JackonickoEveryone’s looking at them (wasn’t there something in Av Week or Flight t’other day?) but I don’t think anyone has them in operational service.
JackonickoArthuro,
The significance of the 125 kg weapon isn’t that you can chuck it further – it’s that it provides a lower net explosive effect, and thereby reduces collateral damage, and potentially allows employment closer to your own troops.
Anyone who saw them loading inert concrete Paveways onto Tornados to provide a lower collateral damage weapon will realise the significance of a 250-lb weapon. The question might even be why aren’t we talking about a 62 kg weapon?
But perhaps weapons like AASM are an interim step before we see individually guided 70-mm rockets?
JackonickoI was accentuating the positive, Scorps.
Rafale’s a fine A-G aircraft, with great potential in post Cold War CAS scenarios…..
The few, minor shortcomings that Rafale has in the A-G role (and it’s already a good A-G aeroplane) are cheaply and easily fixed.
I wouldn’t go along with the idea that it ‘leaves Eurofighter in the dust’ – but I would say that Rafale does have inherent advantages, and has moved well ahead when it comes to getting particular A-G capabilities into service.
Addressing Rafale’s A-A shortcomings mean a new radar, a new engine, a full HMD, sorting OSF properly, etc. It’s a rather more expensive undertaking. Without those improvements, Rafale will struggle to win competitive evaluations which involve any emphasis on A-A. Even against aircraft that are markedly inferior overall (like the F/A-18 and F-15), but which have better A-A capabilities – as happened in Korea and Singapore. The same would have happened had Rafale been properly and fully bid in Saudi Arabia, against an aircraft with adequate A-G capability and better A-A capabilities.
JackonickoI don’t know if you need a full HMD for A-G, and if holding out for one prevents integration of a cheaper, simpler, HMS, then pushing for Gerfaut may do great damage to Rafale.
It’s a similar story with data links – for CAS and A-G missions you may not need full Link 16, if you have IDM (and RAIDS as poor man’s JTIDS!).
A two-seat Rafale with tanks, A-A weapons, three AASMs, three light dual mode bombs, and rocket pods would be a useful CAS platform, better than a Super Hornet (and, unless you had a real need for radar performance) better than an F-15E.
But I don’t know whether such mixed loads are fully cleared. I’ve seen no evidence that they are.
JackonickoYou’re quite right!
My visual memory had entirely deserted me. I’d quite forgotten that it had a tank as well at Farnborough.
By gum that was an impressive display, and had I not seen them close up, with my own eyes, I’d have sworn that the bombs were fibreglass dummies.
But (especially at the moment) 1,000-lb LGBs are not the ‘weapon of choice’, and Rafale’s ability to carry triple clusters of baby LGBs or AASMs is enviable and much more relevant. Bung Litening on Rafale, give it a helmet and something like IDM and you’d have a really compelling A-G package.
Typhoon’s A-A advantages are substantial, however, with significantly better radar range (especially at the wider limits of azimuth cover), while the aircraft’s supersonic agility, acceleration and rate of climb are all of a higher level of magnitude.
But that’s all irrelevant if you want a long range bomb truck and you already have air dominance. And depending on what opposition you’re facing, and what exchange ratio you deem acceptable, Typhoon might be viewed as being a bit ‘gold plated’ even for A-A.
When choosing a new fighter, it could quite easily come down to cost, or to through life costs, or to industrial advantage, or politics…….
…….. which is why it’s so interesting, at the moment.
JackonickoLurker? It took me eight hours to respond.
I’m not sure that they flew six 1,000-lb LGBs and a tank.
Yes it’s a relatively short range configuration (that’s why we have tankers), but you could obviously fly full A-A, four 1,000-lb bombs and two tanks. But the real reason to criticise this loadout is that it’s based on 1,000-lb LGBs, which are too big for many current scenarios.
What Typhoon lacks is a 250-lb (or 500-lb) PGM, and a stand off PGM like AASM (or a Brimstone variant, perhaps?). I’d also like to see an early integration of CRV7.
I would tend to agree that Rafale is a better heavy attack aircraft than Typhoon, though since EF can carry a pair of Storm Shadows (or four or six big LGBs), I’d say that it has a pretty respectable heavy capability. But yes, Rafale has a definite advantage, whether that advantage is ‘real world relevant’ or not.
Just as Typhoon has real world advantages in the A-A role.
Jackonicko“-new config planned : 4 Mica + 3 AASM + 3 GBU-12/22 + 1 GBU-24 (and Damocles) + 2x 2000L tanks……… Either way, it leaves the EF in the dust.”
That’s a pretty extravagant and exaggerated conclusion, Eagle. No-one would deny that Rafale is ahead of Typhoon when it comes to progress in the A-G role, and in terms of integrating kit.
Typhoon’s A-G capabilities are formidable – with a demonstrated ability to carry six 1,000-lb LGBs and a full A-A load, and with Litening III.
The Rafale is better optimised for A-G, and will always be a better low level platform, with longer reach in the A-G role, and it does offer key capabilities NOW that Typhoon won’t have for a little while – the ability to carry mixed loads (have they done it in frontline service, though?), triple carriage of smaller weapons (hat’s off to ‘les French’ for that), and a good stand-off PGM (AASM is a really enviable weapon).
But the Rafale has A-G shortcomings, too. No helmet, a crippled OSF from F2 onward, and no DVI.
JackonickoIt’s a generalisation, of course, but one with a real basis in fact.
RAF engineers experienced a culture shock when the service got a new generation of US built aircraft in the late 60s – notably the C-130 and F-4 – both of which were very different to their UK (and European) counterparts. The F-4 was compared (as a carrierborne aircraft) to the milled-from-solid Buccaneer, while the Herc was compared to the Argosy, Belfast and Britannia.
Structural problems (albeit minor ones) emerged almost immediately, causing headaches to the senior eng branch officers at HQ STC and MoD by 1970-75.
But the problems were manageable, and the Herc was everything that the Argosy was not.
RAF engineers on exchange who were exposed to the L188 and P-3, and to the C-141, found aircraft whose vulnerability to fatigue problems were shockingly new.
JackonickoThe Longerons cost about $1,000 each if manufactured in small batches. The full repair scheme is costed at $250,000 per jet, which means that you could do 488 for the marginal cost of an extra F-22.
Bargain basement stuff, unless having done the repair you find that a rib somewhere else has a similar manufacturing problem.
Building an aircraft for 4,000 hours is positively ‘Soviet’ – especially of extensions are difficult or costly. Before they retired, the RAF’s Jags had been cleared to 7,500 hours, and the Tornados can go to more than 6,000 hours.
But then experienced aircraft engineers who have been around a bit will tell you that many US designs are structurally flimsy compared to their European equivalents.
Jackonicko“manufacturing defects that could potentially cause fatigue cracking have been detected in a further 182 F-15A-Ds.”
I wonder whether the faulty parts are as common in all models, or more common in particular variants/batches?
The repair cost is negligible – but is there a concern that the longeron manufacturing defect represents the tip of an iceberg when it comes to F-15 structural parts?
JackonickoF-35 will replace the ‘Heritage Hornet’ in the CVWs.
Does anyone know whether there are still any A/A+ models on the frontline? There were a couple of units with APG-73 equipped As, IIRC. VMFA-115 was one, VFA-201 was another.
JackonickoIt’s unduly simplistic to dismiss Sandys as a clown – he acted on the best advice he was given, and was receptive to some ideas as a result of his own experiences.
Though it’s convenient shorthand to call it the “Sandys White Paper” he was only the Minister of Defence, and the White Paper was drawn up by his Department, in consultation with the Chiefs of Staff, and was approved by the PM of the day, and the Cabinet.
It’s highly likely that any other politician of his age and background would have produced a similar White Paper in 1957, and you must remember that very few criticised it at the time!
Sandys (who was Churchill’s son-in-law) died in the late 1980s, in his eighties.
He was an MP from 1935 (apart from the period 45-50) until 1974.
His military service was with a Territorial artillery unit pre-war, and then he fought with the British Expeditionary Force in Norway. He was wounded in action, giving him a permanent limp. He resigned his commission in 1946.
He was in thrall of missiles and unmanned weapons, partly because he had been the Chairman of a War Cabinet Committee responsible for defence against German flying bombs and rockets.
The White Paper urged industry consolidation (which was vital), ended National Service (conscription) and restructured and reduced the size of the Army to reflect peacetime/Cold War needs. Apart from the misguided thinking on the replacement of manned aircraft by missile systems, the White Paper was pretty well thought out and made necessary changes that helped improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the armed forces and defence industries.
The effects of the White Paper were detailed in a recent article in Air International. In short, though, ALL manned fighter programmes planned at that time (apart from the Mk 1 Lightning) were cancelled, and the TSR2 proceeded as pretty well the only fully funded bomber programme – primarily for out of area ops.
There is a reasonable Wiki entry on the White Paper at
JackonickoThe Sea Harrier did have an F95 camera, and so could do a little recce – and the jet was cleared for carriage of the Vinten GP-1 pod, though I don’t know if it was ever used by the squadrons.
The Typhoon will have some recce capabilities by dint of ground-mapping radar modes, its ESM and RWRs (enough to justify an R in the designation themselves), and will have an impressive additional NTISR capability thanks to the Litening III pod. Bear in mind that when the Tornado force replaced TIALD with Litening in theatre, the GR4s stopped carrying an LDP and a JRP pod, since Litening had sufficient recce capability to allow it to replace both. It certainly has as much R-for-Recce capability as the Harrier GR3, 5, 7 or the Tornado GR1, 4.
It’s not what an old fart like me would think of as recce (I remember Hunter FR10s and tactical Canberra PR7s), but it probably represents a more useful recce capability than those ‘traditional’ jets had.
It could be argued that the Block 2B Typhoon already had enough recce capability to justify an R in its designation, and since it could carry and deliver A-G weapons (albeit with no autonomous designation capability) perhaps a G as well.
JackonickoI hoiked the Air Command press release out of my e-mail inbox.
This is what it said:
23 Nov 07
NEW DESIGNATION FOR TYPHOON IN ROYAL AIR FORCE SERVICE
The latest and most capable versions of Typhoon, the Royal Air Force’s state-of-the-art multi-role fighter, have been given new designations to signify the addition of surface attack capabilities.
The initial production aircraft, capable of employment in the air defence role only, were known as Typhoon T Mk 1, for the two-seat variant, and Typhoon F Mk 2 for the single seat variant.
New “Mark” numbers have now been assigned to both single-seat and twin-seat Typhoons which have been upgraded or built new to so-called Block 5 standard, which adds surface attack and reconnaissance capabilities to the aircraft’s existing air defence capability.
Thus, the upgraded two-seat aircraft are now Typhoon T Mk 3s (abbreviated Typhoon T3), and the upgraded single-seater aircraft are Typhoon FGR Mk 4s (abbreviated Typhoon FGR4). The FGR designation denotes Fighter, Ground Attack and Reconnaissance.
Notes for Editors:
1) Firm orders have been placed so far for 144 Typhoons for the Royal Air Force (RAF), divided into two Tranches. Most of the 53 Tranche 1 aircraft are of the earlier Block 1 and Block 2 variants, but all of these will eventually be upgraded to Block 5 standard. All of these aircraft have now flown.
2) Delivery of 91 of the upgraded Tranche 2 aircraft to the RAF is due to begin late next year. Discussions continue on a possible Tranche 3.
3) Typhoon has been developed by Eurofighter, a four-nation consortium which includes Germany, Italy and Spain as well as the United Kingdom, and is in front-line service with all four nations’ air forces.
4) Typhoon is also entering service with the Austrian Air Force, which has 15 on order. Saudi Arabia has announced that it intends to acquire 72 Typhoons, the first of which are expected to be delivered during the course of next year.
It’s not a link to an online source, so I could have made it all up, of course, complete with the deliberate mistakes….
JackonickoThere can be little doubt that the Avon Mirage would have been superior – but would it have been worth the extra cost? Would it have been worth the risk of being a ‘unique operator’ with all that entailed for support costs and service costs?
And the Mirage III was never expected to serve for long – it was intended as an interim type, and cost was king.
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