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As stated before I will move the discussion where it belongs to. You cna find my reply here:
http://forum.keypublishing.com/showpost.php?p=1872527&postcount=93

What we do know about Typhoon DASS is that the RWR relies on a pair of wideband antennas per sector.

Such antenna pairs with a resolution of ~10° cannot provide a bearing accurate enough for passive targetting, you need an interferometric array for that.

Sorry for the short off topic and we might continue this discussion in the Typhoon news thread, but this can’t be left uncommented. The “~10°” figure is completely unsubstantiated. Even much older systems without interferometers achieved greater accuracy than that. Bearing accuracy depends on a lot of factors including the antenna design, arrangement and technology. With the same antennas, but one being fitted with interferometers you are certainly going to achieve better results, but that’s not an automatism! We don’t even know for sure whether DASS employs interferometers or not. BTW DASS features 16 antenna assemblies hidden behind 10 radoms. Three of these antennas account for the MAWS, the rest for the ESM/ECM sub-system.

Which is why some Typhoon customers choose not to include them…

TRDs are fitted to all Typhoons, spare Austrian ones which lack the DASS altogether. German Typhoons just use different TRDs than the rest of the fleet.

Of course, on the Typhoon if you install a TRD you have to remove one of the four ECM modules, losing coverage for that sector.

As the right wing-tip pod is designed to accommodate two TRDs this is a no-brainer. The rearward facing ESM/ECM antenna offers a wide FoR to provide full coverage of the rear hemisphere.

No it can’t. It lacks the accurate antenna arrays for such job. It also lacks a laser rangefinder.

The lack of accuracy in this case a pure speculation of yours, if not an outright invention. You forget about PIRATE which offers very accurate angular position data, range data, velocity, acceleration, rough target vector and the target ID in STTI mode. DASS adds a range estimate, bearing and emitter ID and Captor reportedly offers a passive mode as well, next to the offboard targeting option via MIDS. A LRF isn’t really passive either!

This means that its only way of getting a firing solution is to use its radar (unless the track is provided by a third party of course).

The data mentioned above should be sufficient even without Captor and MIDS, albeit there is still the same problem as is present for the Rafale or any other current fighter for that matter, lack of MCG and a lesser range of accurate data to provide a firing solution comparable in scope and accuracy to that of the radar.

Typhoon DASS shares the same basic problems than the plane it protects: workshare packages mean that the ESM & ECM were made in different countries and their outputs were never meant to be fused at a higher level because yet another company was making the central avionics.

DASS was merely designed by two companies, like SPECTRA which is designed by MBDA and Thales. That DASS wasn’t designed without any sensor fusion in mind is equally wrong and apparently based on nothing but hot air.

Again sorry for the OT and if there is an interest to continue the discussion we should move elsewhere and leave this thread for what it is meant to be, a Rafale news and discussion thread.

The main mission of Growler is to provide detection and jamming against all known surface-to-air threats across the full spectrum of EW.
Rafale did exactly that in Libya and AdA was the only air forces able to operate without the protection of the USN F-18G (going as far as refusing it even when it was available).

The Growler is much more designed to provide protection of allied forces by suppressing enemy air defences in the first place. SPECTRA is more designed to protect the aircraft itself, rather than protecting multiple formations over a wide spread area. SPECTRA might be able to protect some nearby platforms under the umbrella. It’s not known whether the AdA was the sole AF able to operate without Growler protection, it was the sole AF which was willed to take the risk. It’s not known whether Growlers were around all the time either when non French fighters were operating in the area.

You can only do that if your aircraft has ELINT/SIGINT capabilities (+ stand off weapons like AASM and a two seater is far better) which are not just a key strength compared to other systems, but a whole new world apart. A self defence suite + a few LGB isn’t going to cut it.

ELINT & SIGINT are electronic recce capabilities. ELINT is used to map enemy radar systems with their position to generate the enemies electronic order of battle, useful for latter mission planning, while SIGINT is gathering intelligence on the signals itself, useful against unknown threat emitters in particular and to update your threat and ECM libaries. The SPECTRA is in this case more or less unique as the EW systems of other aircraft don’t pose full fledged ELINT/SIGINT capabilities, at least not from what’s known, which isn’t everything available however. I think that the AASM is a valuable key enabler for the Rafale as a very flexible stand-off weapon it’s certainly going to enable safe mission execution which otherwise requires more specialised weapons such as ARMs etc.

Where did I say or imply that? It just serves as a cueing system that someone is painting a target and it means that the target has enough time to react. One reaction could be to switch on radars and/or get updates from other radars. Since the RBE2AA has at least 80 KM “spare” range (versus effective weapon range) there would be plenty of time to react to get into a counter attack position.

Your entire discussion is centered around this argument and you never made an attempt to make a clear cut here, so it isn’t to far stretched to assume that you imply exactly that and I’m obviously not the only one who reads your comments in this way.

My point has been very simple all along: The Captor-E radar does not have a weapon system to match its superior range so a lot of that early warning advantage is really dissipated at some level.

A powerful radar can be good for all sorts of things from raw power in electronic attack modes to improved performance against lower RCS targets. Radar range isn’t static by any means and even if you detect and track a target way beyond engagement range the awareness of the threat leaves more options to prepare an engagement or exercise other options depending on the tactical situation and your mission.

….just why did the Typhoon’s hi-tech EW system score so much lower in the Swiss AF assessment?

….or for that matter why was the basic Hornet’s (…not Super Hornet’s) EW system score so much lower?

From what’s available independent from the Swiss eval DASS had some issues at times, largely driven by software glitches which may explain the performance gap next to other factors I can’t elaborate on yet.

I think it may have to do with geolocation capabilities which are underdeveloped in run-of-the-mill systems. There was a claim by a pilot that the SPECTRA can be used for airborne passive targeting. Perhaps that would work if they could network jets in an effective cross-triangulation method between themselves.

Dassault has claimed this on a website: “The outstanding capability of SPECTRA regarding airborne threat localisation, is one of the keys of the RAFALE’s superior situational awareness.”

How far that goes is beyond me, but if the SPECTRA is effective in airborne geolocation as has been claimed (and this is many times tougher than geolocating static ground emitters) than it means that whenever the Typhoon switches it radar it would be tracked in turn for distances easily up to 200 KM (claimed geolocation range of the SPECTRA according to some).

“up to 200 km” has been stated, but that’s detection and not necessarily localisation of a threat emitter. As you pointed out yourself geo-locating airborne emitters is quite difficult from a single ship and the data obtained are more rough and inaccurate. You can cue your missile and launch it into a basket from where it will try to acquire it target with its own seeker, but if launched at long ranges with minor data only and without any MCG the pk isn’t going to be high.

I basically don’t get the point of your weird scenario anyway as neither China, nor Pakistan will buy the Typhoon, so your scenario makes no sense at all.

My point is that your scenarios are very much centered around a single assumption only which is Rafale with radar silence, plus possibly AWACS/GCI support against Typhoon with active radar and no such support. Whatever scenario you envisage it’s not IAF specific anyway, but for some strange reason you are defending the choice of the IAF by bringing up exactly this scenario.