Scorpion82@Eagle1
I’d like to read more about the details of the software/hardware changes. If possible in the Rafale thread.
Wrt Captor performance gains through software updates you are right you can’t expect a considerable increase in raw performance while retaining the hardware within physical constraints. That was actually not the point anyway. The raw range performance was never questioned or criticised at all. The radar had other issues and performance in those areas, especially track stability, ECCM performance and ground clutter rejection characteristics have seen some considerable improvements with the more recent radar software revisions. What Mr L talked about were mission data and with what I know now he wasn’t wrong on it. The UK has taken the lead in radar and DASS development and the RAF has fielded improvements in advance of other customers who are now eager to introduce these enhancements. How the latest stuff would actually compare to that on the Rafale is yet another question. If I should hazard a guess, there are areas where the differences are a big as before, there might be areas where the differences are even bigger and there are certainly those where the differences are smaller these days. This may go either way. At the end of the day it’s good to see that both designs evolve and that the customers are confident and satisfied. Of course there will ever be things to moan about but that’s just life.
Scorpion82You are right generally speaking, but in this case the RBE2 AESA is clearly much better than the Captor insofar as the RBE2 PESA was already superior to the Captor. The only official document comparing both radars is the swiss evaluation report, which clearly & undoubtedly claims that the swiss judged the RBE2 PESA superior to the Captor.
Judging superiority is relative. The RBE2 PESA wias named among the other sensors when the claim made was “The strong points of the Rafale were the quality of its sensors”. Judging the Eurofighter in the DCA role it was stated “Eurofighter would need some improvements especially in the EW and Sensors domain…” Which is a pretty generalised statement that may give a glimpse, but it doesn’t outline the Captor as particlarly weak or inferior to the RBE2 PESA. Some, also generalised, more specific indications were given in the sole MET chart of the leak, which covered the 2nd phase of the eval and took Rafale’s RBE2AA into account. Here the Rafale scored visibly higher on “acquisition” and “detection”, but only marginally higher on overall situational awareness and identification and somewhat lower in engagement. Overall the excerpts from the leaked report give no clear picture with regards to the relative performance, strengths and weaknesses of the Captor-M vs RBE2. They give a limited idea on RBE2AA vs Captor-M and that suggests that the RBE2AA should prevail in detection and acquisition by a visible margin.
my 2ct
Scorpion82Not necessarily Scorpion, rafale and typhoon often practice against or along each others so it is relatively easy to assess each other radar range. The idea isn’t to be ultra accurate but it is not difficult to Know if your radar has less range, more range or much more range than the competition…No need to bring so called leaks into the equation.
Well the reference to the Swiss evaluation was brought up by you and I simply pointed out that the Rafale was evaluated before Typhoon, so that such an assessment, also considering the time frame could not have been made back then, irrespective of whether it is true or not.
Secondly, although captor and rbe2 pesa have both evolved since this swiss competition I would like to point out that rumors “leaked” from who you know regarding both radar performances where much older and participated to shape the internet crowd opinion on both systems. So when the typhoon could track F16 at very long range for the Singaporean evaluation circa 2004 this is fine but in 2008 for the swiss evaluation it is suddenly not fine…It’s also fine when an infamous journalist says the rbe2 is “dead end” in 2003 or 2005 but when the swiss praise the rbe2 quality it is not accepted.
To be honest the Mr. “similar to sea” argument is tiresome. Maybe we should focus on the discussion at hand and simply leave the claims of a certain journalist out of it. The 2004 claim of “long range” is certainly not contradictory to the overall assessment in 2008. Radar performance and capability depends on a lot of factors as I have already outlined in my post at #711.
I am just trying to underline that many beliefs that are repeated on rafale pesa vs captor are unfunded and takes their origin even further than the swiss evaluation.
Agreed.
Last but not least, I would say that if Eurofighter Gmbh could not bring a mature Captor-M in 2008, and that it is only now in 2013 that we can talk of the captor M as a somewhat finished and accomplished product well…Something must have gone terribly wrong and we should make a wake up call regarding the assessment some have of the captor-M. I mean they must wait 2013 to get a properly functioning mech scan radar that could be competitive in the swiss assesment 5 years ago when the industry is now moving massively towards AESA ?
At times were performance and capability is largely driven by software, with the hardware laying the foundation of capability only things like these may happen. It doesn’t mean that Captor was that bad back then, but it wasn’t perfect either and there was still a lot of room for improvement even without altering the hardware. Reliability issues in some instances were criticised by Armasuisse for good reason.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t ignore the qualities of the Captor M. I am just pointing that it is overhyped by some typhoon supporters who view it as a kind of “concord”. It is a modern Mech radar sure but in 2013 it is hardly impressive. Just to put things into context.
Agreed.
As far as the Swiss evaluation is concerned I wouldn’t say it is outdated. Sure both the RBE2 PESA and the Captor Have evolved with new softwares refinements, hardware obsolescent treatments but to imply the overall performance would have been dramatically changed like going for a complete new technology or design is clearly an overstatement.
In some areas it has dramatically increased, the question you should raise is “what’s the baseline”. 😉
Lake was quick to advertise Captor M in the Singaporean evaluation in 2004 and dismiss rafale radar performance with the usual unbacked/unnamed claims but of course in the swiss evaluation it is all about excuses like “it was not a properly working radar but now I swear everything has changed and you will not believe your eyes…”
That the RBE2 had reliability and performance issues in its earlier days is not a “Lake” invention, but has been reported, albeit without great detail. Some of your chaps said yourself that the performance and reliability had considerably improved with the F2 standard already and there were no major hardware changes involved as far as I can judge. Feel free to correct me on the later part.
Scorpion82The French test pilot knows this from where exactly? Has the Swiss breached rules of confidentially and unveilled priviledged information of competitors to another one? Funny enough that the Typhoon was evaluated after Rafale! The leaked results are yet something else, but they are also almost 5 years old and in the field of avionics and sensors not fully representative anymore for either design Gripen, Rafale and Typhoon. If the Swiss would repeat the evaluation nowadays it will certainly come to a different result, whether the ratios will changes considerably or not and in what direction is difficult to say.
Scorpion82So…
How does the RDY-2 compares to the captor? 😉
Nic
Bring up some details about the RDY-2 and we may perform a basic assessment. For a detailed comparison you would need to know quite a lot of specific details, many of which are in the realms of classification. Just to give a glance:
– Transmitter power output
– Transmitter power management
– frequency spectrum and number of channels + frequency agility modes if available
– power loss between transmitter and scanner and between scanner and receiver
– scanner aperture, slewing speed, gimbals, gain and management
– receiver filtering logic, data processing channels
– processor speed, memory, software and algorithms
– actual modes of operation, sub-modes, functions
– range performance
– ECCM capabilities
– track accuracy and stability
– ground clutter rejection characteristics
– number of detections and tracks to be processed
– presentation of radar output data
– control of radar functions
– integration of radar data with other sensors and/or systems
etc.
Scorpion82Unless the specific details about the radars in question are known and I doubt that anyone here or even elsewhere knows those details about ALL of these radars it remains to be a claim in the first place. What can be compared are some bits and pieces that can be found in the public domain, but they hardly resemble the full picture. Based on its newess and what’s known about the Captor-M and other M-Scan radars I tend to believe that Captor-M is at least one of the most advanced and capable systems of its kind and I can’t immediately think of any other M-Scan radar that would actually exceed its level of performance and capability overall (in certain aspects maybe). But that’s as said an assessment based on what I know about those different radars and that’s certainly just a fraction of what must be known to arrive at the conclusion whether this or that radar is superior to another one overall and in which particular aspects etc.
Scorpion82You chaps never manage to stay on topic do you?
Scorpion82Gentlemen
What about leaving the troll starving? Didn’t daddy tell you chaps: “Don’t feed the troll!”? Use the ignore list or simply don’t read the badnwith robbery, but don’t throw more food at the troll, otherwise you’ll just attract him to come back!
WRT the ongoing discussion, well it’s obvious that arguments are going pass each other. Why? Maybe because the points raised are simply not too well understood by either side. People look at the evolution roadmap that Eurofighter has outlined over a decade ago and they measure the actual progress against that roadmap. Viz a viz that roadmap the Typhoon is far behind the curve, what’s being ignored in the first place here is that:
1.) That roadmap was just an industry concept that was never commited to or funded by the customers!
2.) That roadmap thus never existed in the first place as a firm plan and is long obsolete either!
At the end of the day it is as it is. It’s not like other aircraft are looking exactly like what has been proposed they could look like at this time frame! I’ll restrain myself from bringing up any particular examples as I already know how this would end up…
Considering the roadmap proposed more than a decade ago it’s not surprising that many confuse tranches and blocks with capability standards, however they should know better as this subject has been covered countless times. I’m for my part increasingly tired to repeat myselfs, so let the dumb die the way they are. It’s not worth the effort!
One additional remark: Modern combat aircraft capability is largely driven by software, measuring the “progress” made by what you can see on the outside just demonstrates that most of the laymen here have simply no clue and insight into how things work and if they would actually know what hardware changes the Typhoon programmes has experienced from block 1 to the latest block 15, they would actually laughing out loud at statements like “the aircraft is at it was 10 years ago and hasn’t changed a bit”. Argueably there is a LOT that isn’t covered in the public domain for good reason, but there is enough out there to get an idea. However this requires some dedication and effort that people usually lack wrt aircraft that they aren’t primarily interested in.
Just my 2 ct
Scorpion82The Spiegel might be ok as long as they tackle with subjects that the authors understand. That’s the usual issue with the general press, even more so when they may serve the interest of this or that party and even more so when it is about sales.
The opening part alone is a joke. Everyone with some understanding on the subject recognises what a bank angle overshoot is. But that won’t prevent some of the usual suspects to get particularly vocal about such an article. The really stormy times are yet to come.
Scorpion82Why so much text when you didn’t understand the question anyway bring_it_on?
Scorpion82The Super Hornet programme is indeed a good example for a modern military aircraft programme that hit its milestones on time and cost. However it’s no clean sheet design and it benefitted largely from the legacy Hornet. 90% of the avionics were adopted from the C/D variant which reduced risks and costs considerably. That not everything went to well was later shown by the APG-79 introduced for lot 27 block 2 examples which had quite some issues. Whether everything is working well in many programmes can’t be seriously compared as some programmes are better covered in the public domain than others.
Scorpion82Hunter 90 was just a sloppy Spiegel translation of “Jäger 90” which in turn was the appreviation for Jagdflugzeug 90 (aka JF90). “Fighter 90” would have been a proper translation, but it just underlines how uninformed and badly written the overall article is. This happens when clueless journalists are writing on specialised subjects.
Scorpion82@Sens
You simply don’t grasp the way how the Eurofighter programme production and capabilities are managed and throw all your incomplete bits and pieces in a mixer and present the result as the 5 star cook’s menu. The requirements for Typhoon were laid out in the WSPS which was part of the MDC. The production was covered separetly with the umbrella contract and the fix price tranche contracts which included an inflation clause. It was planned that the aircraft would enter service in an EIS version (block 1), followed by the IOC variant (block 2) and finally the FOC version (block 5). Block 5 aircraft didn’t pose all the capabilities and functionalitied as laid out in the WSPS, so yes the customer accepted a lower spec version, while continuing to receive aircraft. The MDC was concluded with SRP 4.1 with the last aircraft delivered being confugred that way. Even SRP 4.1 still missed out some stuff, mostly clearances and software glitches. SRP 4.3 represents the full standard, but has been contracted separately. This incurred additional costs, but also covered stuff beyond the WSPS. All other developments such as the Drops, P1E etc. were never part of the MDC, so claiming these costs as part of the original contracrts is plain wrong. The tranches themselves never defined any capability level to begin with. There is no “substandard” wrt T2 and T3A production standard as such were never defined or contracted in the first place! That’s an area where you are plain wrong and you continue to spill that nonsense albeit you should know better in the meantime.
In addition the F-35’s blocks are indeed capability related, Typhoon’s blocks aren’t per definition.
So late and more expensive definitely, but not the way you misrepresent it here.
Scorpion82.. of cause it is not EADS, just a part of that. It was created to contain the commercial risc and allow own profits. Eurofighter GmbH was unable to deliver Block 5 examples at the start of Tranche 1 production. Every Block has to give the related capability or it is a substandard example only. The F-35B/A of the USMC/USAF will get their IOC with Block 2B software and the related capabilities, when the USN will wait for the final Block 3F software and full capabilities for their F-35C. For the Eurofighter you have different substandards within the Block 5 examples. That had nothing to do what the partners were willing to pay for a Block 5 example. It was not at hand at first and had to be introduced step by step and generating a lot of extra cost. See the related software upgrades and time-scales within Tranche 1 examples about that. At first all the F-35s for IOC had to start with the full Block 3 software and all related capabilities. There was no shortage of development money, when it was learned it will take much more time and cost to reach the Block 3 level. To allow the production run at all lower Blocks with reduced capabilities were allowed. Right now you can get a F-35B/A with Block 2B software and the related capabilities. With Eurofighter you got a Block 5 example with Tranche 1 and not the related capability but a lot of promises about extra capabilities for free, when in reality you had to pay for every software upgrade or stay without that. Eurofighter did even allow you to trade some of your hardware to pay for such software upgrades. All the customers run Eurofighters of different capabilities by different software alone from the same Tranche built. All that gives an idea, why an otherwise sound design never becomes an export success. Satisfied customers will give follow-up orders most of the time and not the other way around.
Stop the nonsense! You have been explained how it works and you still don’t grasp it. Is it sheer ignorance or stupidy? The approach within the Eurofighter and F-35 programme is pretty much similar. A block 3I is not up to block 3F and the US armed forces actually introduced block 1 examples that are pretty limited in functionality and capability as were those earlier blocks of the Typhoon. Tranche 1 was never supposed to start with a block 5, the approach was always phased and spread over multiple production blocks which represent the smallest breakdown of the production, followed by the intermediate batches and the tranches as top level of PRODUCTION orders. Capabilities of the Typhoon are described by PSCs and SRPs. But what do you know about it? Obviously nothing, otherwise you wouldn’t continue to spread your BS! Give it a rest!
Scorpion82Wrong. It was realised very fast, that EADS was unable to deliver the promised capabilities in time and cost. To get something for the billions spent already all parties agreed on the basic Tranche 1 Typhoon to start with. Still in hope EADS will catch-up and keep its promises in the end. Nothing did fullfil till today, when more and more procurement money had to be diverted into development money instead. Nothing new the F-22A and the F-35 in mind. Sensor-fusing and the related software building took much more years and in the end several hardware items had to be replaced and the three planned Tranche runs were no longer compatibel for later upgrade work. Instead we have different Blocks inside every Tranche as well. The poor politicans are overtaxed to explain their taxpayers the shortcomings of the industry. When the other way around we had to dicuss the mismanagement of EADS at first.
That’s a rather weird perceiption of the reality. Production wasn’t split because politics intended to give the industry more time to finish development. That the aircraft would enter service in a sub-spec configuration and that a phase approach to capability insertion was taken is nothing unusual at all and in fact common practise for all military aircraft these days.
Likewise it is simply reality that electronic obsolecences are a common problem for all aircraft that are in production over a period of years, let alone decades it’s again not a “Eurofighter specific” issue. The “blocks approach” isn’t unusual either.
Last but not least: Eurofighter GmbH isn’t EADS, but EADS is part of Eurofighter GmbH.
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