Thank you Scorpion and may I add, apologies if I come across as harsh for eurofighter. That is not my intention, but people like Jackonicko have a lot to learn from, especially dignity and grace, from you, arthuro and tmor.

Well it can happen that people get a bit emotional on some topics, there is probabley no one who is completely immune against that.
What people have to learn is mainly to respect another persons opinion and not to offend them just because they might disagree, especially if their own arguments are more than vargue. Many people talk a lot which sounds like great knowledge on the first glance, but which turn out to be crap or just half as “professional” as it sounds.
When I learned one thing for sure then it is that even people “in the know” don’t know everything or are right on everything. If you want to know how an engine works or the radar of an aircraft you would be better asking the engineers or technicans rather than the pilot for example. The pilot is the one to ask how all this will affect the aircraft’s mission capabilities. This are just few examples, but the message should be clear. The entire topic of military aviation is way to complex and comprehensive to know all! You might not believe it but some enthusiast who just deals with the topic as a hobby does often know more about it than the one who is working on it. It’s of course limited as there’re details you simply can’t gather from public sources and the technicans, pilots and engineers know it better in their specific areas. Another thing you have to consume with care is the opinion from those very same persons about different ACs. I have talked to quite some guys from different air forces including dutch, brits, french, americans, italians, spanish, greek, turkish and other guys and it’s across the board the same everywhere. When I talked to a B-1B guy this summer for example who showed me his plane he had to admit that there are things he didn’t even knew, I have to add that the B-1B is neither an aircraft which really interests me nor an aircraft I know that much about and until then I just knew the public available stuff.
I also talked to AdA guys quite some times, Mirage F1 and 2000 guys and also asked them about their opinion about the Rafale, you would be surprised but their opinion was mostly sceptical. BUT ask a german or british guy working on the Tornado or so about the Typhoon and they will be just as sceptical as those french guys are about the Rafale. There is a lot of hear say even in the airforces and much, really much of the opinions are just built on that.
When it comes to internet discussions you should ever keep in mind one thing: Not every piece of information can be found on the internet, hence there is no link to everything someone states. The best way to deal with it is evaluate statements your self (if you have the required knowledge) and if it’s not completely crap such as the statement “The Su-34 is completely immune against missiles” keep it in mind and try to get things confirmed if possible. There are often things you’ll just figure out years later.
I could further add to that topic, but that’s not the right place here.

CIU ? 😮

CIU = Combat Identification Unit or short the TV camera with LRF module 😉

I’ve learnt something today, about Gerfaut. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it sounds logical.
It seems that when Sagem won the contract, in fact, they couldn’t get it works as intended… So, DGA stopped the funding. Instead, the money have been spent on the AESA program. This explains why even Thales didn’t propose another solution, there’s merely no money for the HMDS now.

Sounds logical. Is it known when Gerfaut was selected? Back in the late 90s there were a bunch of info about Thales Topsight-E and it was tested, if not even integrated to a certain degree into the Rafale. I was very surprised to learn that suddenly Sagems Gerfaut was selected over Topsight-E. On which ground has this selection been done? Didn’t Topsight-E hold up to the promises at that time? Topsight-E seemed to be much more mature than Gerfaut and the fact that its now operational on the Su-30MKM and will be used by the MiG-29K makes me wonder about the choice of Gerfaut which is to my knowledge not used by any platform.

For the FLIR : it’s not only a FLIR… It’s the IRST. As Scorpion said, F3 can be retrofitted. The current IRST is obsolete, and there is no replacement yet.
For air2ground missions, the Damocles will replace it, in fact. The OSF is more suited to A2A missions.

Yes the position on the nose is not the best position when it comes to AG. Below the fuselage would be a better place just as it is the case with the F-35s EOTS, this might be a slightly disadvantaged position for AA however, as the look up angle would be limited.

Arthuro / Tmor,

Anyone have idea of whether Rafale retains its FLIR sensor in the nose? I remember reading that FAF was dropping it because the original sensor was obsolete? And was the Rafale sent to Switzerland equipped with a functional FLIR?

The Rafale sent to the Swiss have a functional IR sensor. IRST/FLIR sensor is not ordered for F3 standard, but can easily be retrofitted from F2 aircraft, if the need arises. AFAIK a new system is planned in the longer term, I guess it’s a matter of funding here.

Yes it can. According Gave Parker C/O of No.11F sqn fuel cosumption with full dry thrust at altitude (40k ft-50k ft) is just twice as high as idle consumption on ground.

This is the actual page I was referring to.
If using full mil thrust, with a SFC of 23g/kN.s, a pair of ej200s will consume abt 3300 kg from the 5000 available, leaving 1700kg for 30 minutes loiter, battle, and return to base. Marginal I should say :confused:

In a max supersonic scramble though my calculations are even more problematic.
With a SFC of 49g/kN.s a pair of EJs will burn no less than 10500Kg!!!

Where am I wrong?

You are wrong at SFC. SFC = Specific Fuel Consumption. SFC is a static value typical for for the static thrust (in this case 60 kN/90 kN to stick with official data). At altitude the thrust produced reduces, while with airspeed the consumption goes up. That’s the reason why the supercruise radius is also considerabley lower than at subsonic speeds. Basically you can’t convert SFC in range as this is the consumption at max dry or reheat thrust in static conditions (normal 0 level with ISO standard 15° C etc.). At altitude both thrust and fuel consumption are way lower than at low level. That’s also the reason why the given mission radius at sea level is much lower than the mission radius at altitude, simply as the consumption is much lower there. Hope that helps.

I thought finishing this sensless discussion with a certain person and keeping out of the thread for a while might deescalate the situation and that the thread has a chance to get back on topic. As I can see that doesn’t work, but it doesn’t matter anyway as the thread has exceeded the number of allowed pages and I suppose it will be closed by a mod soon.

For the benefit of the interested and due to obvious misunderstanding:
Re Typhoon + supercruise:
A supercruise capability for the Typhoon was ackknowledged back in the earlier 90s when the prototypes haven’t even demonstrated that capability and when marketing was not present, as not even the customer nations ordered the aircraft. That wasn’t recognised by the broad public however, as it wasn’t widely reported. The situation changed in the later 90s when prototypes (DA4 & 7) demonstrated that capability a reached a supercruise speed ~ mach 1.2. A value we can still read in many official publications. The term supercruise itself was better known by the broad public at that time due the F-22 and Eurofighter started to point out this capability more often as the first foreign marketing campaigns were underway.
A MTU engeneer said back then that mach 1.3 was realistic with speeds up to mach 1.5 with improved engines. Fact is all production Typhoons since block 2 are powered by the EJ200 Mk101 FOC version which features new components and is stronger than any earlier versions including the EIS version of block 1 aircraft, pre-production and prototype engines.
Mach 1.4-1.5 has been “verbaly” stated and reported for some time now and the eurofighter website just recently stats mach 1.5 as possible supercruise speed. What has been consistently said is that this is a max figure, not necessarily sustained for longer periods and definitely not in an operational configuration! That is what some here got wrong. Operational applicable supercruise speed is ~mach 1.2-1.3 depending on the configuration and including AAMs and drop tanks (BTW 1000 l, not 1500 l as Typhoon11 said).

Re supercruise Rafale:
NO one ever stated the Rafale can’t supercruise, what has been reported from the Singapore evaluation was that the Rafale couldn’t do it under the conditions there. If you don’t like that and don’t believe it by that fact, do it you are free to believe what you want. As said no one said the Rafale can’t supercruise, but that it might have difficulties to do it in some circumstances.

Hope that this clears something up.

😡
Lord Asap:

:mad::mad::mad:

What do you expect from Fonk, NungesserC, Thunder, Global Press, Lordass or whatever he calls him. 😉

no barel roll? rafale? anayway barel roll is used when there’s nothing more to show, behing the easile move to execute
here and at low taking of speed!

http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=zSj9thvmPuE
http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=PnY1nqyEqLo

And where is the barell roll? The started rolling before unloading quickly? LOL

no supercruise? in singapore? get me the singapore Mod report pls? not the fanboy typhoon journalist who’s payed to glow the product of his payroll bosses, Typhoon didn’t even qualify for the final for its poor performences, as in Korea and brazil and Nerderland, spin lies are frequents in british “press”!

Of course everything which might not speak pro Rafale is just biased fanboy crap the guys who reported it are of course paid by the manufacturer:rolleyes:.