The gain of weight of MIG-35 is not much unlike F-16. infact MIG-35 gained TVC.
but that is clearly not the case with Rafale. It will stay the same for long period of time.

The empty weight of the MiG-35 has not been disclosed but it is most likely heavier than the MiG-29M whose empty weight was 11500 kg, given the larger wings, enlarged intakes to feed the RD33MK and additional stuff like the heaver radar etc. it is likely to have gained some weight. TVC itself is not going to boost the engines thrust output either so that point is rather moot and as of now no one has ordered the MiG-35, let alone any MiG variant equipped with the KLIVT nozzles. It is an option, not taken by any customer thus far, though available.

Rafale is underpowerd once you load up with decent load. Radar ranges are in theory. but i will not surprized if Zhuk-M2 of MIG-29UPG of IAF exceeds current Rafale radar.

In heavy strike configurations it could need more power, but in normal AA configurations it compares well. Even if we assume an unrealistic low empty weight for the MiG-35 of 11500 kg.

We get 11500 kg EW+5200 kg fuel/2 x 9000 kg thrust/42 sqm wing area
TWR: 1.078:1
Wing loading: 397 kg/sqm
Fuel fraction: 31.13%

Rafale C 9500 kg EW/fuel 4750 kg/45.7 sqm wing area/2 x 7650 kg thrust
TWR: 1.073:1
Wing loading: 312 kg/sqm
Fuel fraction: 33.3%

So in effect we have a 2+% better fuel fraction, an 85 kg lower wing loading and a 0.5% lower TWR. And as said that’s already a rather optimistic assumption in favour for the MiG-35!

Rafale cannot utilize 9500kg external load. it is theoretical value.

As I noted…

Su-30 does not need upgrade as it has decent power but upgraded engines are available unlike Rafale.

The Su-30 has not such a great TWR at all and is in fact inferior to the Rafale here.

Even if we calculate with only 60% of internal fuel its TWR is just around 1.03:1! This is based on the normal takeoff weight figure of 24900 kg with 5270 kg (60%) of internal fuel subtracting the included missile weight and accounting for two pylons arriving at an estimated 24250 kg. It might be a bit lower than that but the Su-30MKI is hardly more powerful as such. If we calculate the TWR for maximum TOW we arrive at 0.62:1 for the Rafale and 0.64:1 on the Su-30MKI, a whooping 2% difference.

MIG-29 is more verstile than F-16/J-10. Try to make carrier borne version of those single engine fighters. Engines will not cope with weight increase

That’s an ignorant view. Being available in a carrier variant and a land based variant is fine, but irrelevant for most customers and it doesn’t tell you anything about the overall operational versatility of the aircraft. And if we compare the thrust grow the F-16 has experienced vs that of the MiG-29 it’s apparent the the US fighter has gained some 4 t of additional thrust from the earlier variants powered by the F100-PW-200/220 (10800 kg) to the blk 60 with a reheat thrust of 14772 kg! The MiG-29’s increase in thust is much more modest from the RD33’s 8300 kg per engine to 9000 kg of the new RD33MK! That’s a thrust gain of just 1400 kg for both engines combined!

I would say MIG-29 airframe is even better than Rafale. Just the larger nose and increase engine power give it distinct advantage.

Quoted range performance figures for the radars indicate that the RBE2’s range is already comparable to that of the Zhuk-M and the RBE2AA will exceed this by 40-50%. The Zhuk-MAE fitted to the prototypes falls short of range performance, remains to be seen whether the final Zhuk-AE with a larger antenna will achieve the brochure specs which might exceed the raw range performance of the RBE2AA. Wrt the engines that view is ignorant as well considering that the MiG is larger and heavier than the Rafale, though Rafale’s MTOW is in fact 1 t higher than that of the newest Fulcrum derivatives! So at high TOWs the MiG-29 offers a better TWR, at NTOW in a light AA configuration the two fighters are well comparable and the Rafale is apparently not underpowered!

can you show me how Rafale can carry as much as Su-30?

Rafale’s maximum external payload is 9500 kg vs 8000 kg on the Su-30MK! However it’s fair to say that these are more theoretical values and depending on the exact configurations the Flanker may have an edge.

Su-30 has clear upgrade map of upgrated engines and even more internal fuel when you consider Su-35/Su-34. with latest PESA/AESA upgrade the electronic ability of Sukhoi will vastly surpass Rafale.

Up to date there are no confirmed plans for re-engine the Su-30 whatsoever and a larger fuel load is only of relevance if you consider the weight of the aircraft itself and its engines fuel consumption and airframe drag as well. Furthermore radar capability isn’t defined by raw power output and range either and avionics/sensors as a whole cover much more than just the radar!

Couldn’t it be possible that both centreline stations are used to hold large/heavy stores?

We were talking about the progess in terms of upgrades of each fighter and not about the operational differences between the systems.

Now talking about the operational advantages between both fighters, I agree that the lack of FSO IR (which imo still is not clear yet for India) and the compensation with MICA IR is a downer in terms of detection capability compared to PIRATE, but the identification capabilities of FSO TV was reportedly better even in the current system. The improved FSO IT will increase this advantage even more and imo passive MAWS are a clear advantage compared to the active of EF when you want to be undetected, just like reduced operational costs of the M88 is a good point as well, especially compared to EF which is in disadvantage in this field anyway.
So there are several advantages that comes with these upgrades, be it compared to the older Rafale versions, or compared to the EF upgrades that are cleared so far.

My point is that not all of these changes are necessarily providing the Rafale with a advantage. Turbine life of the M88-2E1 reportedly was 200 h only. This was increased to 700 h on the M88-2E4 and the new M88-4E offers a 40-50% increase in engine components life time. That means we can expect ~1000 h for the turbine stage now. Hot parts of the EJ200 had a life time of 1600 h and there are some indiciations that this was to be increased to 2000 h with the T2 engines. Whether it happened or not has not been confirmed. But it already looks like the EJ200 is more durable than the older M88 versions and might still offer an advantage over the new M88-4E. But to stay fair it would require more information to do an accurate comparison.

That the original OSF may already offer a better ID capability than PIRATE is possible, TV cameras offer a crisper image than IIR devices, but they are limited to day time operations. A passive missile warner offers advantages wrt to covert operations, it’s immune against ECM and will have no problems with ground clutter as well. On the downside such systems offer bearing data only whereas active systems determine the threat missile’s range, direction of flight, speed and closure rate as well. This allows the system to suggest evasive/support manoeuvres to the pilot and coordinate the employment of counter measures in a more timely manner. On top of that the detection performance of IR devices is heavily restricted in adverse weather conditions and suffers greatly when the rocket motor has burned out. Active systems will be much less affected by weather and the state of the motor. And just for the record DASS is being upgraded with the P1E as well and I speak about hardware upgrades only. The software was permanently improved on existing aircraft as well. Add the new MIDS, radios, DGPS and MODE 5 IFF, a new software based on a RTOS and you are looking at a quite respectable upgrade. Rafale’s received almost no hardware upgrades ever since the F2 standard was introduced in late 2004. The F3+ will be the first variant to introduce some major hardware upgrades 8-9 years after the F2!

No, I asked where does India gain mor from? Developing own techs with foreign assistance (co-developments), or the production of foreign techs in India under ToT (outsourcing of the production)? Because the latter is what the EF consortium offers, techs that “they” developed for the EF, but have not get the necessary fundings would be produced in India. We get ToT and jobs of course, but the gain is mainly in terms of production, not in developing them and that’s why co-developments are better for India.

I asked it Scorpion recently as well, why the EF consortium didn’t offered a similar partnership in co-development of the Kaveri engine, like Snecma offers? They could have even combined it with the sale of EJ 200 engines for LCA MK2 + TVC and take that as a base for the Kaveri engine. India would have gained way more from such an offer, than from simple licence producing the EJ 200 in India right? And on the other side, it would have increased EFs chances in MMRCA way more too, but AFAIK, only the French and Russians offered such co-development opportunities.
The partnership offer at this stage is mainly to get the fundings and lower the
production costs of EF, while the benefit for India in terms of development is very limited. Actually, the only part where India would really be a partner of the development, is the naval Typhoon, that is offered completely to India and according to Indian requirements. But even that is a fake offer, since nobody, not even the initial partners wants that version and by the fact that India has already their own carrier fighter project running. Developing the naval Typhoon, is no advantage for India either, but at least we could be a real partner. :rolleyes:

You better ask Eurojet (not Eurofighter) why they didn’t offer participation on the Kaveri! You could also ask why Thales wasn’t in the running for an AESA radar for the Tejas Mk2. As said a thousand times before, there are a lot of development opportunities for the Indians. They aren’t limited to co-producing parts! This is something you appear to be stuck with in your head and you should start to get it out of it!

Scorps, based purely on Snecma and French senate reports, here are the flight hour milestones for the M88. Divide by two and you’ve got flight hours for Rafale.

May 1999: 6,200 hours (mostly pre-production aircraft)
summer 2006: more than 30,000 hours
late 2009: more than 100,000 hours
late 2010: more than 130,000 hours

Extrapolating from the above, M88 is probably around 170,000 hours right now, and Rafale therefore around 85,000 hours. I’d expect the 100,000 hours milestone will be reached by mid-late 2012.

I can only guess what the “30,000 hours” milestone this year represented: my guess is that that was flight hours in front line French Air Force squadron service, i.e. excluding the French Navy, trials squadrons, pre-production aircraft, and all flights before 2007…

Does the engine hours include those of the prototypes and are they real flying hours or benchtest hours as well?
The “30000 h” Rafale had 4 squadron badges painted on its flaperons, but they are not that easy to identify for me as I’m not really proficient when it comes to French squadron badges. What you say makes some sense however and in this case the Rafale may have ramped up quite a lot of fh in that time (since ~2006 or so). Though there were reports about a low availability of the Rafale of just 45% in 2007. This has certainly changed and I don’t know whether it was for the AdA’s then new F2s only or whether it was the average for the entire F1/F2 fleet.

Countdown to 300th Typhoon

My current count is 291 Typhoons including IPAs and a few aircraft not being delivered yet. With this year running for another 3.5 month there is a fair chance that we’ll see the 300th Typhoon flying before year end.

@Colibri
The article states:

To date, the Rafale is the favorite not only because of its excellent test scores but also because of its industrial offer. The plane corresponds to the budget and offers excellent prospects for modernization. Eurofighter on its side improves technically, but suffers in terms of cost!

Maybe someone who speaks proper French can be so kind to accurately translate us that passage which was written in French in the original article as it seems. Maybe it’s just a crappy translation from the engine.

EELightning, just for correction, about 100 rafales have been delivered until now, which is half (or less) than the Typhoon… so, if one takes the 100000 vs 60000 figure, the rafale does quite well, especially considering its doing it for a good part in real war operations and from carrier (the typhon having been used for air policing basically – so yes, doing circles in the sky, more or less), except in lybia where it started being used in war.

Just for correction…
I know that the 60000 fh figure was brought up by EEL, but I seriously wonder where it comes from and in fact believe that it is way to high! The AdA logged its 30000th flight hour in April or May this year (2011). The AdA received its first aircraft on 22nd December 2004 and required about 6.5 years to accumulate this number of flight hours! Even if we assume that they have amassed some 5000 fh since then, which is already quite optimistic it’s far away from any 60000 fh figure. Of course we need to take into account the flight hours of the MN, but how many could that be? 25000? I seriously doubt it! Why? Well while the MN received its first aircraft on 4th December 2000 (over 4 years before the AdA) it had to cope with a very low number of aircraft for years. The last batch 1 Rafale M was just delivered in October 2002 IIRC and that was Rafale M10. As Rafale M1 is on loan to Dassault to support ongoing flight test activities and the MN had to cope with 9 aircraft for YEARS! The first batch 2 Rafale was just handed over to the MN on 19th May 2006. In February 2007, at the time the CdG was deployed to the Indian Ocean, they had just 12 Rafales (9 F1 & 3 F2!) onboard! In May 2008 the 9 F1s were withdrawn from service and are held in storage ever since. It was not before 25th July 2009 that the first batch 3 example was delivered to the MN. This was Rafale M25 (the 25th production Rafale M). Substract the 10 batch 1 examples and the MN had not more than 15 aircraft in service at that time. Two examples were lost in September 2009 and another one in November 2010. 37 Rafale M are on contract as part of the batches 1-3. Batch 3 deliveries will be concluded in 2012 so you can expect that the MN has received 35 ac at best. 35 – 3 crashed – 10 batch 1 = 22 Rafale M currently in service! How many flight hours are likely for such a small fleet over the given time frame?

Even if it is 60000 fh in total considering a fleet of ~100 Rafales (now) over a time frame of almost 11 (ELEVEN) years (December 2000 – September 2011), how does it compare to the Typhoon?

I’ll dig up the example of the RAF Typhoon fleet only as it is rather well documented. RAF flying operations with the Typhoon were launched at Warton in November 2003 (Case White programme). That’s a period of about 8 (EIGHT) years now! BAES announced the delivery of its 100th Typhoon earlier this year, as at least 20 of them were delivered to Saudi Arabia it leaves some 80 ac for the RAF, possibly around 85 now.

If you take a look at the NAO report from March this year they list the logged flight hours between 2005 and 2010 (a period of 5 years!) and the graph reads: ~2200 fh in 2005, ~5800 fh in 2006, ~9500 fh in 2007, 10000 fh in 2008 and 9500 fh in 2009 = 37000 fh! Add those flight hours amassed from November 2003 to 31st December 2004 and those massed since 1st January 2010 and you can easily add another 20000! That makes at least 57000 fh for the RAF alone with ~4/5th the number of aircraft and in a 3 years shorter time frame. And the 57k figure is already quite moderate considering the ever increasing number of Typhoons! In 2010 BAES delivered 25 ac alone (those for SA included!).

So are even 60000 fh (which I doubt) for the Rafale fleet over a period of almost 11 years a good achievement vs. a 15-20% smaller British Typhoon fleet with an equivalent number flight hours in three years less time? I don’t think so. Sure the Rafale has logged more hours in combat ops over Afghanistan and Libya and is proven in more roles on the other hand the Typhoon fleet is providing 24/7 QRA for the UK and the Falklands, sure a more boring and less impressive “job” in comparison to combat ops, but at least a PERMANENT commitment vs. temporary commitments for the AdA/MN Rafale fleet!

I’ll skip the rest of the usual Rafale pro camp brabbling about the “Typhoon is lost because of F-35 and the lame partner nations”.