Except that a state is not you and me, and public finances are subject to specific rules (and in northern Europe, these are VERY severe rules

I don’t think Boeing expects the decision to be reversed (if they do, they will be very disappointed!). I strongly suspect what they are trying to do, is to change the perception created by the Danish eval that the SH is a very expensive solution (thinking to other competitions, e.g., Canada and Finland).

It’s a significant weakness relative to a key competitor, nothing more, nothing less. It has strengths too but that is a weakness.

Everything else equal a small radar will have less performance than a big, there is no doubt about that, however things are more complicated than just looking at one single parameter for one single sensor.

Again, I don’t think the Rafale has lost any competition due to the small radar; please feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

Also it will be interesting to see if Typhoon manages to succeed in score new sales after 2021 with their new super radar — I doubt it, because it will be very expensive, and overall still inferior to the F-35 (which will be fully operational by that time). Also the Rafale will probably struggle to score any sales after 2021, the window of opportunity is closing very rapidly for expensive Western 4.5 gen jets.

That hardly proves the assertion wrong. An overall result, doesn’t change the individual impact of a given area.

That was not the point I was making; I was making the point that the small radar of the Rafale is not a major problem; other factors are much more important than the Rafale radar size. I was also making the point that professionals tend to assess these things quite differently from fanboys on this forum. And this is demonstrated by the outcome of the evaluations they make, and the conclusions they draw which seem to be different from conclusions e.g. you would draw. You have already highlighted the much bigger radar of the Typhoon, and the higher A/C performance; the Swiss evaluators highlighted the Typhoons A/C performance but overall they ended with a very clear conclusion; Rafale was overall technically far above and beyond the Typhoon.

As for issues:

Lack of proper stealth for instance, is IMHO a much bigger problem for both the Rafale and the Typhoon.

Another big problem for Rafale is the high cost of the a/c, and the high cost of the weapons (compared to US weapons).

I would put the size of the radar much further down the list of issues for the Rafale. It seems the pros agree with me on that.

thanks for the links — the first one does not work for me but the second one does state that they plan to go for GaN later on. The article is somewhat old, so I guess we will have to wait and see what the cash-strapped Eurofighter partners decide to do in the future, especially given that some of them will operate the F-35 that will have a very good radar even if not GaN.

As for the radar size: theoretically you are right I just wanted to highlight that it seems not to have had an impact in real life evals of the Rafale, and you have not been able to counter that argument as far as I can see, just re-iterating your opinion that you believe radar size to be very important.

Well it depends on how far you lower the bar I guess. I mean we could say that the Rafale and Typhoon meet the requirements of stealth because they’re below 1m^2 but we both know it’s a lie.

Well it seems to me that evaluators, including the Swiss, have looked at detection, acquisition and engagement, all of which improve with a larger radar given the same technology.

Of course for those who put the bar higher, neither Typhoon nor Rafale will do, then you need to wait for the F-35.

But for those who have done a proper and fair assessment of both Typhoon and Rafale it seems to me that they have either put Rafale above Typhoon, or at least put them at the same level in terms of technical eval. Thefore I think you exaggerate the issue of the small radar of the Rafale. For fanboys it seems to be a major issue, but not for the pros it seems…

Show me one eval where Rafale did not make it to the shortlist (or won) because of the small radar?

And in other news, Ireland isn’t buying F-35s either. Exactly what do you expect people to infer from this?

Do you really put Singapore and Ireland in the same class when it comes to defence!!!? I think you need to do some more reading…

There are strong indications Singapore will buy the F-35 (which is not surprising given their location and their high ambitions), however it’s a question of when, and interestingly they have recently decided (as I alluded to already) that they don’t really need it quite yet. No doubt part of the explanation is that their F-16 and F-15 are still up to the job.

Well that’s okay then. You can look great whilst dying.

How many Rafale have been shot down so far? AFAIK the answer is zero. It performs quite well also in tests and trials. Used with the right tactics and doctrine it is doing very well today, and I think it will continue to do so for still many years to come.

If it can perform a given mission with a probability of success (PoS) of, say, 95%; how much can the F-35 improve on that, realistically?

One of the countries in the world most serious about their defence, and investing heavily in defence (Singapore) decided recently they will NOT buy the F-35 right now… instead they will rely on their F-16 and F-15 only, for a few more years… And I don’t think it’s just because they wait for the bugs to be worked out, it takes best case 3-4 years from a decision is being made, and until the a/c start to arrive, so they are looking even further into the future.