“Omnirole” seems to indicate that you believe Rafale has something that other multirole 4.5 gen fighters don’t have. Could you elaborate on that? It is not at all clear to me what that would be.

Cost is something that’s very hard to do something about. One cannot make a political decision to change the cost of an a/c.

However the US can make political decisions on what level of technology India may get and also what level of ToT. The ball is with them.

Rafale is a fantastic a/c and France can be proud of it, however the tech is not on par with what the US can deliver. That begs the question why India would go with a more expensive solution that is inferior or (best case) at the same level as what the US can offer.

I put Typhoon ahead of Rafale because I belive it’s slightly cheaper (may be wrong?) and because I think the 4 Eurofighter countries can offer an interesting partnership with lots of exciting tech transfer. NG is ranked ahead of Typhoon because of the significantly lower cost.

One thing I wonder about; when India considered the M2000 for MMRCA, were the US fighters on the table at all during that period? Or was it just between the Russian stuff and the M2000?

I thought SU-30MKI was quite good at deep strike? (well, as good as one can be with a 4. gen jet)

RCS has been reduced significantly AFAIK.

So you’re saying that the software running the RBE2AA will be basically the same as the software running the current RBE2 radar?

I thought there were some fundamental differences between the PESA and AESA that meant the software would need some (if not substantial) rewriting?

What was not available in F2 is not really of interest today if it’s available in F3, I don’t quite get your point there?

“interlacing between a/a and a/g” sounds rather fundamental to me, I really thought that was available at least in F3?

Perhaps this can help:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swashplate

Or will it just increase the confusion…?

Wanna bet that this is utter B.S. and that the AESA will climb onboard with all the same modes as the PESA?

Newer modes that were not feasible before have to be developed, sure.

:confused: As stated already I believe the modes are available in the current (non-AESA) Rafale radar.

Anyway it’s not BS, and of course it can be done the questions are when, how much will it cost, and who will pay.

With the general Alain SILVY
Deputy Chief Plans within the Staff of the Air Force.

And about the UAE demand to have a more powerful RBE2 radar, could it answer to some expectations for the Air force?

The Air Force is interested in having a RBE2 with an active antenna. It is now established with the powerful AESA antenna which will equip our tranche 4 Rafale. What the Emirians are calling for is much more complex. They want, in addition to the AESA, to have new functionalities on their Rafale, such as GMTT / GMTI (detection and tracking of moving ground target), interlacing between air/air and air/ground modes, etc.. Even if this is not for us an urgent need, the operational ‘plus’ obtained could nonetheless eventually interest us. However, the key Emirian demand is about the range of the RBE2. And, with the same antenna diameter, the only way to achieve the 10% range increase (compared with the Basic AESA F3 “roadmap”) that wish to obtain the Emirians, is a big boost to the power of the radar.

But more power to the RBE2, could it be a risk to generate serious electromagnetic interference (EMI) with the SPECTRA receptors ?

There is indeed a very real EMI risk to treat. This is the case whenever we want to change aircraft emission systems. There are solutions, obviously, but this will require to reexamine SPECTRA. But the biggest problem we have identified is about electric generation, which could be insufficient. To increase the maximum range of a few nautical miles, we would have to deeply review the electrical generation system of the aircraft.
In short, to conceive what it could be a Rafale-9, that is to say a new aircraft moving away from the similarity you want with french Rafale. The Emirati experts participating in negotiations are well aware of the problem. But they are also used to have very high quality weapons systems. They want to avoid any regression with the Rafale, at least on the radar range, compared to the F-16 Block 60, the Rafale having also many other qualities. The Emirians don’t have AWACS and therefore want – it is a fundamental requirement – that the Rafale can see very far. Beyond the radar, they are showing fairly strong requirements into SPECTRA development with, for example, the expansion of some frequency bands, an increased sensitivity, adding functionalities; in short, they want we push up the current technologies. Of course, to improve the electronic warfare of our Rafale faster than originally planned could be an additional operational advantage for the Air force. However, our current approach is to consolidate the features implemented in SPECTRA, to make them more robust and make it easier for operators and programmers before wanting to go further into addition of new capabilities. The current SPECTRA is working well and even very good. In sum, what separates us, about Spectra, is a matter of timing and calendar […]. In a more general way, we share the same wishes about capabilities, but with very different maturities calendar sometimes. Budgetary constraints remain a dimensioning factor.
[…]
How long would require the additional developments required by the UAE?

It is difficult to answer precisely this question, especially since I do not have all the elements of the problematic. The first UAE aircraft would not be delivered before 2014. This period should be sufficient to finish to develop a 9 tons M-88. About the radar, we would not probably have in 2014 all the capabilities and performance expected, but they would, I think, nevertheless be already very close to the target. The problem of electric generation requires also time to be processed. This will be a heavy operation for the aircraft. In the case of an order signed this year, we would therefore have some years to develop the additional features. These years should not be wasted. In any case, I think the discussions with Emirians take place on a sound footing. Their negotiators are experts who know exactly what is fighter plane and are aware of the state of the art and of various constraints. Talking to people at this level is very pleasant for the Air Force. However, now the order must materialize.

Interview by Jean-Louis Prome

http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?137433-Rafale-News&p=5133158&viewfull=1#post5133158

I would think that a general from the French Air Force, that is working on the Rafale project is a pretty good source… He did get one thing wrong though. The UAE will get an AWACS soon (or did they get it already?); the Erieye. So perhaps they can live with the “short” range of the RBE2 AESA?

At the same rate, all we know for sure at the moment about Rafale’s
RBE2 AESA is a number of MMICs of a thousand.

We also know that it has a shorter range than the AESA in the F-16 block 60; this was disclosed in an interview not long ago. In the same interview it was also disclosed that the RBE2 AESA is still lacking some radar modes that one would expect to find in a modern multi-role fighter. I believe those modes are available in today’s RBE2 and it’s of course a question of time (and money!) to get them onto the AESA version. Still, it’s interesting that they are not there yet.

I believe that most countries and vendors want to keep the real performance of their radars a secret…

All we can do is speculate. However some people-in-the-know have posted on this forum and others some info on the CAPTOR that seems credible, and that indicates that the CAPTOR does have some very impressive capabilities including a very long range.

Little is known about the PS-05A.

What is known is that it has a peak power above 10 kW and the following modes:

Air-to-air modes
Target track modes
• Track While Search (TWS) and automatic priority and optimised search pattern
• Priority Target Track (PTT) while TWS
• Single Target Track (STT) and raid assessment support

ACM modes – Air Combat Manoeuvring
Auto Acquisition Mode
• Bore Sight (BST) mode
• Head Up Display (HUD) Search – search pattern supporting the HUD
• Wide acquisition mode – Wide Search
Air-to-Ground modes
• Ground Moving Target Indication (GMTI) for land and sea searches
• Ground Moving Target Tracking (GMTT)
• Air-to-Ground Ranging (AGR) for bomb guidance
• Doppler Beam Sharpening (DBS) – Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) mapping modes
• Real Beam Ground Map (RBM) and prime detection
• Spotlight (SP) mode

Some of the few things known about the Raven so far is that it will have 1000 T/R modules and a swashplate design.