ZedroSHum, is the Rafale the only plane with LCD ? Does it have last generation LCD or .. ?
ZedroSI’m not ‘making propaganda’, I’m just interested to see which of you Rafale fans are prepared to look at the object of your affection with clarity and rigour.
I’m sorry, but you don’t do so.
You say that you got the “real facts” from people you can’t quote or name. To trust your claims is mainly to trust you and your unknown sources.
For clarity and rigour, I guess it can be better. I think that even yourself can agree that it’s a bit hard to accept some “facts” based on so few proofs.
ZedroSI just would like to explain why, for me, Jackonicko’s claim regarding the “superiority of the Eurofighter MMI due to DVI over the Rafale MMI” needs more that just “I’ve been told so”.
Looking at history, we know that :
The Rafale team innovated a lot in MMI (touch screen, mini lateral sticks and etc). They even started to implement DVI but the cost for value wasn’t, for them, enough so they’ve finally skipped it. However, they kept it for export customer, if needed.
The Eurofighter team was clearly conventional in its MMI design, with only the DVI coming as an innovation. Please consider as well that many features of the Rafale’s MMI were retained for other planes cockpits, like F22 or F35, so they aren’t insignificant I guess. These features aren’t on the Eurofighter, so whatever the improvement the DVI brings, it still lacks a lot as well.
Since then, however, there were the Singapore and South Korean competitions, where each time the Rafale went further than the Eurofighter. So, even if the Eurofighter’s MMI is such a bleeding edge tool, it didn’t provide the plane a significant enough advantage to beat the Rafale. Nothing revolutionary maybe…
Then, the group behind the Rafale, the so called GIE, looked back at their failures and decided to implement what they judged important for securing future exports.
DVI wasn’t among the items to implement/improve, even if :
– according to Jackonicko, even Rafale’s pilots were then aware of the striking superiority of the Eurofighter’s MMI,
– the Eurofighter MMI was well known at the time, making it easier to “copy”
– the price of DVI should now be a lot less than 15 years ago when the Eurofighter and Rafale cockpits where first designed,
– the capacities of DVI technology has as well changed a lot since 15 years, due to Moore’s law and private research in the field.
At the end of the day, that’s why I need more proof than “pilots words” never seen on paper.
ZedroSThe quote from Moussez is silly:
Moussez said that (…) in technical and performance evaluations “we have systematically won against the F-15 and the Eurofighter Typhoon.”
I was personally under the impression that the Rafale did indeed beat the F 15 and Typhoon on technical and performance evalutions which were done in Holland, Singapore and South Korea, am I wrong ?
ZedroSJackonicko, I find your way of making claims without backing them really shocking. Here is one more :
“Typhoon has equal or better sensor fusion than Rafale (PIRATE, radar, DASS, SIFF, offboard sensors).”
How did you reach such a conclusion ? How were you even able to do so : how do we measure sensor fusion ??? And once again, we only have your enlightened opinion but nothing behind…
And please, could you come with something more consistent that “I spoke to pilots X and Y” ? And for Mindef contacts, once again, why on hell isn’t there some quotations of them saying what you put in their mouths ? It’s the same by the way for the pilots. Furthermore, the Rafale team has shown they are eager to improve their plane where it’s necessary, so why don’t they work more on DVI if it’s such an improvement ? After Singapore and South Korea they did a debriefing and then chose to act on what seemed so important, why DVI wasn’t included ? Why can’t we have any article, pilot comment or report of such a difference between Typhoon’s MMI and the Rafale’s one ? There is plenty of paper work regarding the radar, the time schedule of the Rafale weapon integration or some components obsolescence, but nothing for this DVI… Why ?
I find it particularly annoying since just afterwards you move on with claims which are only yours like :
“And whatever the arguments about ‘design heritage’, Dassault did not use a cockpit design committee as BAE did for the EAP, and EF continued with Typhoon, and while there are exchange tours for the AdlA there are nothing like as many, and there was not so much experience of other aircraft input into the Rafale cockpit.”
Once again, what does it prove ? Putting 1000 men around a horse doesn’t necessary mean this very horse will run faster ! As far as I know “design committee” aren’t the best solution to all troubles on earth, are they ?
BTW, how can you say there was no “design committee” for the Rafale ? Did someone make the desing in his garage and so be it ?
And then, it’s quite a change from the so called “pilots words”, these words are your very own and you should back them more, some links would be a lot more welcome than such vague and general sentences.
The “there was not so much experience of other aircraft input into the Rafale cockpit” sentence is particularly appealing : how can you tell ? Did you ask each member of each team which planes MMI they have been working on and then do a comparison ? Or is it just by judging from a so called “history” at a time where all of the MMI designers have access to many cockpits and “pilots words” ? Don’t tell me it’s the Singapore pilots who were able to tell you so…
At the end of the day, I find it quite disturbing as well that the EF wasn’t short listed in both Singapore and South Korea and that you’re still able to find so many advantages to the EF and so few to the Rafale. How come the Rafale was always near the finish line, especially for its technical merits, each time and never the EF ? For example, regarding South Korea, could you explain why the EF failed there too ?
ZedroSThat’s not what Jackonicko is doing. He says Rafale is superior in some ways to Typhoon, but Typhoon is superior in other ways.
He is saying so, indeed, but without telling how he made such a conclusion. That’s the disturbing part of it!
You’re free to disagree with his opinions, & it’s reasonable to ask him to justify them, as you’re doing, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to accuse him of this “natural upper hand” thing.
When someone says “X is better than Y” with such a definitive tone, I always feel this way. The only fact that such a “superiority” thing can be held true in such a general manner is always disturbing for me, especially in such a complex matter as modern aircrafts.
For example, for the engine part of the story, it’s well known that an engine will react differently at various altitudes, depending on its very design and requirements. So to be able to tell “such engine is definitely better than this one” is always surprising. At low speed some engines of the past century can still overcome modern ones… But for sure the requirements have changed!
Regarding the MMI, it’s a very complex topic and I honestly don’t know how one can tell “this one is better than this one”. How do you judge? They are so many parameters it’s really though to come with a final answer. So when I say no argument at all but just a conclusion…
Hopefully he will provide more backup for his claims and then it’ll be ok !
ZedroSJackonicko, I just love the way you say some things are facts without having even the tinniest source to back them. They are just your own affirmations without details or source and we should believe them without question ?
It’s plain too easy to take this discussion with a kind of “natural upper hand”. Could you tell us why the MMI of the Rafale are so bad ? Or why the MMI of the Typhoon are so incredible ? And please, backup your claims.
ZedroSJust for jokes, c’mon. :p
ZedroS, c’est seulement pour jouer…..
It wasn’t explicitly told so… I was kind of mislead.
ZedroS….and she is supported by all french women. Just for say..
Do you any source for this sentence ?
Notably because my (french) girl friend doesn’t support Mme Royal so… I don’t believe it could be 100% of the french women.
ZedroSA little more food for this topic ;
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/50aa3678-8dff-11db-ae0e-0000779e2340.html
A dangerous precedent for corporate corruption
By Wolfgang Munchau
Published: December 17 2006 18:58 | Last updated: December 17 2006 18:58
A sales director once bragged at an office party about how he had bribed several large retail customers. Some only responded to very large gifts, he said, recalling one case when he discreetly pushed a car key to the other side of the negotiating table. The trick was to find out what they liked, and then you were almost done.
I was one of this man’s employees – during a stint at this particular company that was mercifully short. What bothered me the most about his remarks was the way he bragged about it. In that company, as in countless others, bribery was not only tolerated, it was cool. If you wanted to become a successful marketing executive, this was what they expected of you.
I was reminded of this episode when I heard about the arrest of a former executive board member of Siemens last week and the decision of the British government to end a corruption investigation against BAE Systems on political grounds. The two cases are different and I am not sure which is worse. The German case is symbolic of the deeply ingrained corruption in that country’s corporate sector. Siemens is not an isolated case. There have also been high-profile corruption cases recently at Volkswagen and DaimlerChrysler, but the British case differs in one respect. Here the government intervened in favour of those accused of corruption.
The two cases have in common that both companies have been investigated for allegedly running large slush funds for powerful clients. Corruption is particularly prevalent if the purchaser is relatively more powerful than the seller and when a single transaction constitutes a big percentage of a seller’s total revenues. This is evidently the case when you sell high-technology military equipment or telecommunications systems. It is interesting that nobody at Siemens or BAE Systems is accused of enriching themselves personally. The crime they have been investigated for, rather, is one where the main beneficiary is the company.
Why would employees voluntarily commit a felony for the almost exclusive benefit of someone else? The only conceivable explanation is if the company rewarded such behaviour, for example through promotions or bonuses. If these employees worked in a corporate culture where it was clearly communicated that nobody could benefit through unethical let alone illegal behaviour, no rational employee would dream of running a slush fund.
I find it, therefore, hard to believe that we are dealing with isolated cases in the midst of squeaky clean corporate culture. Siemens has been one of the best run companies in Europe for well over 100 years. It runs one of the most sophisticated treasury operations on the planet. This is not the kind of company where a €420m ($550m) slush fund goes undetected. It is possible Siemens’ top management knew nothing about the bribes. But as top managers they share responsibility for the rampant see-no-evil-hear-no-evil culture in their company.
What gave the Siemens corruption case a particularly delicate note was last week’s decision by Nokia, the Finnish telecoms manufacturer, to delay the start of a €20bn telecoms joint venture with Siemens, pending a compliance review. Nokia’s corporate culture could not be more different to that of Siemens. According to the 2006 corruption perception index by Transparency International, Finland takes the number one slot – the least corrupt country – while Germany ranks number 16. By extension, this ranking tells you a lot about Nokia, which in 2004 accounted for 3.5 per cent of Finland’s gross domestic product.
If one wants to fight corruption effectively, one has to do more than just prosecute middle managers. A better way is to give them the right long-term incentives. Siemens is a company that rightly prides itself on its orientation towards long-term gain as opposed to short-term profits. Long-termism is everywhere at Siemens, except, it seems, when it comes to corruption.
A necessary, but not sufficient condition for an anti-corruption climate is the right system of legal incentives. In Germany, bribes to foreign officials were tax deductible until 1999. In other words, corruption was not only condoned, but officially encouraged. This is no longer the case.
The UK seems to be moving in the opposite direction. The statement by Lord Goldsmith, the UK’s attorney-general, that “the wider public interest…outweighed the need to maintain the rule of law” in the case of BAE Systems may set a dangerous precedent. If bribery can occasionally be in the national interest, then it cannot be morally wrong in principle. It is a relative crime, depending on who does the bribing and who gets bribed. The logical error in Lord Goldsmith’s argument is the failure to take into account the effect of his own decision. If it leads to more corruption, as it undoubtedly will, it cannot be in the public interest.
If the attorney-general thinks this way, we should not be surprised that corruption is firmly entrenched in our corporate cultures, just as it was 20 years ago when an overconfident sales director discreetly passed the car keys across the table.
[email]munchau@eurointelligence.com[/email]
Please take notice it’s the Financial Times. And, whatever your feeling towards France/French posters/UK/UK posters, they seem to consider this operation to be quite a mistake.
ZedroSPLA-MKII’s Expert Analysis:
The biggest bit about the Rafale is its French egotism. Its a plane that should never have been made, better to have stuck with the EF-2000. HOwever, the Rafale is more European than the Eurofighter in a number of ways – Its beautiful post-modern design, its excellent man-machine interface where the pilot fits in “like a glove” and some fancy technology like “active radar cancellation” (does it work as well?) and other tid bits. It remains a “big little fighter”, very “Small is Beautiful”ish. The Rafale however, badly needs an upgrade to the F3 standard if it wants to pretend to be toe-on-toe with the EF.
France would have been a load better off without it. France would be better of moving on beyond it. However, French pride will get the better off them, and they will keep digging the hole in their defense budget. Their biggest bet in selling this turkey is to Brazil or Argentina, or find a tin pot dictator somewhere to bribe and get a contract to “save face”. They’d actually be a lot more successful if they use all the technology they have on the Rafale to build a smaller single engined plane. That they might be able to sell. They can even call it Baby Rafale and declare the Rafale a success 🙂
Funny. No technical point at all, just very large and generous considerations about such a simple topic as the french soul. Apart from being a self declared EF and Rafale expert (who hasn’t to produce a minimum amount of proofs for his numerous claims, that’s normal), are you as well a psychatric doctor ?
lol
ZedroSThat’s a luck we have such experts on Middle East here. And for sure all of them out smart all the parties included in this mess, and thus don’t need to bring in any source/facts of their “all mighty” explanations, ranging from why each one is here, in which conditions did they accept to come in, and neither whether they agreed, or not, to disarm Hezbollah. Neither do they bother to think back at why this UN force was asked to come. Neither do they think again at this marvellous piece of warfare of Tsahal during a few weeks. Neither try them to see each’s ones shortcomings in respecting UN resolutions, only seeing the other’s ones faults. Too easy.
All is forgotten, only hybris, once again, takes the lead.
Mine is bigger, as usual, and for sure yours’ is so small it’s a joke. Stupid you, clever me. lol
As said the other, it’s a week end joke !
ZedroSEurope could not handle a mission like Afghanistan without US support. Embarrasing after all, and a complete waste of ressources and no threat to rogue states.
I know a very military capable country which has embarked itself all alone in a quagmire a few years ago which now proves to be a complete waste of ressources and poses no threat to rogue states. It’s even rather the other way around with so many ground forces just next to some quite famous rogue states… Nothing to be very proud neither is it ?
lol
ZedroSIt would be a better topic with images/videos included ^^
ZedroSJust about the Rafale, let’s not forget that the Rafale doesn’t come out of nothing… It’s the same company behind, and they’ve learnt even from the Mirage 2000.
BTW, one of the points I consider important on the Rafale is the integration of electronics, especially regarding the Spectra suit (which can be seen on the aircraft structure itself). This kind of electronic integration has big impact on an airframe, and couldn’t be done easily, I think, on the Mirage 2000.
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