I did some quick calculations, assuming full internal fuel and 1000 kg of payload I got:

Rafale: TWR: 0.99

Gripen NG: 0.90

With 50% internal fuel:

Rafale: TWR: 1.18

NG: 1.06

L

NG with the F414 Enhanced Performance Engine, 1000 kg payload:

TWR with 100% internal fuel: 1.08
TWR with 50% internal fuel: 1.27

Of course this increase in thrust is probably not needed for the NG as it is planned today — as we all know, other factors like RCS, MMI, data fusion, sensors, missile performance are probably more important than TWR.

However it does show that Gripen still has room for growth. As does Rafale.

L

But also only to a limited degree. The Gripen will never reach a TW-ratio compareable to that of Rafale or Typhoon.

I did some quick calculations, assuming full internal fuel and 1000 kg of payload I got:

Rafale: TWR: 0.99

Gripen NG: 0.90

With 50% internal fuel:

Rafale: TWR: 1.18

NG: 1.06

L

No idea, my point was that you can’t say the Gripen NG enjoys an advantage there because we both don’t know the exact data and won’t know for many years. Suffice to say that the Rafale had low RCS and IR signature incorporated from the beginning of the design phase, which leads me to believe it is not necessarily worse than the Gripen as you made it to be.

True, we don’t know the RCS of Rafale, and we don’t know much about the IR signature other than that both vendors claim to do a lot of IR signature reduction…Also see my comments below.

I ceased to visit strategypage as it is a very bad place to get decent information from. I also noticed much anti french prejudice there, and saw a lot of false or clearly misleading stuff, even in the main articles.

A good place to look to get info on the Rafale would be there. http://www.vectorsite.net/avrafa.html
You will find articles about many other planes there, including the Gripen.

Thanks for the link, I am looking at it right now. Regarding the RCS and IR reduction for Rafale, I have to admit some of the info I was basing my claims on came from some of the contributors from SP — I agree there is a lot of noise and outragous claims however I had the impression that some of the contributors actually know what they are talking about, but I may have been wrong in that assumption.

Well the Rafale already uses COTS as I just said in my previous post :confused:

My apologies, I was too much in a hurry and I missed that part. Also, contributors on SP claimed otherwise…

Single/two engines is only part of the story.
1/ The Mirage 2000 is single engine and yet the Rafale needs 30% less personnel for maintenance.
2/ The Mirage 2000 engine can be replaced in 3 hours while BOTH the Rafale’s engine can be replaced in 1 hour 45 minutes.
3/ The Mirage 2000 engines needed to be revised every 75 hours while the Rafale’s engine was intended to be revised every 150, but has shown since then that it could hold 500 hours between revision! According to materials used, this could even be extended to 800 or 1000 hours.

Besides, there is no overhaul during the whole life of the plane. Only components are replaced without the need for re-calibrating (same for the engine parts which can be replaced without re-calibrating). All parts are interchangeable from one plane to another, the comuters LRUs are replaceable independantly etc etc.

There are few movable areas, no variable intakes, no airbrakes, no retractable refueling probe -> less maintenance.

Test systems are made inside the planes with a very comprehensive diagnostic tool which can detect 95% of all failures. You don’t need engine testbeds on the tracks, no oxygen bottles to replace as the oxygen is generated aboard, onboard cooling is provided for electrical parts while the engine is off thanks to its own APU.

It can be refueled with the engines still running…

It seems Rafale and Gripen may be quite similar in this respect then. From the site you suggested:

Once deployed to a road base, the Gripens are serviced by a ground crew of six, including one highly trained specialist and five minimally trained conscripts. A service team can refuel and rearm a Gripen in ten minutes. The Gripen features an auxiliary power unit (APU) to reduce its dependence on ground systems, and the fighter’s onboard digital systems include “built-in self-test” capabilities that can download diagnostic data to a tech’s laptop computer. Service doors to critical systems are at head level or lower, allowing easy access by technicians. Flygvapnet experience shows that the Gripen requires 40% less maintenance work-hours and only half the fuel of the Viggen.

Which is quite an advantage actually, but I think you are not giving enough credit to the Spectra suite and the discretion incorporated in the design. For instance the Rafale can fly at 600 kt at 30m of altitude and 5,5g discretely thanks to the INS/GPS and the digitalised 3d map covering 300000km², and in very difficult and/or unknown terrain the Radar has a terrain following mode which can be interleaved with AtoA and AtoG modes. Add the low RCS/IR, and the capabilities of the Spectra to detect and jam emissions with pinpoint accuracy and discretion and you should start do understand the Rafale’s capabilities.
Nic

Again SP has had quite a lot of discussion around this — Unfortunately the French that are arguing the Rafales case are making such outragous claims that even I understand they have to be wrong — the people “critizising” Rafale seems to be a bit more connected to reality, and it seems they know what they are talking about, but then again I could be wrong about that…

Anyway, to add to some of the stories and anectodes around Gripen; I have heard that in some of the training with Norwegian F16, the F16s had problems detecting the Gripen; similar to the red flag pilot that said the Bison went undetected until the merge, it seems Gripen of today can do the same. Whether this is due to just the low RCS of Gripen or a combination of low RCS and EWS I do not know for sure.

L

What the hell are you on about? Even your basic Rafale has 50% more power than your 100KN Gripen NG, and if you add the extra weight the power to weight ratio should remain higher for the Rafale, because the Rafale is no more than 50% heavier. And with the same payload the ratio will increase in favor of the Rafale!

I should have been more clear — I meant that NG will have a much higher TWR and fuel fraction than current Gripen, thus reducing the gap to the Rafale. Point is, TWR is not that important once go over a certain threshold. I don’t know whether current Gripen is above or below that threshold, but I am sure NG will be. Look at SH; it is a pig, still it will be formidable in a2a due to it’s low RCS, AESA, excellent EWS, etc. I agree Rafale will have an edge in TWR however it will not be significant anymore. Keep in mind that in a2a the weapons load is much lower than for a2g or multirole, thus the higher thrust of Rafale is not a significant advantage at all. The NG with six or eight a2a missiles and 0 to 1 drop tanks will be very agile and fast.

Also don’t forget that Gripen has extremely low drag; The proof of this is that the old Gripen has been able to supercruise with 4 AMRAAMs, 2 sidewinders and one drop tank! If you consider that supercruise depends more on thrust-to-drag than TWR and also consider the low thrust of the RM12 compared to what other jets got… the drag is amazingly low in a2a config, this is the only explanation for the supercruising Gripen with RM12. Put in a F414 in the same a/c and you will get something very interesting…

Low RCS and IR reduction were features that were incorporated in the Rafale from the start, as well as the IRST, for which a new gen is already in the pipe. HMD hasn’t been ordered by the AdlA because of lack of money but it’s still a possibility should anyone order the plane, just like DVI, which already has 300 words or so. And I seriously doubt the AMRAAM holds much advantage over the Mica, not to mention that the IR/EM combo allows you MUCH more versatility and tactical flexibility than the AMRAAM/Sidewinder combo.

The old Gripen A had RCS of less than 0.1 m2; Gripen C made significant improvement and NG will have lower RCS than C.

For IRST, we know that Saab is world leading.

HMD offers a clear advantage, IMHO.

AMRAAM has much longer range than the MICA, I think this is a clear advantage.

Here lies theonly advantage of the NG lies… if the radar is, as proposed, mounted on a mobile arm to reach a 200° coverage.

Indeed, NG AESA will have much better coverage.

What exactly allows you to say this? Isn’t spectra a world class EWS? The Rafale has a low RCS and low IR signature as those were already incorporated not only in the design of the plane but also in the design of the M88! The only thing lacking in the Rafale’s defensive suite is the towed decoy. But anyday I will bet on the spectra vs the Gripen’s EWS. Could the gripen locate a radar emitter with less than 1° precision et give an idea of it’s range? Because the spectra can thanks to interferometry techniques. That done, it can either use those info to target the radar’s source, OR use AESA jamming antennas to jam that radar with pinpoint accuracy (hence very low probability of being intercepted).

Spectra was world class and so is the current Gripen C/D, however for the NG the Gripen EW goes through a significant upgrade. Also, the hardware is being replaced with faster and more powerful computers. I seriously doubt that Spectra will be any better than the EWS in Gripen NG, actually I suspect the NG EWS will be better, due to the dramatic increase in computing power that allows more sophisticated algorithms than for the SPECTRA running on out-dated hardware.

For RCS signature reduction, see above. IR signature reduction: Perhaps Rafale also is quite good here, I don’t really know, however Gripen has for many years used fuel for cooling; also F-35 is known to do this to reduce IR signature. F414 will benefit from all the IR signature reduction techniques done by GE over the years, but also Volvo did some IR signature reduction techniques on the RM12 (developed from F404) which were incorporated in F414. I somehow doubt that the M88 has less IR signature than the F414…

Towed decoys, is a clear advantage, also HMD. I am surprised that Rafale does not have this yet?

Numbers please…

http://forum.keypublishing.com/showpost.php?p=1399049&postcount=570
Furthermore It cost less than 3000USD pr. hour to operate, significantly cheaper than any other fighter out there. Also, MTBF is very very good.

Sorry but the Gripen isn’t in the same league as both others, which is why the comparisons aren’t nearly as interesting.

Nic

I think many people still have the perception as Gripen as a toy plane, mainly due to the A/B but also the C/D version. Granted, it is a light weight whereas Rafale and Typhoon are medium weight. But if you look at the capabilities the gap will be much smaller with the NG. And I did point out that Rafale will have some advantages in terms of range and payload. However for many countries and many missions such long range and payload may not be needed.

In a2a I think that NG (but not C/D) will be better than Rafale.

In a2g Rafale will be able to do some missions that NG will struggle to do, however for most missions NG will do as well as the Rafale also in a2g.

You may say that they are in a different league, and to some extent I agree, however they do compete in India, Brazil, and many other countries. The fact that they are competing in many countries support my claim that the gap between the two has been significantly reduced.

L

Hmm, how comes a Rafale vs Gripen thread stops at 3 pages, and seems rather civil, compared to all the Rafale vs Typhoon or Typhoon vs SU35/SH/etc. dicussions this forum has had for many years?

Rafale vs Gripen NG:

In a2a the two may be on almost the same level, but with a clear advantage to the NG; the F414 in combination with increased internal fuel means higher TWR and lower drag (since it reduces the need for drop tanks), however, more importantly the low RCS, IR signature reduction, low visual signature, world class IRST, HMD, and excellent data link will give the NG an edge over Rafale in a2a. The combination of the latest AMRAAM and Sidewinder seems better than the MICA (which has too low range); of course when both get Meteor, this advantage will be reduced.

There is little info on the AESA radars of either Rafale or the Gripen NG, so we don’t know how that will impact things; most likely their radars will be in the same class (with around 1000 modules).

In a2g the Rafale still has some advantages due to it’s longer range and more payload, although the gap will be reduced significantly with the NG. And the NG will probably have a better survivability, due to the combination of it’s world class EWS, low RCS, low IR signature, towed decoys, and low visual signature.

In terms of costs, Gripen NG wins of course; both in fly-away but also more importantly in life cycle costs.

Rafale has an advantage in that it contains mainly French (non-US) parts.

Now, will we finally see a Rafale vs Gripen thread that will compete with the Rafale vs Typhoon threads of the past?

L

That is a very good news ! Can’t wait to see that…Only a month to wait now…Where did you get the info ?

A meteor or a rocket laucher on this weapon station will boost rafale’s already formidable carrying capabilities if developped…

Hmm. With the new AESA, Meteor, and a HMD Rafale will pose a serious challenge to even the Typhoon in a2a… A pity all this arrives so late.

L