And there was no reason for the UK, Germany, Italy and Spain to let everything being dictated by a single country giving up their opportunity to remain proficient in various fields of aircraft development and production. In the end the sides split up and they both did it their way. End of the story.

And my gut feeling tells me it’s still just a matter of a single post to identify you Monsieur Sampaix. I’ll leave it at that.

Aurevoir

That’s inaccurate. The ACX program, derived from ACT-92 and taking MN requirements into account, was launched by Charles Hernu on november 12th 1982. The F/EFA program started one year later (december 13th 1983). The M88 demonstrator ran on a test bench for the first time less than a month later (on january 6th 1984), before R&R began the development of the XG-40 technology demonstrator (which led to the EJ-200).
France already had almost everything on track when the F/EFA program collapsed again in 1985, while the other partners only had an ever changing paper-plane and no engine except a revamped RB-199. With this in mind, it looks like that everyone’s stance was a bit too much for each other…

Within the FEFA programme the naval variant wasn’t a matter as the French requirement for 250 aircraft outlined. Yes the ACX was meant to demonstrate the feasibility of a joint AdA/MN fighter, but the MN only decided for the Rafale in 1986. and the paper plane had its tech demonstrator dubbed EAP which flew just a month after Rafale A and the XG-40 ACME demonstrator was in the works since 1982.

I agree that the French desire for a carrier-capable design should have been accepted by the other countries. The French insistence for Dassault to have design leadership was not legitimate.

As Feydakin pointed out, the naval variant was of no interest during the time the French were involved with the FEFA/EFA programme. The decision to adopt the Rafale for the MN was made in 1986 only, at that time France had already left the programme. Discrepancies arose around the French demands for programme leadership, overall design responsibility, a fix workshare irrespective of requirements and investment, adopting the ACX design, the M88 engine and the specifications as laid out by the AdA. This was a bit too much. It might be noteworthy that the initial EFA specifications agreed by Germany, Italy and UK on 1 August 1985 reflected a compromise between the French requirements on the lower end and the British requirements on the higher end concerning the size, weight and required engine thrust.

@Kovy
Exactly those.:very_drunk:

well unlike radar , a jammer need enemy to be able to receive it , otherwise there no point jamming , dont you think :p

If there is no active radar then there is no need for jamming either… More importantly the point is that modern jammers aren’t comparable to those noise jammers of the past which attracted every suitable receicer all around the broadcasting platform.

I do not think that the sort of maximum-range “shoot and run’ you are talking about represents a realistic scenario for air combat.

If I were to see an approaching opponent fly such a turnaway manoeuvre at long range, I would assume that either he had decided to decline combat, or that he had launched a BVR weapon at me and was now trying to avoid being engaged by any BVR weapon that I might fire. Under such conditions, the kill probability (KP) of my opponent is low. All I need to do is to manoeuvre to place myself outside the search volume that the enemy seeker will have when activated. I am then free to continue my mission.

The rules of BVR combat are little changed from the Vietnam War era. A pilot has the choice of firing as soon as the target is within the maximum range of his missile, or closing the range until the target is within the no-escape zone of his missile (as defined by the ‘worst case’ target behaviour).

After firing, the pilot will want to disengage as soon as possible, but such a maximum-range “shoot and run’ is unlikely to result in a kill. With a modern BVR weapon, the pilot is constrained by the need to keep watching the target’s behaviour in order to provide his missile with the updates needed to maximise missile KP. The longer the time he does this, the greater his chances of scoring a kill.

The longer the range of the BVR missile, the greater the amount of capability that is lost if in-flight updating is not available. But there is no simple rule to guide the pilot in when he should end missile updating and start to disengage. It depends on the way that the engagement evolves.

There is very little in the public domain on this problem, but that may change in the next few days following the presentation of a paper on the subject at an unclassified conference. The text of the paper in question is apparently not included in the conference documentation, but my understanding is that Aviation Week had a journalist at the conference, so they may have something to report.

While I agree with the above it needs to be taken into account that MCG might be provided by another platform. In addition the time to autonomous can be computed so a pilot isn’t necesarily unaware of when the missile enters the terminal phase, with the induction of two-way datalinks the point of where the missile goes “pit bull” is accurately known.

Perhaps it should not be too surprising — consider the Swiss leaks. They demonstrated how far behind the Typhoon was compared to the Rafale in a number of areas. Given the huge budget and large number of a/c produced one would think that Typhoon should be more and not less advanced/mature than the Rafale — unfortunately that did not seem to be the case in 2008 — and where is Typhoon today? Rafale flies with AESA today; when will the Typhoon AESA be ready? SPECTRA is updated regurlarly — how often is DASS updated? When will it get full, mature multirole features?

Typhoon is a fantastic a/c with a great potential, however the customers probably want something more than just “a great potential” — in particular considering the high costs…

You get what you pay for. If the customers require something it must be paid for, the lack of commitment and will to invest on behalf the the governments and MODs was always a stumbling block for the Typhoon. The situation is better now where national developments require no quadrinational approval anymore. Everyone can now opt for what he wants and is willed to pay for and this has already paid off for the UK in particular, but also for Saudi Arabia. The new aüproach is for smaller upgrades which may culuminate into larger upgrades later.

The 2008 results from the Swiss eval are well understood by those close to the programme and aren’t of relevance anymore as all platforms involved have evolved ever since. The Typhoon is a lot more mature and capable today albeit you can’t measure it by the number of weapons integrated as many do and as Eurofighter has become more silent about the ongoing developments it’s not too surprising that the public perceiption is that nothing happens, but that’s far from the truth. DASS has been constantly evolving ever since its induction and several hardware changes have occured and additional hardware changes are funded already. Software development went ahead with the UK DASS Enhancements which will evolve further building on the latest hardware introduced with the DASS 1-3 Enhancements. Some further improvements are being step wise integrated via the drop programme and the upcoming P2EA upgrade will introduce lots of further enhancements. DASS 4 & 5 Enhancements aren’t funded yet beyond the initial feasibility studies, but the requirements exist along with an implementation roadmap. The pace of weapons integration is still dissatisfactional, but that’s more owed to customer priorities and funding commitments than to the unwillingness or inability of the industry to do so. The EPCs have understood that investments must be made in advance and the do so. AESA development continues on base of industry funds and has thus not halted. Two aircraft are earmarked as testbeds for the new radar and a well defined evolution roadmap of the radar exists.

Argueably there is still a lot of stuff that would be desirable and that may still take a while, but the aircraft evolves at a constant pace, though it’s not as well documented in the public domain anymore as it was in the past.

Combat Radius: Depending upon mission profile being tested (Mix of Sub vs Super radius dependent upon mission profile) The F-22A Was between 14% to 24% better when compared to ATF Requirements despite not meeting the weight and fuel burn targets set forth after YF22 was selected..[/B]

This can be explained by a considerably reduced range requirement! I doubt that the F-22 actually meets the range requirements as laid out in the original ATF specifications. Those were revised at least twice in the late 80s and early 90s. Most likely the range requirements have been lowered considerably. Otherwise it’s totally unrealistic that an aircraft which is about 40% heavier and carries about 15% or less fuel meets, let alone exceeds range specifications. The F-22 is comparably short legged for an aircraft that was designed to rely on internal fuel in the first place, it’s fuel fraction is actually that of an aircraft that is designed with drop tanks in mind and according Lt.Col Niemi the F-22’s range performance is comparable to that of the F-16C, albeit the F-16’s configuration has not been defined in that comparison, fact is however that the F-22 falls much behind the F-15 which is was meant to replace.

@Eagle1
I don’t think that anyone here believes that the Rafale programme wasn’t well managed overall. Cost grow can have several reasons and roots many of which can’t be influenced by the industry itself.