If it was that easy to swap an old system out and a new, entirely different one (in terms of mass and size)… I would expect them to have at least mass and probably size representative ballast or something in their, otherwise they would have to alter ballasts and/or adapt the control laws accordingly to keep the CG within permissible boundaries. We aren’t talking about something close to CG but about a position that is farthest away from CG.

It won’t be a ready for production model of Captor-E that will be flying this year, even if the hardware is halfway mature. Fix cycles will be required and development will progress as testing is underway. It’ll still be a couple of years before we’ll see it on in-service aircraft. I don’t expect a production contract to be signed before 2016 or even later.

A follow on deal from SA is not too unlikely, but the recent death of the RSAF chief will most likely hold up things a bit.

Kuwait is on the tables, but it’s not fix. Something might be announced anywhere between now and 2016.

UK T1 extension beyond 2019 is uncertain, there might be a U-turn but that’s not definitive and the prolongation might be limited and possibly covering not the entire fleet.

Other export prospects (no likelyhoods included) include Belgium, Denmark, Bahrain, Malysia and Indonesia. Even Qutar and UAE can’t be ruled out completly.

Concerning a-d it’s suffice to say it didn’t happen, the “might” was pre-emptively chosen.;)

It’s in a different article.
http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/raytheon-reveals-new-composite-missile-body-for-mald-414902/

Not going to happen wrt Brimstone and Storm Shadow.

I think you fail to understand the concept behind it. Stealth lower the target aspect ratio against a background of emissions. Hence, a stealthy, non broadcasting IFF , has to “interrogate” a multitude of potential contact before knowing if it’s even an airborne object of interest. The only way to remain discreet while performing such action, is to do it by comparing known tracks and the monitored source of the signal at the fastest pace possible in order to find the nail in the haystack.

While I can follow your logic wrt precisely directing interrogations at individual targets, in order to maintain stealthiness, the rest of your argument makes no sense to me. You say a track should be immediately interrogated, even before its classified as airborne. This statement alone makes little sense to me as you have to detect an object multiple times before ir’s being tracked, as tracking requires the successful correlation of successive detections. By the time ESM has initiated tracking of an emitting source it’s most certainly aware of whether that object is airborne or not. Even if not what exactly does IFF bring to the table to assist in the process that isn’t already inherent to ESM? If you insist that the interrogation should be performed as soon as an object is detected, the same question as above applies. On top of this interrogating every single detection (as long as you have no track) is counterproductive to the concept of stealth as you would betray your presence for no benefit if the object isn’t tracked. Bear in mind that an opposing platform’s transponder might be programmed to onlx redpond to known interrogation codes ao you have no benefit at all while still not being sure whether the object subject to the interrogation is friendly or not, maybe it is a friend with a failed transponder, wrong codes loaded or simply out of range to process the interrogation.

Two philosophy are matching such requirements. Analogical filtering is one of them that Jõ have shown here that is the subject of Russian R&D studies.
Fusion is the drive mean in that. Since a considerable number of calculation have to be made (think about the aspect ratio that change every time you alter even one single of the 6DoF) and due to the scarcity of the source signal (stealth), embedding your sensors into a single processing unit is of a matter of necessity.

Rafale have no built-in sensor fusion that we know aside of Spectra and OSF. Radar data are post processed. An unhappy heritage of the all passive frenzy. OSF has been deleted and replaced by Mica optics, what exclude fusion. TV sensor have sadly also not the range to act has a valid IFF interrogator (once you can see, even with the good sensibility of that sensor, you don’t need an IFF per def).

While I agree that allocating all sensor signal and data processing to a single processing unit may have its merits by minimizing latency, I somehow doubt that all data are immediately integrated. The reason for this is that different sensors have different characteristics that need to be specifically treated even inside a single processing unit. This will reduce the benefit vs multiple processing units to a small margin and one could cater for this by taking the latency into account within the algorithms of the sensor fusion engine. Btw who says that all signal and data processing is performed by a single unit only? AFAIK the N-036UVS is the dedicated signal and data processing unit for the T-50’s multiple radar apertures, dunno whether it also processes the data of the L-402 as well as both in combination form MIRES. This itself is no proof for anything however and AFAIK the OEIS and data link data are not processed by the N-036UVS which effectively negates the argument anyway. The statement that radar data etc. Aren’t fused in case of the Rafale for example because they are. Pre-processed by a dedicated signal/data processor is pure nonsense. Can you obtain better results with a single unit? Possibly but we aren’t talking about significant margins here for the reasons outlined above and in the context of the T-50 the argument might be entirely moot as well as pre-procesing of individual sensor data appears to be done by dedicated processors. IIRC the AN/APG-77 even received a dedicated processor during the V1 upgrade, dunno how it is managed on the F-35 here.

Hence, as you can guess, it’s not a matter of not researching enough a specific matter here. It’s all about collecting information, readily available to us, as here, and building by logic and intellectual honesty a representative picture of the subject.

As a side note, notice that, when discussing about sensors, nothing is irreversible. Competitive thinking mights turn the outcome rather quickly. Surfacing tech are now about to alter the present state of art.

If you don’t share the passion and dedication for various airraft you are certainly not going to spent as much time and effort researching data/information on those aircraft that aren’t in your primary focus. What you call collecting information is what I call research. If it was as trivial as you suggest, i.e. Information being readily available one would have to assume that Jo for example is just as well informed about the Typhoon as me is, that I’m just as well informed about the T-50 as he is or either of us is just as well informed on the F-35 as f.e. Spudman is. That’s certainly not the case and for that simple reason I stick to what I outlined before. But feel free to disagree.

That’s hair splitting of terms, abusing it for the sake of making arguments. What’s the purpose of interrogating emitters anyway, unless your ESM is lacking in ID capabilities? If you can correlate ESM tracks with other inboard and offboard sensor tracks, then correlation with IFF detections is not really an issue. On top of this SPECTRA can target emitters autonomously, DASS can’t at this stage. Discussions beyond this are pretty much useless due to the absence of sufficiently dependable and accurate data about the respective systems. Based on the rather limited information available you can guess all you want with no guarantee on being right or wrong on this.

You mean the results of IFF interrogations and ESM identification capabilities are fed into the sensor fusion engine? Everything else wouldn’t make much sense to me. Capabilities like these are available on some modern aircraft designs.

You say LEVCON, do you mean the slats or really the moving LERX?