Scorpion82The details are created at the lowest level, results reported to the next higher instance where information are consolidated and reported to the next higher instance and so forth. The higher infoemation flows the more compressed it gets and when arriving at top level it might be as simple as a green or red field on a chart. The other way round decisions made by top level will be routed down to the lowest level where once again solutions are worked out, before results of its implementation are reported back upwards. I don’t think that such marketing has a significant impact on the decision making as there is simply to much money involved . An exception might be some dumb dictators who may make to decisions based on gut feelings overruling common sense.
Scorpion82That must be cultural then , sounds to me more like a low grade commercial advertisement a bit like “seen of TV”, but I guess one could see that as marketing. Not too sure how effective it is tough in the market space.
I effectively do not recall Dassault ever trumpeting its products to be second best ;), or anything less for that matter. But more seriously I do not think I ever came across any Dassault ‘s advertisement of comparable nature.
If claiming “to be a generation ahead of the competition” isn’t a comparable exaggeration, I don’t know what is. But as said that’s the business of those people. 99% of the readers/watchers won’t know whether it reflects reality or not and those who know take it for what it is and won’t decide for or against the product based on marketing claims like these.
As such it’s not seriously worth to even discuss this and for this reason the debatte ends here, for me at least.
Scorpion82it certainly is (what some seem to forget), but if I was trying to sell the Typhoon on today’s market, I wouldn’t use “most versatile” argument to depict it. I’m sure they can find a more credible one… (considering what they are paid to do their job, they better be able to do it)
Credibility is nothing that marketing departments or representatives appear to really care about. It’s always going to be the best in the advertisers, in one form or another. In the current situation its difficult anyway. The aircraft is good and offers a great potential, but exploiting it requires investments which are often coming slowly. At the same time the price is to high for most and the competition is hard.
Scorpion82Glad to see I am not the only one noticing the rhetoric of EF consortium, back to old habits …second best…etc but hey those French are so arrogant ,you know !.
As if any company, including your beloved Dassault is going to advertise its product as the second, third… best of its kind. That’s called marketing…
Scorpion82Dassault has surely analysed what needs to be done wrt removal/fitting of existing/new systems to satisfy an Indian specific configuration. If Dassault has integrated the ODL on the upgraded M2k and possibly some other stuff earmarked for integration on the Rafale there will certainly synergies that should ease/accelerate the integration of these systems. I suppose it’s not known what differences there will be in comparison to AdA Rafales?
Scorpion82well, ok, you’re right, the aircraft is, basically, a flying computer assembly, designed to be easy to maintain, every element just plugs in or out, can be reprogrammed to adapt it for different coding/frequency but just for India, instead of reprogramming the modules in question they’ll redesign every single one of them, all the antennae, and so on… then go back to anechoid chamber to reprogram SPECTRA to take into account differences in RCS they’ll induce, and so on… cost for development, add a billion dollars more… just like that, to be sure…
TooCool maybe you take yourself a few moments and read what I said with your brain switched on instead of replying for the sake of having the last say. Not all avionics are standardized to allow a new system to be just fitted, a few other systems being loaded with new frequencies and that’s it. I understand that a layman can’t grasp the complexity of the subject, but if you want to tackle with it you should be open to listen and try to understand instead of shooting back because you feel offended for whatever reason. If you re-read what I said you’ll notice that I kept my statements somewhat generic and that I didn’t imply that it’s going to take ages and billions to get a new data link fitted. I have explained to you with some examples what needs to be taken into account when attempting to integrate something like a new data link. That doesn’t mean that anything of it needs to be done. I.e. the power and cooling reserves might be perfectly fine to cope with the power consumption and cooling demands of the new system, so you don’t need to change anything, but you need to verify the impact first. The same applies to other aspects. If the new data link uses the same or similar frequencies as existing systems you might use existing antennas to do the job of transmission and receiption, but then you definitely need to ensure that there is no electromagnetical interference. If the new data link works at different frequencies than any existing system of your aircraft you need to either add additional antennas or re-design existing ones and so forth. As I don’t know the specific details here about the possible Indian datalink solution I can only generically outline the areas where an impact analysis has to be performed to determine the impact of the new data link on the aircraft with its existing systems. That’s not rocket science in theory at least, but it takes a certain knowledge base to and understanding to grasp.
Scorpion82would be nice to think before posting… India has several aircraft types and every single one of them has different electronics bays/connectivity… from Migs (21/27/29), Sukhois, Jaguars, Mirages, and I probably forget one or two.
If you’re to put inside a give “standard” piece of electronics “India Special”, you’d have quite a few problems making it fit. Obviously, the “boxes” used are adapted to the aircraft.
Now, Dassault already has sold the Mirages and knows, obviously, what needs to be intalled. Most of the stuff might need different coding (IFF, Link16…), some frequencies change, all that is done through software as the aircraft has everything needed as far as hardware goes anyway. And if there are specific hardware modifications (some particular circuits), chances are Dassault has had the requirements long time ago and nothing prevents them from intalling the curcuits needed inside boxes fitting the aircraft’s available spaces
It was definitely not me who implied that fitting a new system is plug & play as if you plug in new mouse into the USB port of your desktop PC. I pointed out some usual examples of what needs to be taken into account when installing new hardware on an aircraft. It’s not like you connect the new LRI(s) to the existing busses and that’s it. You obviously acknowledge yourself that it’s not as easy as that as your following post shows, but must be me who is not thinking before posting…
Scorpion82er, the Dassault’s “boxes” for indian market Rafales are most certainly being tailormade for the Rafales to be built there, using the same format so they can fit instead of those for the french. That’s the difference between “modular” design of the Rafale and fighters made 30 years before.. you don’t selel aircraft and tell them “adapt you own stuff on it as you can”… not with all the integrated harware and software managment that is done today
You still believe in Santa as well do you? It’s definitely easier to integrate stuff today using standardized data busses and software driven avionics can be adapted as well, but that doesn’t change anything wrt what I’ve said and if the IAF wants its Rafales to be fitted with its own DL to ensure interoperability with its remaining assets it’s not going to be “tailor made for Rafale”, but it with be adopted for Rafale. What I said still applies! We aren’t there yet in aviation where we are with commercial computers. In the world of military aviation with a lot of special purpose built equipment it’s quite often not going to work in that way.
Scorpion82but, again, the construction is modular, so it is more about removing a couple if “boxes” and plugging in new ones.
It’s not as easy as that!! The new boxes must have the same size, weight, cooling and power consumption or you need to do even more to get them integrated, add connections which must be compatible or further adaptions are required. A new data link may operate at different frequencies, this may require an antenna re-design, add EMC testing and other system changes to prevent electromagnetic interferences. You further more need to implement a new ICD into the MDPU software to ensure the new message types (obviously not link 16) can be processed. Further more the functionality/capability of that system will certainly differ and you need to integrate it with the rest of the system. It’s not even remotely as trivial and certainly not a plug and play task!
Scorpion82The ability to anticipate and react quickly to changes/issues is my point. In that regards the big Eurofighter consortium didn’t do as well as Dassault because of organisationial issues which led to lower work efficiency (on the FCS for instance as you point out).
German reunification shouldn’t have been an issue with 3 other countries backing up the program… But for some obscure reason, it seems that nobody wanted to take responsabilities to keep moving on.
You can’t be prepared for everything and a sudden loose of 33% of development funds would have been significant. Add that the programme was already beyond the concept definition phase where a re-allocation of design responsibilities and development activities is far more difficult. I personally doubt that if Dassault had been in charge instead of BAe it would not have accelerated the programme. One shouldn’t confuse politics with industry skills.
Scorpion82I stand corrected (of course I was talking about the first flights), but i keep my point.
Rafale program was also signed in 1988 and the fact remains that there was a 3 years gap between the first flight of the 2 prototypes despite the fact that Dassault was developping 2 aircrafts at the same time with a much much smaller team. Can such a huge gap only be caused by cooperation issues ? I would agree if the work to be done and the workforce were about the same on both sides, but those 2 parametters were obviously not in Dassault’s favor.
Wrt the gap between the first flights you are right, however, this was exactly an issue of integrating the FCS teams from BAe and DASA into one functioning unit and sorting the issue of who got the design responsibility. Add the turmoil created by the German reunification, the huge question mark it left over the future of the programme and the temporary suspension of development activities caused by it. It is not as easy as it seems and the conclusions that are drawn here are solely based on the time differences and ignore the reasons for it.
Also which two aircraft was Dassault designing? Rafale C/M are two different iterations of the same design sharing a lot of commonality. Surely an additional challenge/burden, but calling it two different aircraft is a bit of a far stretch IMO.
Anyway if Dassault secures the deal for 36 fly-away aircraft from Indian it’s surely a win situation for the French and IAF.
Scorpion82Just a quick reminder as an exemple : It took a relatively small company like Dassault 5.5 years to design and build the Rafale C01 AND the Rafale M01 while it took 8 years for BAe, DASA, CASA and Alenia all together to build the first Eurofighter. This was during the development phase of course, but this should give you a hint about how responsive they can be.
Not really, it took about 2.5 years from signature of the development contract in November 1988 to completion of DA1 around May 1992. You shouldn’t confuse construction of the aircraft with the first flight. Rafale C01 was completed in October 1990 and was ordered in April 1988 IIRC that’s about 2.5 years as well. There is also a huge difference between designing, developing and producing aircraft or anything else for that matter.
Furthermore you can hardly compare a single nation programme with a multinational programme. The latter will always be somewhat slower due to the need to agree and arrange everything among multiple partners which is never an easy task. Look at how it went when BAe and Dassault were designing the EAP and Rafale A respectively. There was no real difference as far as the timing was concerned.
Scorpion82The question is who is/are the troll(s)?
Scorpion82It wasn’t really feasibile 20 years ago.
Scorpion82There was. Even the BL-755 was considered before such weapons were banned. Flight trials with the 1500 l tanks were actually performed using DA3 back then. Concerning ALARM there are/were even some software provisions.
Sign In
