aircraft

Karen Oddey, Managing Director of Thales UK’s land and joint systems business said, “This order underpins the importance of Thales’ UK Optronics capability, building on the success of the tranche 1 contract for which delivery is now well underway. The PIRATE system makes a significant contribution to the overall effectiveness of the Eurofighter Typhoon’s combat system ”

http://www.thalesgroup.com/Pages/PressRelease.aspx?id=4767
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CCsQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thalesgroup.com%2FWorkarea%2FDownloadAsset.aspx%3Fid%3D10265%26LangType%3D2057&rct=j&q=Typhoon%20pirate%20thales&ei=xOrbTdnaEsy38gOQqeDlDw&usg=AFQjCNHugQuK45QCTchjLAk5P0yDn1NCbA&cad=rja

In order to be effective, the IR seeker on a missile has its own computer and is able to differentiate a aircraft from decoys.

Obviously you don’t know how to spell French properly so maybe you shouldn’t.
You’ve just proved that you have nothing to say.

à bon entendeur, salut !

It is quite easy to calculate at around 1/10th of EF so around 0,1-0,3m².

After I don’t know how many years, we still know close to nothing about the RCS of the B2, yet apparently we know everything about the Typhoon’s and Rafale’s RCS :confused::rolleyes:…

In fact, anti-stealth will bring into question all stealth designs: How much invulnerability will current low-observability techniques offer as air defense systems adopt larger and more powerful active, electronically scanned array (AESA) radars? From the early days of AESA development, a key goal was to build a radar that could detect very small objects—such as a cruise missile at a distance great enough to target and shoot it down—or a larger object like a fighter with a very low-observable treatment.

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_generic.jsp?channel=awst&id=news/awst/2011/01/17/AW_01_17_2011_p20-281824.xml&headline=Stealthy%20Chinese%20J-20%20Vulnerable&prev=10

There are report that 3D radars are quite good against VLO aircraft, and that the French were able to detect F117 over long distance during Kosovo’s war… (though I’m still looking for reliable info on that).

I also forgot the Tiger HAP with improved stealth characteristics.

my point was that there is no proof that it has a better rcs than a typhoon. both aircraft where developed around the same time, both were designed from the outset to have reduced rcs features. i think its rather unfair to describe the typhoon as a supersonic missile platform.

Yet they were not developed for the same role. The Rafale is a multi-role a/c from the beginning with an edge as a fighter/bomber.
You cannot have a credible airborne nuclear deterrence whitout a credible aircraft system delivery (aircraft + missile + warhead). The typhoon was never design as a strategic nuclear bomber, yet, it was design in order to maintain air superiority against highly agile Soviet fighters, with powerfull radars.

Nobody ever thought at the time of sending the Typhoons alone, deep inside Soviet airspace in order to destroy ground targets, yet it was supposed to defeat Soviet AtA weapon systems (fighters + missiles).

Again the Typhoon thermal signature was studied in order to reduce it significantly, and with the increase in jamming, EM discretion, and IR detection, the Typhoon clearly was thought or at least is thought with “stealth” in mind.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIKZjARXcos

The most important question is what type of threat was the a/c designed to counter.
The F22 as a air superiority fighter might have a far better thermal signature (yet will face more EM threats) that the F35 which is supposed to be a multirole AtG fighter/bomber (and as such will face heavy IR threats), and as such no better than Typhoon and Rafale in this spectrum.

The Gripen is clairly a interceptor, with secondary multirole capabilities designed to fight over quite small areas where BVR capabilities are less important (EM threat). So the “stealth” tactics of the Gripen is to operate near the enemy using roads, and “surprising” the enemy by lauching from nowhere.