the typhoon is better.
Nic

Nic,

You are behaving like a hysterical, blind, biased fool, and you’re wallowing in histrionics and dramatics. And that’s a pity, since I’m sure that you’re none of those things.

I do not omit the strengths of Rafale, indeed I have underlined how far behind Typhoon is when it comes to current multi role capabilities and weapons integrations. As always I’m far more balanced than you and your kind, as I’m prepared to concede that both Typhoon and Rafale have both advantages and disadvantages.

But the point is that someone held up the Swiss evaluation as some kind of proof of Rafale’s supposed superiority in the kind of close in, WVR combat practised in DACT, which is ironic, because that’s just about the only Rafale strength that the Swiss report did not highlight, and indeed the only credits it gave to Typhoon were those that are most relevant in this area.

That’s not ‘lying by omission’ it’s directly answering a specific point.

As to Rafale’s underpowered engines and marginal supercruise capabilities, the Rafale fanboys all dismissed the accusations as lies, but, as Scorpion points out, they are proved to have a real basis in fact.

And the recent quotes (to say nothing of Frisian Flag) do tend to demonstrate that Typhoon is pretty dominant in the air-to-air arena. That really shouldn’t come as a shock to anybody.

Toan,

That is “A piece of cake that should have been ready several years ago,” hence my use of the 😮

I’m still not sure who should have paid for an early integration of capabilities not then required by the partner air forces, however!

As to whether potential foreign customers still have no clue as to when specific advanced capabilities and weapons integrations will be ready, my impression is that things are changing very rapidly indeed on that front, and that while that may have been true last year, it’s less true now, and becoming progressively less so. I assume that those with sufficiently big chequebooks know more about it than I do……

I would add to Nicolas10 points that some of Lake claims are factually wrong like the Dutch evaluation was conducted by the CBC bureau. Just look at the dutch press :

http://vorige.nrc.nl/nieuwsthema/jsf/article1977507.ece/Vergelijken_van_papieren_vliegtuigen

and if it was a pure commercial/industry works as he claims the result would look completely different with the F35 being probably last. So even some basic common sense collides with his claims.

Firstly, that link confirms that the evaluation was a paperwork evaluation, with no assessment of the actual aircraft (The title translates as: “Comparing paper airplanes”) and says that in the long Letter of 13 February 2002, only two paragraphs were devoted to the military qualities of the different aircraft.

Secondly, in March 2002, Flight reported that:

“Dassault and Eurofighter have told a Netherlands parliamentary defence committee that their proposals to supply fighters to the Royal Netherlands Air Force were not seriously considered by the economic affairs ministry when assessing bids to supply a future fighter.” and described the report in question as coming from: “the CPB, the Netherlands economic policy analysis office.”

Thirdly, EF GmbH have explicitly, on the record, said that the Dutch evaluation was conducted without their co-operation, and that the Dutch had no access to detailed technical data (let alone confidential data) from the EF partner companies.

Finally, you could look at the CPB report (2002/01) which contains a full description of the evaluation, and which makes it clear that the evaluation was by the CPB.

The article in question is: “Better buy JSF off-the-shelf than participate in its development”, by Martin Koning and Bert Minne. It explains that “in March 2002, the Dutch Parliament asked CPB to update this study, as conditions have changed since October 2001, when the study in hand was finished.”

Yves Robins, the Belgian former head of PR for Rafale is the only source for there having been a real world evaluation of Rafale by the Dutch.

It has been denied by others at Dassault and there was certainly never an evaluation of Typhoon (that was confirmed by Rauen and Phillipson CEO and COO of EF GmbH).

I suspect that Yves is confused, and that if there was a Dutch evaluation of the aircraft it was at another time, and in support of a different evaluation, probably by the Dutch air force/MoD (who would at least have had the means and resources to carry out an evaluation), since the three-way F-35/Rafale/Typhoon evaluation was conducted by the Dutch Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB) who are an independent economic and political research institute, and who evaluated the industrial and economic factors of a potential Dutch procurement.

Moreover, that evaluation was conducted in 2001 (the report is in the CPB publication of 1/02), at a time when any foreign interest or evaluation was so unusual as to be widely reported (the mini Norwegian evaluation of Typhoon springs to mind). Yves comments in Canada came nine years later.

I’d be interested to see any corroborative evidence of any Dutch flight evaluation of Rafale, especially in the light of the denials that it ever happened.

“The Swiss came to the conclusion that a Typhoon P1E could not close the capability gap to an upgraded AESA equiped Rafale…”

Not even that. The Swiss report judged that once a risk/credibility weighting had been applied, the P1E Typhoon didn’t score as high as Rafale. It could be that the upgraded Rafale was leagues ahead, but that the upgrade was viewed as being unlikely to happen and so the weighted score reflected only a relatively narrow victory. That’s not probable though. Much more logical and likely is that the Swiss judged that there was a real risk that P1E would not happen, or would not be exactly as advertised, or would be late, and that the Typhoon score was heavily penalized by the risk weighting.

Moreover in this context (of WVR combat) the Swiss judged that Typhoon had better performance, lower pilot workload, and was superior in ‘engagement’.

There are very many reasons for Rafale fans to be inordinately pleased with what the Swiss report said, but this is perhaps not one of them.

(I can happily accept that the Swiss preferred what they saw of Rafale to what they saw of Typhoon, just as the French ought to be happy to concede that the Saudis and the Singaporeans reached a different conclusion).

Eagle 1 raised an interesting point:

“I don’t think he has been contradicted by any official RAF source as far as I know…….. both Grandclaudon (squadron commander) and captain Romain think that the rafale is by far superior in the AtA arena. They put there name and reputation at stake which is far more credible than a pure PR paper.”

The French are unusually open in claiming victories (I don’t want to be controversial, so I’m not going to use value-laden language, I’m not going to make comparisons with Clostermann, and I’m not going to speculate about psychology).

Other air forces (and especially the RAF) have a different approach, emphasizing ‘deeds not words’, and with a more circumspect approach to discussing the results of exercises and DACT. There are practical reasons for this. There has always been a huge reluctance by RAF pilots to talk about how they fare in DACT with UK-based USAFE units, for example. When the RAF wins, they stay silent, as it is felt that to embarrass one’s training partners by highlighting their weaknesses would put future co-operation in jeopardy. When the RAF loses, they stay silent as they don’t want to highlight weaknesses to potential enemies. The same approach extends to other opponents. The RAF are never going to come back from Magic Carpet, boasting about how they ‘whupped’ the Omanis, because they value the training, and don’t want to jeopardise future opportunities.

In Lightning days, the RAF was used to winning against all comers. In Phantom days the odds were closer, and in F3 days, WVR was always challenging. With the Typhoon, the RAF is again used to ruling the roost (especially since the introduction of the HEA) as Frisian flag demonstrated. But you’re still unlikely to find named RAF pilots talking about the results of DACT without a really major shift in policy.

I think that this policy is mistaken, and that the French approach is a better one. No-one is pulling out of training with the Rafale, after all.

The inability of the RAF to officially refute the half truths, exaggerations and distortions offered up by the French side about ATLC and Solenzara is frustrating, but should not be taken as being an indication that the claims made are in any way accurate.

To paraphrase Kovy, this doesn’t change the fact that the Rafale has had its share of defeats at the hands of Typhoon on a regular basis!

Nor does it change the fact that:

“As of today a Rafale brings much more value to a battle field being able to do much more things.”

As of tomorrow, however, with P1E, the gap will be narrowed, and there is every sign that the pace of integrating new capabilities is accelerating dramatically. P1E will not give Typhoon a stand off weapon in AASM’s class, nor a strategic capability. Nor will Typhoon have a strike capability, or an anti-ship missile like Exocet. Nor will ROVER make Litening into a recce tool in the same class as Reco NG. Rafale will remain more versatile, with a wider suite of capabilities.

But Typhoon will at last be a fully Swing-Role/Omni role fighter, capable of simultaneous air-to-air and air-to-ground engagement.