This is supposed to be a Rafale news thread, and I regret dragging it further into the usual Typhoon/Rafale willy-measuring contest.

However, accusations have been made, and they need to be answered, and I hope that I can do so without gratuitously knocking Rafale, and certainly without resorting to nonsensical claims, or making very skewed interpretations of the facts.

No-one would claim that the Typhoon is AS operational in the Air-to-Ground role as the Rafale is. It is, however, ‘operational’, albeit in a limited way.

(So limited, in fact, that I wouldn’t use TMor’s phrase “a combat proven multi role fighter.” It’s technically, factually correct, I suppose, but it seems a bit much.)

I wouldn’t want to describe the Rafale as a ‘Jack of All Trades’, because that would infer mere competence, rather than the excellent ratings it enjoys in so many areas. By any normal (non French) yardstick, I’m quite a fan of the little Rafale, it’s just that I don’t think that it’s 100% perfect, and nor do I think that it’s the best fighter in service today, so to its more avid fans, I seem to be a ‘knocker’.

Nor would I claim that Typhoon will ever gain all of Rafale’s capabilities. It will never be a nuclear bomber, and I suspect we’ll never see a carrier version. There will be other niche capabilities that Typhoon may never gain.

Rafale enjoys multiple capabilities, and it has an excellent suite of A-G weapons, that will only be further enhanced if the AdlA acquire Brimstone, and if they get a better targeting pod than the mediocre Damocles. One hopes that talks with LM about Sniper come to fruition.

Typhoon will eventually gain most of the same capabilities, though I’d still see a need for a weapon in the same class as W-AASM. But Typhoon is superior to Rafale in some areas, and will gain superiorities in some others, while it will remain weaker in some areas too.

At the moment, Typhoon’s air-to-ground capabilities are of course limited, but the point is that it is operational in the role, and that it did better than most of us expected in that role, in combat, in Libya.

Firstly, the thing about Dynamic (as opposed to pre-planned) targeting, is that it requires flexibility and adaptability, and the ability to rapidly retask. The simple fact is that figures issued by the CAOC and shown by AOC 1 Group and OC XI Squadron during their pre-RIAT press briefing show that the UK performed the lions share of these missions requiring reactive, dynamic targeting.

It’s not about hitting moving targets (though Typhoon did that, too), though I would say that a moving target engagement capability perhaps has more to do with one’s choice of pod than with the aircraft.

Talking of official figures, I’m looking forward to more of the facts and figures some of us have seen from the CAOC to be made public. I’m especially keen to see highlighted which combat aircraft used in the Libya operation had the largest number of non-accomplished missions due to weapons integration issues, for example.

And I’m also keen for someone to publicise which aircraft struggled to keep flying the very long range sorties due to fuel transfer and engine related problems.

Secondly, it’s simply inaccurate to suggest that in order for Typhoon “to be effective it was required to be pair with a Tornado despite all the excuses/justifications.”

Typhoons did operate in mixed pairs with Tornado, and the arrangement proved advantageous to both sides, as is apparent from the public pronouncements from Sammy S, Rupert Joel, Jez Attridge and Dicky Patounas.

But Typhoons also operated on their own, in the air-to-ground role, with conspicuous success, and were able at least to attack multiple targets in a single pass, and they used Litening to perform a limited recce role.

In addition, there were many instances when Typhoon spiked for Tornado (including some instances where the Typhoon pilot had not previously been A-G qualified on Typhoon), and many instances where the only aircraft with an LDP in a formation was the Typhoon. (This was the case during the 19 PWIV attack by Tornados, for example).

I’m not diminishing what Rafale achieved (though I would suggest that the picture, though ‘magnifique’ may be slightly less rosy than the cheerleaders paint). Nor would I want to over-egg the Typhoon pudding.

Typhoon went to war with just one weapon, after all, and arguably not a very useful one in the Libyan context. OK, you can drop concrete EPW2s for reduced collateral damage (they did) and you can reduce the fill of the warhead for less net explosive effect, but being limited to one bomb type is clearly not ideal.

P1EA will improve things, but only by making the aircraft reliant on a different and more useful type of bomb, and until Typhoon gets Brimstone/SPEAR and wider bomb clearances, and Storm Shadow, then the UK will still need to retain Tornados.

But the idea that Typhoon is utterly incapable and needed its hand holding by Tornado is facile and asinine, and very far from the truth.

A 9/10 score for Rafale in Libya is a great success, of course, but it’s 1 point short of where some of us expected it to be. 7/10 for Typhoon is clearly less impressive, but it’s one or two points better than most of us expected.

With regard to MarcDave’s 75% point….

If you take overall programme cost and divide it by 160 aircraft, instead of 232, then the price does shoot up alarmingly. However, if you still build the missing 72 aircraft and sell them to Saudi Arabia for a massive amount of money, shouldn’t the amount that you receive be taken into account?

If you buy two cars for £59,000 each, then you have paid £118,000 for the fleet. If you want to buy any more, they will cost you £59,000 each. If you then sell one of the cars, is the unit cost suddenly £118,000? And say you sold the second car for £75,000? What’s the cost to you of the car you have kept?

But we’re talking about unit programme cost, not unit production cost, or the marginal cost of building an extra Typhoon, and it is that (plus a compulsory export levy in the case of export customers) which determines the price of Typhoon. And we know that the unit price has been in the £42.42-£46 m range. I’d venture to suggest that that is ‘in the same ballpark’ as the price being paid by the AdlA for Rafale.

Peter G,
In the UK, the HEA has been in use by No.17 Squadron for a very long time. The decision was taken to wait until it could be issued force wide, rather than trickling it out to some pilots, or on a squadron-by-squadron basis. This meant that on a given Monday morning, the whole force could be handed their helmets, given the user guide, received the lecture from the 17 Squadron helmet SME (who has more than 200 hours helmet time) and go off and start using it. This meant that the RAF had to wait until sufficient helmets were ready to be issued to every pilot. This finally happened in October.

NB that it’s a fully binocular system with full overlaid symbology and imagery. In the light of recent pronouncements on the JSF helmet, and what we read about Top Owl, this is significant.

The selection of Gripen doesn’t make this a moot point at all. But hey, you wouldn’t miss an opportunity to twist the perception of facts when they favour Rafale, would you ?

There are no points for second place, Thomas. That’s what I call moot!

Singapore…..So, for once, show your “evidence”.

Don’t need to. Everyone who spoke to the Singaporeans, or to those involved in the evaluation knows exactly what happened. But it’s certainly moot, I’ll grant you.

An elimination never communicated to the French side, only to some media.

Funny. Dassault people certainly knew all about it, and so did those who lobbied for Rafale’s reinstatement.

What would Boeing have to do with this ?

Well as the winning competitor in South Korea, they knew what happened, surprisingly.

I enjoyed your final para, Thomas. Very good!

Best wishes.

Tskk, things don’t change, it seems. :rolleyes:

You don’t, clearly.

2012: Maiden flight of first Rafale (Rafale C) with productional RBE-2AA radar.

2013:
* French AF will get five Rafale B/Cs with RBE-2AA radar by the end of that year.
* French Navy will begin to introduce Rafale M with productional RBE-2AA radar during that year.

Early 2014: First FAF Rafale squadron with RBE-2AA radar becomes operational.

Still such a pleasure to read from you.

He asked: “Correct me if I am wrong….”

He was.

He was corrected.

The Swiss did at least fly the various aircraft, whereas the Dutch evaluation was a paperwork exercise, with no access to the aircraft, and conducted by the Dutch CBP (the Dutch Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis) an independent economic and political research institute that has been criticised for its lack of insight and technical knowledge of the programmes it has scrutinised. The CBP analysed the three aircraft on economic and industrial grounds, and not on technical grounds nor on the basis of real world capability.

No evaluation team visited Warton prior to the CBP evaluation, and no Dutch pilot flew the aircraft. EF GmbH submitted no bid, no price, and no specification, and nor did Dassault.

If it’s NG, then it’s not just ‘good enough for Switzerland’ but better for Switzerland than Rafale. It has a better radar (thanks to the repositioner), it has a helmet sight, and it has better take off and landing performance. Industrially, the Swedes are peerless when it comes to delivering offsets, etc.

No, the Swiss aren’t going to have such a good long range heavy attack aircraft as they’d have had if they’d bought Rafale. They’re not going to be carrying multiple Scalps over long distances. No, they’re not going to have an atom bomber. No they’re not going to have such a good BVR fighter as they’d have had if they’d bought Typhoon.

But they will have an aircraft that’s well matched to the capabilities they need most, and one which won’t ‘break the bank’ and one that will provide lots of work for Swiss industry.

Congratulations to Saab and the Gripen team.

I offer this snippet without bias.

Talking to people from all three sides in Dubai, there seems to be a consensus that if the Swiss ‘rubber stamp’ the conclusions of the 2008/9 reports, then selection of Rafale is still the most probable outcome.

If however, there is renewed pressure on cost, then Gripen is still in with a chance, albeit an outside chance.

And if the Swiss choose to look again at the aircraft, then Typhoon is considerably more mature, and therefore more compelling, than it was in 2009, and with a more credible (I only say more credible…) and robust path to AESA and certain other capabilities.

There’s also the question as to which way India jumps – since whoever wins in India gains a new source of funding for upgrades and improvements.

My money’s still on Rafale for this one, I have to say.

Someone on PPRuNe made the following observation:

The murder of three RAF men is recorded in the book “Footprints On The Sands Of Time” page 210.

Looking at the “Bomber Command Losses” by Bill Chorley it seems that most of the crews killed that night could be accounted for and were buried together as crews. The three men who became separated from their crews were: F/O Leon Milner (460 Sqn Lancaster PB542 coded AR-D2), F/O Michael Gisby (582 Sqn Lancaster PB544 coded 6O-?) and F/Sgt W Horlor (W /Op) (150 Sqn Lancaster NN743 coded IQ-Z).

It seems POSSIBLE that these were the three men who, separated from their crews met their deaths when they were shot, thrown over a parapet, or beaten to death. Two Germans were subsequently hanged and others given prison sentences but the names of the victims were not confirmed but it seems likely that their remains were ‘casually’ disposed of by the enemy and hence they were cremated or buried in unmarked and (postwar) unlocated graves.

Since the men were handed over to Hauptmann Heyer by the Police, there must have been a record of their identities.