I just want to throw some more cents of mine into the discussion.
The Rafale is an excellent airplane and without doubt one of the most advanced and capable combat aircraft in service today. It’s a very versatile platform and quite good at all it does. Th Rafale certainly features some nice and possibly even unique capabilities, has its strengths and enjoys its advantages over other types. But it would be naive to believe that the aircraft is an uncompromised, perfect super fighter, which is superior to everything else in every single area. Every design reflects a choice of compromise and trade-offs have to be accepted, the Rafale is no exception here.
The aircraft appears to be a very balanced design and in my humble opinion it’s probably the best balanced multirole fighter in service today. This is owed to the requirements which called for an aircraft capable of performing all missions the French armed forces require from its fast jet types. The aircraft is intended to replace all fast jets in the AdA and MN and the Rafale must be subsequently capable of performing all mission reasonably well. Other aircraft are less well balanced as either AA or AG was the principle design driver and the other requirements are subordinated for that reason. The French treated AA and AG requirements with equal priority translating into a well balanced combat aircraft.
The term omnirole fighter suites the Rafale and perfectly describes its nature as an inherently flexible operational asset. Dassault and the AdA/MN refer to omni-role as the Rafale performs all the missions previously performed by all the fast jets operated by the two services. Anything beyond that is exaggerate fanboy hype, however. The Rafale is revolutionary and unique for the French armed forces as it is the first type to perform all the missions in a single variant. All previous generations of French combat aircraft were built in different variants to fullfil the various roles, i.e. the Mirage F1 which was built in the C, CT and CR versions dedicated to AA, AG and recce respectively or the Mirage 2000 which was built in the C, RDI, 5F versions covering AA, whereas the D & N covered the AG roles. For the French the Rafale is subsequently a real quantum leap wrt operational flexibility. Looking at the big, not French centric, picture unveils, however, that such an versatility is neither revolutionary nor new at all. The introduction of digital, software driven avionics enabled the F-16 and F/A-18 to do so since ~30 years! They may not perform every mission the Rafale performs and they may not perform equally well in every mission, but switching between roles in flight is a real possibility for virtually all moder multirole fighters, EVEN the Typhoon. Being capable to perform SEAD/DEAD missions without any “special equipment” or dedicated ARMs doesn’t change that very fact!
Rafales reduced signatures are all fine and well and might be lower than that of any other modern fighters, spare real VLO designs like the F-22 or F-35, but it’s nothing but ridiculous to claim that this aircraft is so stealthy that it will never be detected early enough or will ever have the first look advantage over every opponent!
Wrt the Spectra magic pixie dust, super stealth cloaking device, well it’s without doubt a very fine system and one of the best of its kind. Whether it’s the best or not is nothing one can readily say without all the necessary details at hand, one might guess, but that’s still just speculation and no proof at all. The French being confident and happy with the system doesn’t prove anything either wrt its respective performance in comparison to other defensive aids suites. If Americans choose to go the safe root because they actually CAN afford to volley waves of cruise missiles against C2 nodes and IADS elements prior sent in their own fighters, why not!? That doesn’t mean a Growler couldn’t have dealt with the threats, but the Americans simply chose the safe way. The French can’t afford this and thus opted for the riskier way, confident that they will survive. In the end the Libyan ADS is no unknown one, western forces encountered all the different air defence systems multiple times in a number of campaigns and their capabilities are subsequently known and ECM, tactics etc. can be adjusted accordingly. To cut it short Spectra performing well in the environment doesn’t prove its superiority over anything, it just proves that it is capable to deal with the threats in the given theatre.
What’s particularly annoying however are these countless unqualified claims and exaggerations about the Spectra’s performance in comparison to the DASS. This brabbling about the French poured oh so much money into Spectra and the mission requirements, without any detail knowledge about the specifications of each respective system is tiring at best! So how much money has been spent on each system and what where the true requirements (not my aircraft has to perform nuclear strike bla bla)!? Facts matter, not conjecture!
I already asked such questions before, but the answers were fishy and not really telling at all, as was to be expected!
As I said before, some people should really start to take a look at the broader picture instead of focussing on “their toy” only and derive exaggerated claims from their lack of knowledge about other systems!
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