The point isn’t that the Rhinos are led by a Wing Commander – that’s entirely to be expected – it’s that they have so many! And no UK observer would expect that.

An RAF Eurofighter squadron has one Wing Commander, a couple of squadron leaders (up to four) and eight or nine more junior blokes.

The Rhinos have four Wing Commanders alone – and a large number of Squadron leaders. They are a very top-heavy, very experienced bunch of operators.

It’s interesting, but probably not worthy of comment until the Indian side claims that:

“the RAF fielded some of their most-experienced and highly-qualified pilots, some of them being very senior performance evaluators in active service, the IAF pilots were a mix of ‘young to middle-level pilots’ from the ‘Rhinos’ squadron.”

Which is an inversion of the truth.

Naturally, the F-22 will be under tighter constraints when firing missiles – firing weapons from an internal bay is more difficult in some cases – and can require more powerful ejector rams. The F-22 may be constrained by bay/airflow interaction and may not be able to launch across such a wide envelope as an aircraft simply ejecting a missile from a discrete pylon.

But any such limitations will be small, and the firing envelope, if smaller at all, will only be marginally smaller.

There are big questions on F-22, but this isn’t one of them, in my view.

1) DJ Cross makes a good point – and it might usefully be added that a missile’s effective range is also a function of radar range. If you can’t support a missile before it goes active, then the missile is wasted.
2) The figures you give are, in any case, incorrect even as an indication of the Mica performance modelled by JOUST
3) If JOUST was good enough to earn such high praise from Rand, then it’s plainly a useful tool.
4) The Rafale’s relatively poor showing was more to do with its relatively modest supersonic agility, acceleration, and inability to maintain energy in a supersonic BVR engagement, together with its more limited gimbal, and low radar range (especially at the gimbal/azimuth limit).
5) JOUST did not and could not evaluate the areas where Rafale is most impressive – swing role ops where a robust self defence/self escort capablity augments an air-to-ground tasking, for example – or taking a missile shot during a PGM engagement.

I think I have an indication, perhaps, but certainly not an answer.

An interesting comparison of two closely comparable aircraft – designed with similar role optimisations and constraints.

The difficulty is which Rafale and which Super Hornet?

F1? F2? F3? Roadmap? Block 1? Block 2?

The Super Hornet has a great ability to point the nose, and very good very high Alpha handling, but in most configurations, you’d have to expect Rafale to be more agile at more representative WVR speeds.

The F2 Rafale has a real edge in medium range passive visident thanks to the TV/laser OSF channel,

But without an HMSS or HMD (and with Hornet having JHMCS) any advantage enjoyed by Rafale would seem to be eroded somewhat.

You’d have to prefer APG-73 to the PESA RBE2 for BVR, but RBE2 for air-to-ground and swing role missions, while a max load of Micas might do better than the Super Bug’s AMRAAMs in some scenarios and not in others.

I’d expect Rafale to have a marginally lower RCS, clean, but for that advantage to be eroded by SH’s LO coatings.

I haven’t seen reliable figures for Super Hornet’s supersonic acceleration, and supersonic turn rate, but I’d suspect a Rafale edge.

When service Rafales get DVI, they’ll enjoy a useful edge over SH in the BVR pre-engagement/target sort phase, while Raytheon’s plans to use their AESA array as a high bandwidth datalink is potentially ‘interesting’. But until then, both aircraft have similar L16 datalinks and similar MMI.

Silve and Joust both put Rafale marginally ahead of the Super Hornet in BVR – I suspect that APG-79 will eventually tip the balance, unless and until the Rafale AESA fulfils expectations, and Meteor will tip it back.

When it comes to air-to-ground, I’d give it to Rafale over Block 1 Super Hornet for the spectrum of useful weapons, survivability and radar capabilities.

No, I don’t already know the answer.

I’d be staggered if the French didn’t get something – even if it were only a simple helmet mounted cueing system like the RAF Jags had. It’s becoming an absolute essential for A-G use, as well as A-A.

No helmet at all means no updating the nav kit via helmet sightline, no recce pod or LDP pointing by the same means, more difficult target confirmation in ops against time sensitive targets, and no off boresight target designation.

I have always thought that the EF partner nations were irresponsible and stupid to be waiting until 2008 for a helmet, and that they should have gone for an interim helmet.

Rafale without a helmet will be stupidly and unnecessarily constrained. Utter madness. I find it almost impossible to believe.

(Before Paris I didn’t know that the F-22 wasn’t going to have a helmet, either).

Kovy,

Quite apart from bringback concerns, the carriage of underwing Exocet would be limited by the potential asymmetry after one was fired. I would suspect that would rule out the outboard pylon, while the inboard pylon might be ruled out by plume effects, or by asymmetry on approach.

Even if it were possible, is there a requirement for multiple Exocet carriage?

Would the Marine National be willing to fund the cost of clearance trials?

Nick,
The carriage of AAMs in Afghanistan was limited by clearance of mixed loads simultaneously, not by an inability to carry AAMs at all.

TMor,
Though Rafale M has flown with 2,000 litre tanks, and has done so on the carrier (most recently during CDG7) these are still subsonic only, and operational aircraft on board the CDG use the 1,250 litre tanks.