I believe HMS will be on the UAE planes at the least. I’m not sure about Brazil, but IF Greece selects Rafale, HMS was one of their requirements. The system is completely ready, but France doesn’t seem to feel it’s any pressing need that has priority over their multiple other priorities, i.e. they’re getting by fine without it. UAE may also induct Meteor before France.

I don’t believe ‘towed arrays’ are anywhere on the time-line for Rafale, same as integral jamming arrays aren’t on Typhoon’s time-line. The integral arrays will likely be upgraded for F4 (2018?) though.

The question regarding the HMD is weather they will finally use Topsight-E or another helmet. I’m not sure if the helmet is already integrated either. Integration with other systems is the name of the game. That the helmet is ready doesn’t mean it is integrated on the aircraft and this could take some time as well.

Just as a side note the Typhoon has an internal jammer with phased arrays.

I might be off on this, but I recall SAAB bofors dynamics part in the iris-t project having to do with the seeker as well.

Anyhow, I’m ofcourse cheering for Gripen to take this contract home, but rafale sure is one great plane, imho a notch better than SH.

The Swedes are responsible for the digital signal processor.

that will help a lot, but still no hms or towed array ?

To date not, though HMS seems to be planned for the longer term (2015+). Topsight-E would be ready and could be integrated if a customer requires it. This HMD is already used on Indian Navy’s MiG-29K and malaysian Su-30MKM. For the Rafale Sagems Gerfaut had been previously selected but was canceled and the priority is placed on other items such as the RBE2AA.

There is a good reason why only F/A-18 and Rafale have deployed to Afganistan and it is maturity of their systems and sustained developement.

We know both aircrafts does what it says on the box in combat conditions.

The reason why we haven’t seen a Gripen over there is that no country which operates the Gripen is involved there or has enough aircraft to allocate at all. Exercises such as Red Flag are quite good to test and further optimise your deployability. If you are operating far away from home with a small detachment it doesn’t matter wheather you are in Afghanistan, India or the US. That there is of course a certain difference between an exercise and true combat missions is clear, but dropping some bombs on camels is not that spectaculare as you want to say us.

No. I didn’t say 120 chaffs. I said 120 packs but sadly I can’t elaborate much more on the difference. It just happens you need 30 packs to refill a single tube. How these packs are expanded is something I’m not allowed to talk about.

Understood, thank you anyway.

AESA, MAW and OSF NG.

Wasn’t OSF NG to follow later on, while the OSF-IT would be introduced as a stop gap solution until development of a new IR component would be completed?

The tanks, (intern like extern all have the same profile), all look like 2000 l to me, that’s 3.200 kg of fuel external without the pod.

To me just one tank is visible on that image and given the fact that the aircraft carried 6 MICAs and the outer wing pylons aren’t used it looks more like 2 x 2000l + the buddy-buddy pod. That config is shown in the video “one day on deck” as well.