ZedroSI would say the tiffy is a complete air to air fighter rather than just a interceptor. and has the attributes to contest in all area’s
yep, I agree. I was trying to say that it looks like being “more” optimized for interceptions, due to its abilities at high speeds
ZedroSIs the number of aircraft significant? why 6 of each.
The F-22 and Typhoons are predominantly air to air, the Rafale Air to ground, and IMHO the F-16 is more air to ground oriented.
(snip)
what do you all think?
well, I think that the french will use as well their Rafale for Air to air. Being able as well to do AtG doesn’t mean the Rafale isn’t able of AtA.
I would rather say that the Typhoon is made more for interception, which is a subset of AtA. The AtA play field is large enough not to conclude anything.
And I would even go as far as saying there is no way one could prove the Typhoon or the Rafale as the best in AtA (regarding all the variables involved, it feels like every fan boys can easily pick the ones he wants to support his own favorite plane – a nice recipe for endless crappy discussion).
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ZedroSIf he had been test flying similar types during the last five years, and if he had a Strike Eagle, Super Hornet, F-16MLU, Mirage 2000, or Gripen tour under his belt, then his assessment would really mean something.
he says the Mirage 2000 is his prefered FBW fighter, among the 71 planes he flew.
then, again, you still manage to say :
And I stressed that PC was a good choice. Good is always “good enough”. And saying that someone else might have been better does not take away from that.
It’s not that PC isn’t qualified to comment. He obviously is
and then :
his assessment would really mean something.
so his assessment doesn’t really mean something, even if yourself agree he’s qualified enough to do such an assessment. Weird isn’t it ?
As far as I get it looks like he’s qualified enough, well, but, in fact, not.
Anyway, I think the main issue for you here is this article being so enthusiastic about the Rafale, so you simply can’t agree with its conclusion being
If I had to go into combat, on any mission, against anyone, I would, without question, choose the Rafale.”.
Well, I’ve no issue with that, we’re among adults so we disagree and it’s not like we had anything to prove.
In the end, it’s all about personal belief in such forums, it’s not like we were even close from having PC knowledge (or even better being clever and experienced enough to have flown EF/F22/Rafale/You name it and still be able to compare in a fair few such planes, if ever it’s doable !).
And to be honest, I just can’t see how he can put that. Didn’t we all agree that the F22 was the mother of all fighters ? Would he really prefer the Rafale over it, without even having flown the F22 ? How can this PC guy say such a thing ? lol Hopefully he lost a bit of his english temper here and it should be read this way.
So there’s no point in trying so hard to temper this article, each one can make his own judgement and enjoy the technical aspects that were in it and aren’t as spooky as the conclusion (which really sounds like, in fact, “let dump the F35 for the Rafale on the aircraft carrier”, which is a completely different matter). It was a good reading, end of story.
And let’s not forget : “Le plus est l’ennemi du bien” (no idea on how to render this properly in english).
ZedroSWhile he was a good choice to write the flight test, someone with more recent military flight test experience, and with more and more recent experience of more comparable and more relevant aircraft would clearly have been a BETTER choice.”
in fact i think the issue with this sentence is that it could be taken as saying that “PC isn’t good enough to do a proper evaluation”, which obviously some disagree here. But that may be just an incomprehension or similar.
To clear the topic, do you think PC has enough knowledge to provide an “enlightened” opinion on this plane or not ? Can he be taken seriously ?
In the end, it could always be better, whoever you throw at such a “review”, but the issue at hand is whether this guy provides some opinions which are valuable.
ZedroSTwist and spin as much as you like, Fonky, but it’s clear that the reason you’re so keen on Collins is because he said nice things about Rafale, and had he been negative, you’d have been the first here criticising him.
And others would have done exactly the contrary, so there’s nothing to gain discussing this.
The irony is that praise from someone who was really familiar with current generation, all glass, agile fighters would have been even more compelling and persuasive.
This was a missed opportunity for Flight and for Dassault.
Well, the guy flew a Mirage 2000, quite close from a modern fighter. For sure, you’re thinking of an Eurofighter here as the only other modern fighters worth of interest, but then, did we have someone actually knowledgeable of both it and the Rafale having made test review ? If not, then we can’t conclude here anyway.
But then, drilling further, did someone with an experience comparable to Peter Collins did such a test review and such a conclusion ? If not, then that would tend to be in favor of the Rafale, since the conclusion of this article is amazingly favorable. If it was done, then we should compare the conclusions made.
In the end, it won’t matter much I guess, any pilot/RAF top brass/you name it can be judged as not “good enough” to be taken in account. And regarding the conclusion of any guy, I’m pretty sure some Rafale or EF fanboys would do so anyway.
I would like to come back to Kovy point : someone having flown extensively with one model would for sure have bias when comparing it to others, unless this guy has quite some time to get used to the other plane. So putting a full blown Rafale pilot on the EF for just an 1h ride, or the other way around, would be pointless.
Then, going back at the present review, having been able to fly modern aircraft isn’t the only reason to be qualified to conduct such a review. Experience with the missions and requirements of fighters is also a plus. And this Peter Collins fits in it pretty much, adding value to his conclusion.
ZedroSHere’s a question for lovers of all things French; why can’t the French ever produce an aircraft with a retractable IFR probe? All of their leading aircraft have always had fixed external IFR probes. I think they look really ugly and spoil the lines of the aircraft.
AFAIK, it was explicitly asked for by the French AdlA and Dassault was severely pissed off by this but, in the end, the customer had it his way…
After, it’s a two sides story like usual :
+ safer
+ more room for nose equipment
+ cheaper
– not as nice
– penalty on RCS/drag (albeit low apparently)
ZedroSas far as I remember it wasn’t that Spectra was buggy per se but more that there was interferences from and with other Rafales around. The article said something like “the Spectra active Rafale should be first and alone to be free of interference from others”.
I don’t remember if the article concluded that it could be (or was) resolved in some other way.
ZedroSThanks for your very interesting and long reply 🙂
Regarding the footballs fans, I agree they’re everywhere, even on modern military aviation, crazy 😉
You hear various things. There are football fans here too. I guess if you want to know the truth , you should make a poll between HAF’s pilots… One case that have been posted here too, because it was on foreign magazine, is the case of a HAF F16 squadron commander i believe, who said that the Mirage is better in dogfight, the F16 is more complete in various roles.
In fact, behind this question was as well an interrogation of the real added value of the HMD. But I guess there’s nothing like a “Mirage for BVR, F16 for WVR” strategy in the HAF ? Is there at least some public results of dogfights between M2K and F16 ?
The fact that there wasn’t dogfights between Rafale and F16 is, however, pretty interesting. Could it be that, whatever the Rafale intrinsic qualities (in terms of dogfights essentially) the presence of HMD on the other side render the whole thing hopeless ?
good night !
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ZedroSAnother side question : what’s your feedback regarding the performance of both the F16 and M2000 in the HAF ?
Just curious 😉
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ZedroSEven now, the 2000-5 is said to be very deadly in BVR with MICA and very sneaky with the IR version.
And where the Rafale should be at least as deadly no ? 😉 lol
In WVR of course, it will have trouble in the future without a helmet.
Just for my culture, since in France we don’t have any aircraft with such a helmet, is the advantage so big ? What’s the feedback from the Greek use ?
Similarly, as I don’t know properly the Turkish/Greek air fight : on which frequency did dogfight happen ? If a real war would break out, would it be an important part of the battle ? On the other hand, did the Greek plan to actually use BVR without first being able to identify the plane visually (as it’s often required in modern air force practice, making most of the fuss about BVR quite pointless) ?
But even for their BVR and EW suite (which has been praised in more defence magazines) and the ability to launch SCALP, they ‘re worthy.
Once again, the Rafale seems prone to be at least as good, and probably better.
A point which I find interesting here, and in modern aircraft in general, is the importance of the hardware/electronic on board, which is most of the time quite independent from the plane actual modernity/capacity. The structural differences are quite few usually no ?
For example, I see the 360° awareness of Spectra as something structural, since it requires a lot of sensors. On the other hand, a better radar would fit in any air plane, so it’s not part of the intrinsic quality of a plane IMHO. The part of structural difference between a F16, Rafale and EF don’t seem quite numerous to me.
Regarding the F35, they could be more numerous, but not only in the right way (VLO comes with its own price) and are certainly way more difficult to judge by now.
About the F35, what makes the Greek, and Turks, for once they agree ;), think that the F35 will be such a AA killer ?
Personally, I find it quite odd since the plane first mission is AG.
Furthermore, regarding is VLO features, we don’t know to which extend they’ll be efficient and available for Turkey and Greece (and who knows whether it’ll be at the same level)…
A last point about Greece and Turkey : they don’t care about 2 engines planes, do they ?
The end of an era… Sad.
EDIT. Confused Mitterand with D’ Estaing.
Let’s see how it’ll unfold. And, at worst, the FREEM will perpetuate the presence of french kit in the Greek army 😉
And whatever the outcome, let’s hope the planes will never see actual combat !
ZedroSSome points.
1. French pilots are considered amongst the best in the world. The fact that some of them, were flying Crusaders before, does not make them less capable. To the contrary!!! Flying an old bird, most of the times, makes one a tactics’ freak.
Hum, I remember the story a F22 pilot, freshly arrived from I don’t remember which old unit/plane, who had quite a ride with some F16 and their (very experienced) pilots.
The reason was simply a lack of knowledge regarding the F22 and its tactics/usage from its new pilot… but clearly as soon as he would be more familiar with it he would eat even these F16 like pancakes (at least, it was told so where I read this).
So I think pilots experience do really matter, unless you conclude from this experience that the F22’s cost/efficiency ratio isn’t justified compared to the F16 one…
And for sure pilots coming from the Crusader wouldn’t have the same level of experience in BVR than Greeks pilots on their pretty recent F16.
ZedroSniet,
french medias or tv doesn’t report on this stuff, it was from belgian sources, while florene TLP 2001..
after you got your own beleives…
LOL
I saw it on TV at the time, at some news show. I even had to decipher it for some friends who did jump way too fast on some drastic conclusion about our air force.
ZedroSFirst and second clash was Rafales F1 vs F-16 B52+
The combats were (almost strictly) BVR.
I have no idea if rafales were using L16, but the Hellenic B52+ were not AFAIK.
But what when wrong ?
I mean, when your own country planes stands pretty well or, which sound more appropriate in this case, impressively well against supposedly more advanced planes (and certainly more expensive ;)), the national press is pretty happy to provide at least some hints on why it went this well for theirs national pilots.
At least, when some French fighters did a 40 to 1 score at some NATO training, it was on french tv news reports. It was hard not to know about it. And for planes lovers as us, a reason was readily given (introduction of the Mica and RDY radar… quite different from the old Matra Super 530 the opponents were expecting. The next times were different!).
Here it sounds just like “they did it! Wooh ! End of story!”. Is the Greek press so different from the french one ??
A side question BTW, did the HAF train with some others 4++ gen planes ? If so, what was the outcome ?
Thanks again for your availability and patience to endure french inquiry about their supposed marvellous plane named the Rafale !
ZedroSSources; More or less the same as everybody.
1. Hellenic Magazines and Web articles
2. Discussion with HAF’s pilots whenever possible
3. Exchanging views with other AF enthusiasts.
4. and MOST important! Combination of the information from multiple sources.
many thanks greg. It’s indeed a various range of sources. I was fearing some “a pilot told XYZ” kind of reports.
Oh, You may also need this:
http://www.kypros.org/LearnGreek/
Indeed, and that’s why I won’t be able to double check your articles. However, your posts I’ve read where always fair and square, so I tend to trust you.
BTW, could you develop a bit more of why such failures ?
It looks like it’s more than just “this plane’s feature is weak”, more something like “this plane is really NOT ground breaking and the cost/value ratio is really low”. Honestly, I’m quite surprised to such a bad over all picture of the Rafale…
ZedroSWon against Mirage 2000-5, F-16, F-18E & Gripen in Austria.
thanks for the update. As said earlier, I had a afterthought doubt about this one.
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