Scorpion82This is debatable . As you say PIRATE is an excellent piece of kit .
Feel free to debate and offer your thoughts on base of what I said.
Any AESA radar will claim this kind of agility .
I spoke about the RBE2 and that means PESA.;) If I mean the AESA variant I will either say RBE2AA or RBE2 AESA. But let’s move on.
This is highly classified (and for some years to come) but from what I could gather all these years , SPECTRA is probably capable to manage nearly twice as many channels than DASS , thanks to Bragg Cells and quicker filtering . As I said many times , it also helps in “building” the electromagnetic response (jamming) .
Well to be honest I don’t know and if I have some time I’ll try to get more on this.
Oh , C ‘Mon ! The fact is that I am having a hard time to find a mission where the Typhoon could perform better than the Rafale , bare a “Scramble” to intercept a fast and high flying target . The M2000 was very good at it , the Rafale is even better but the Typhoon is better than both .
In general I would agree as the Typhoon still lacks adequate AG capabilities. In air-to-air in general I would say both aircraft have their pros and cons.
What about DASS ?
Well as we just figured out that the DASS was designed to employ AESA technology since its inception, we’ll certainly have to wait. Right now there isn’t anything available spare new antennas for the P1E upgrade and provisions of T3 DASS for even further growth than what is offered now. We’ll probably have to wait for some time, maybe even years before we’ll know anything more.
This is outright false wrt T/R modules (more like 1190-1200) but we can trust the 15 gram and the 10W .
Why is it “outright false”? Virtually all indications hind at ~1500 TRMs! Maybe it will be less, but what makes you believe that it will be ~1200 only?
This source…
http:/http://www.airpower.at/news06/0922_captor-e/
…states “…die Radarantenne des Eurofighters, welche 1.424 Module enthält…” (…Eurofighter’s radar antenna which contains 1424 modules…)
Scorpion82Isn’t a 280m/sec climb quite good?
How does this stick out with the rest of Euro-carnards and F-22?
It should read >280 m/sec. The older Flankers were in fact attributed with a >300 m/sec so we may regard the 280 m/sec figure as conservative. There are no data out there about the F-22 but the Rafale has a stated >305 m/sec and Typhoon ~315 m/sec.
Scorpion82@Bluewings
The answer to your question is that even with Eurofighter’s more open policy not everything is out in the public and sometimes we have to wait for years to learn something which has in fact been there for quite a long time. Thus far there have been multiple sources stating that DASS employs solite state phased arrays which could mean both PESA or AESA. I personally tend to go with the minimum and that’s why I said PESA for a long time, now we know that it is in fact AESA and I stand corrected on this one too.
And I have something for you, as I just stumbled about it. It should answer quite a lot of your questions wrt the AESA technology employed with DASS.
The relevant part starts at page 11. Have a good read!
https://www.myaoc.org/eweb/images/aoc_library/Events/2002/102802_CONV/02CONV_Proceedings/Day2/Track2/Bacchelli.pdf
Scorpion82@haavarla
Do you have any source about the wet fins of the Su-35S? The fact that these fins are essentially the same as on the Su-27 and not enlarged as on the Su-27M etc. leaves some doubt about it. You also must take into account that while some individual components of the aircraft might be lighter, the airframe is more compact either and the additional room is certainly used up by cramming in more stuff. Add the structural strengthening to increase service life by 3 times and MTOW/payload capacity and the empty weight usually goes up. I think that the calculation I did should be roughly accurate and that’s the best you can do as long as no additional data are available.
Scorpion82They evaded all AD systems while carrying their interdiction missions. Those who, on purpose, underestimate the Lybian AD network during these first strikes, simply don’t know what they are talking about.
The AD threat was high, that’s a fact, but another fact was that the French Air Force was very confident in SPECTRA capabilities which eventually allowed the Rafale to fly safe through the Libyan SAM network. Believe it or not but that point has been noticed by many Air Forces (including potential customers)
I’m not aware about the details of the Libyan AD, other than that its individual elements were dated. The systems employed are largely similar to those encountered in Iraq and the Balkans. You certainly expect a top notch EW system like SPECTRA to perform reasonably well. The French and NATO in general were already spying the Libyan AD a few weeks before the first missions were actually flown. So yes the French were confident and that’s fine, others were possibly not. We nonetheless know little details about the ongoing missions.
So you aknowlege that the integration is a (big) part of the job (amraam first integration to the tornado F3 was so weak that the missile was almost useless) 🙂
Indeed I do.
This is were you underestimate the couple Rafale/AASM
No the simple point is that some capabilities of the Rafale are exaggerated by its supporters, the AASM was just an example here as the “6 targets in a single pass” claim is brought up virtually all the time…
Agree on the rest of what you said and what I didn’t quote.
Scorpion821.) the Su-35 is ligher than the SK.
Having dealt with that question and performed some calculations some time ago, I very much doubt that the Su-35S is lighter than the Su-27. The NTOW is given with 25300 kg including 2 R-73 and 2 R-77. I suppose the NTOW figure includes 60% of the internal fuel as it is the case with all other Flankers meaning 6900 g. Now subtract the the weight 25300 kg – 6900 kg fuel – ~600 kg for the missiles -500 kg for pilot, gun ammo and racks to hold the R-77s etc. and you arrive at 17300 kg. This is of course just an estimation, but it is very unlikely that the Su-35 weights less than 17000 kg.
————–
Wrt to the fin tanks only the Su-27M, Su-30MKK and Su-35UB feature them. These fins are actually larger and easily recognisable by their straight fin tips.
Scorpion82Well, apparently, the other Air Forces were not confident enough to send their own aircrafts before the tomahawk and B2 strikes 🙂
Or maybe they just didn’t wanted to follow the “no risk no fun” route. In he end we don’t know where Rafales have operated during these first missions and whether they came close to any ADs at all. We can certainly give them the benefit of doubt.
What’s funny is that the french Air Force is the only one without dedicated SEAD platform / weapon
That’s actually incorrect as in fact the vast majority of air forces around the world lacks dedicated SEAD platforms. Many use their multirole fighters to perform such missions, albeit we might agree that most would use dedicated ARMs.
Scorpion, you can’t dismiss the extensive (and expensive) work required to fully integrate such a weapon on an aircraft.
I don’t dismiss it, but I point out that some of the “unique” capabilities are in fact not so unique.
And none of them is integrated on the Typhoon. That’s the problem here (it’s the MMRCA thread, isn’t it ?).
Even the Brimstone could be integrated on the Rafale before the Typhoon.
Well that’s all true, but the capability the AASM provides comes from the weapon, albeit the integration on the aircraft dictates whether its potential can be fully exploited or not. What’s more or less unique about the AASM is its stand-off range for such a kind of weapon. In essence the AASM is a powered JDAM/LJDAM depending on the version. Delivering multiple JDAMs in a single pass has already been a capability available as far back as the late 1990s, the Rafale can do this since late 2007 when the AASM was finally cleared. Wrt the Brimstone it’s once again the weapon which offers the capabilities regardless of which aircraft it is integrated on. We currently have no real idea what kind of weapons the IAF plans to purchase with the MMRCA winner, what if the IAF requests weapons not integrated on the Rafale or Typhoon for that matter? What is all the integration worth then? And as many bring up the Rafale is nuke capable argument, would the French even sell the ASMP-A with this aircraft? I somewhat doubt it, but who knows?
Scorpion82Scorpion :
I have never said that the Typhoon can ‘t do silent interception.
I give you the benefit of the doubt that you didn’T mean it, but many of your claims sound different than what you claim afterwards and it’s obviously not just me who find some of your claims very misleading and unclear.
What I said is that the Rafale is better at it and that ‘s a fact. Silent interception with SPECTRA , OSF and IR Mica (that you don ‘t have) has been one Rafale ‘s wanted capability from day one . Check the first FoxThree publications , you ‘ll see .
The MICA IR is without doubt a fine missile and it is unique in the west and I consider it as being superior to the Russian IR guided BVR AAMs like the R-27T/ET (except for max range). Wrt the targeting, however, that’s the field of the sensors and not the missile. A Typhoon is perfectly capable to conduct a passive missile launch and an AMRAAM will only go active in the terminal phase. Spectra provides no more data than DASS (bearing, range estimate & emitter ID), OSF can only range with its laser which is an active and not a passive system. The IRST isn’t mentioned at all by any Rafale pilots and it looks like it isn’t much used at all, it is even stated (though not formally confirmed) that the IRST is not even fused with the rest of the sensors and it’s performance is reportedly not convincing either. The TV camera is nice for IDying targets and track them, but is has its limitations as a purely optical sensor and lacks a search and TWS capability. The much vaunted Rafale F3-04T will have no IRST at all for some time to come!
PIRATE from what is known provides many more information than the IRST of the OSF and is in fact capable to perform most of the functions the entire OSF suite performs. It won’t do everything as good (ranging & ID for example) and it can’t do everything at the same time, but it’s at least fully fused and looks like being a much more capable IRST than the current on of the Rafale.
MIDS is the same and in the end one can say that both aircraft have some pros and cons here and it is not such a clear cut as you claim and much less a “fact”.
Now , you keep thinking that DASS can do SPECTRA ‘s job which is far from the truth.
DASS isn’t necessarily capable to do all of what the SPECTRA can do, but the same might as well be true the other way round. We certainly don’t know all the details that’s a fact and the DASS itself as well as the Eurofighter weapon system as a whole are certainly much more capable than what you are willed to acknowledge and you have been debunked here multiple times with regards to your claims about the Typhoon, which is yet another fact as everyone can see!
I already posted more stuff than I should regarding SPECTRA ins and outs , including some technical papers on Superheterodynes , Bragg cells , GaAs MMICs (here DASS is “folding”) and subtilities behind and within the software running the show .
Well you have indeed posted some sources, but many of them were very general and not specific and many of your claims are in fact not bolstered by anything but conjecture. Your claims about RBE2’s frequency agility, the number of simultaneous channels the DASS/SPECTRA can listen too etc. I don’t say that everything is necessarily wrong, but in many ways it is pure speculation and the fact that you even come up with numbers you can not back up with any sources at all is hurting your credibility a lot!
Have we ever heard of a possible “Active Cancellation” capability for the Typhoon ? Ever ?
As we say in France , there is no smoke without a fire .
No we haven’t and there is yet no proof or official confirmation that it is a capability implemented into SPECTRA.
Do you mean “Automatic Target Recognition” ? If so , what with ? The RBE2 or the OSF ? Because the RBE2 will make the difference in between a F-15 , a F-16 or a Fulcrum (example) by counting the engine blades and the RBE2-AA will prvide iSAR . The OSF provides a video of the aircraft so …
ATR is much more complex than that. It’s about signature recognition both in the IR and RF spectrums mainly aimed for AG operations. What you describe is commonly known as NCTR and it has been confirmed in an article that it will be introduced with the RBE2AA indicating that this capability is in fact not available on the current RBE2 PESA. And just for the record the NCTR capability of the Captor is much more advanced than this, it’s not a simple JEM technique, but shape recognition as a whole. That means that even targets with hidden compressor stages can be identified!
Correct again and clever thinking . Do I really have to say that I trust Thalès 😀
No you certainly don’t need to say this.
A mechanical radar like the Captor needs around 2 whole seconds to go from 9 O ‘clock to 3 O ‘clock , then the scan rate during the plate rotation is way slower than a simple Pesa radar since the beam is not electronically steered . I am not even talking about the time needed to scan the vertical plane as the radar is rotating , but I should 😉
That’s all true, but it didn’t answer the question I raised! Show me a single source about the RBE2 scanning its entire FoV within 0.0000001 seconds!
Yes we can discuss the Typhoon as it is a fighter who shouldn ‘t be underestimated but don ‘t compare it too much with the Rafale .
Cheers .
That’s a funny statement as it is first and foremost you who brings up the Rafale any time the Typhoon is being discussed!
Neutral ?
So , when I post facts and/or personal opinion , I am not neutral ? I can ‘t see the relevance of your point V1nce . I never lie , I am sometimes wrong and I learn along the way but I am always honest and again , more often than not , I know what I am talking about because most of the time I work with links and pdfs in front of me and I also have my own experience .
How does it come that no one here or somewhere else shares your opinion that you are neutral, balanced and objective? The opposite is the case, so is it just the hundred+ others or are you the kind of man who is seeking the faults by everyone else, but not with yourself?
???
That bloke only deserves dedain or a kick in the butt , because he is obviously trolling . How can someone in his right mind compare the Rafale to the Tornado ?
But then , I must be the troll …
Well I applaud that guy who was obviously ironical, just to demonstrate you how annoying your rants over the Typhoon are. You virtually include the “Typhoon is a souped up M2000” claim in any lengthier post wrt the Typhoon. I personally don’t care as I discard it as your opinion, but you know very well that this statement causes anger amongst some people and the fact that you repeat it over and over again, though you are perfectly aware of this very fact is trolling! You intentionally provoke people with the endless repetition of this statement, which is your opinion but presented in a way as if it is a fact!
Far from me to actually discredit the Typhoon . I tell you a secret but don ‘t spread it : I love the Typhoon
If you would “love” the Typhoon you wouldn’t bash it on every possible occasion just to promote your real love, the Rafale, as the best thing invented since sliced bread!
Your claims about yourself are just not coherent with what you post!
Give me a Rafale ‘s weakness , just try Sir , I am being honest here .
Weakness is relative, but the Rafale certainly doesn’t exceed all other aircraft in all single metrics either! It still lacks an HMD, its IRST isn’t overly great either, it’s not underpowered but not the most powerful aircraft either, it’s nose diameter is smaller than that of many (not all) modern fighters, its current PESA lacks a GMTI/T mode, NCTR among other stuff and its AESA won’t offer some of the capabilities from day one as well, its MICA EM missile is certainly not the best ARH guided BVR AAM…
I could certainly find more than that, but that’s just enough to demonstrate that the Rafale isn’t perfect!
To balance this the Rafale has certainly a lot of strengths as well such as excellent range/payload capacity (actually the best in its class), tremendous manoeuvrability, apparently very good MMI, excellent systems integration and sensor fusion, a very good EW system, MICA IR, AASM etc.
I apologize in advance for the off topic.
regards
Scorpion82BTW scorpion, while Captor has maybe GMTI/GMTT, integrating to the new captor-E will be a whole different ball game.
I remind you that the last versions of RDY had those modes integrated, so the fact that it’s not available yet on the RBE2 probably means that it’s not so easy to port it to PESA/AESA radars. So when Captor-E arrives in 2015 (if the recent reports are true), then it’s possible that it will lose some features compared to the mechanical captor in the begining, and catch up later on when new modes are implemented.
Nic
It’s in general not easy to port the software written for one radar to an entirely different radar. I think it’s much easier to reuse the software on an evolved version if the same radar. I basically agree with your concerns, however, though we don’t know what Euroradar has been doing over the last years. What is known is that CAESAR has undergone further flight trials, albeit no details has been released. As the hardware was basically ready to go it’s not unreasonable to assume that work on the software front has been done. It has been stated that the CAESAR initially sported the same modes as the Captor-D, including AG modes. It certainly requires some work to really benefit from the advantages the AESA technology offers.
Scorpion82@Bloodshot
Thank you for bringing this up, this are really good news. Up to date I had only seen multiple stating “solid state phased array” which could have meant both PESA and AESA, thus I made the conservative guess that it is PESA. It would be interesting to know when this was introduced as I believe that it may not have been available for the initial DASS given the timeframes. So it could be something new which was introduced with T2. 2 years ago or so I had a credible source hinting at new ECM antennas for T2 examples, but no further details were given.
Scorpion82BW, the difference between you and them is that they usually don’t exaggerate the way you do and that they know when to stop before making a fool of themselves. No one says that everything you say is wrong and you are certainly knowledgable about the Rafale, but you are not so knowledgable about other platforms as you believe yourself, which has been demonstrated over and over again. The likes of TMor, Kovy, etc. prefer to ask for information instead making assumptions in the first place. Assumptions and opinions are all fine, but there are a lot of situations when facts are available and thus assumptions or opinions are unnecessary. You state that you “love” the Typhoon, but you miss no opportunity to bash the aircraft. You can’t talk about it without brining up the Rafale in order to demonstrate how “superior” it is and while most people admire many of Rafale’s strengths, you rarely do so wrt the Typhoon and if you acknowledge something wrt the Typhoon you’ll downplay it directly often within the very same sentence.
Wrt the decoy I don’t know much, neither does you but what I stated is a fact whether you like it or not.
Scorpion82Are you claiming that other aircraft are capable since decades of :
- hitting up to 6 time sensitive targets 50km away ?
- ensuring their own self defence meanwhile ?
- making his way through and evading dense air defense with no jammer/wild weasel support ?
- demonstrating all the roles with only one version ?
There is still a lot of misunderstanding about what Rafale is actually doing over Libya…
This topic stinks.
TMor, no one denies that the Rafale has some nice and even some unique capabilities, but much of what is regarded as so unique and special exclusive for Rafale only isn’t that. Aircraft were able to swing roles, self escort etc since the 1980s. The fact that the French flew missions before the major CM strikes may demonstrate their confidence, but that doesn’t proof that other aircraft couldn’t have done it as well. Engaging multiple targets in a single pass isn’t new or unique either and the “@50 km range” claim is true, but that’s owed to the weapon and not the Rafale itself. A Brimstone can be launched in salvos against multiple targets even without acquiring them in advance and this against moving targets. That’s also something you’ll find rarely, but it is the capability of the weapon and not the carrier. There are many weapon systems with a sort of unique capability, but some try to exaggerate on that others don’t.
Scorpion82@totoro,
no it wouldn’t be possible as carriage and even more so the release of weapons must be cleared before any configuration is approved and that’s not the case right now. As aforementioned and as Sens said there is no real need for carrying more than what is currently possible and already 8 is more than needed in most cases.
Scorpion82@Kovy,
yes it might be or not who knows.
Scorpion820.3 m as stated above 😉 It was 1 m for the Captor-C.
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