IMO this debate is a kind of a smoke screen to find some relative weakness compared to the typhoon.

I view this more as an outlining of facts, not even platform related at all. Obligatory is hardly a Eurofighter supporter.

Because if you take a bird’s eye view for a minute and look at the picture of where both aircrafts stands in terms of capabilities and development it is frankly a no brainer. With a full set of new generation sensors ready, upgraded engines and already a very wide (and capable) set of weapons integrated the edge that the rafale enjoys is obvious. On the other side it is hard to see the momentum to catch up (and the typhoon is significantly late)…Especially considering that a new road map in in the pipe for the rafale.

The main difference here is the number of stores and weapons integrated on each aircraft, the Rafale is clearly ahead here. If you take a closer look at the hardware changes you’ll realise that almost nothing has changed on the Rafale from first deliveries of the batch 2 examples in late 2004 and batch 3 examples as they are delivered today! The software has been developed to exploit the potential of the given hardware and new weapons/stores. The Typhoon hasn’t seen a great addition of weapons and stores, but the hardware has changed considerably and the software was further developed as well. The P1E enhancements will be fielded before the F3+ standard comes online and spare the AESA radar the rest is just improved/updated stuff with no obvious prove of great superiority, if any at all. Upgraded engines with longer life time etc. are fine, but what are the comparative values wrt MTBO and life time of different parts of the M88-4E and EJ200 MK101? The DDM/NG is different to the active MAWS of the Typhoon and OSF-IT is a camera, but no IR component included anymore. I’m not going o judge about better or worse here as such, but these endless claims of the “oh so much more developed Rafale and no upgrades for Typhoon brabbling” is somewhat delusional! Some people would be better off gathering some facts, instead of spreading conjecture.

If you compare the size of an a/c radar with a AEGIS radar system for exemple yes sure size matter, but not when you compare a 1000 modules RB2E with a 1400 modules of the Captor-E. The capability of the Captor-E to “see” at greater angle is what is going to give its edge over the RB2E.

Nonsense, reapeating such crap won’t make it more true. Size matters period. If you don’t grasp that you should start learn the basics!:mad:

I tend to beleive Typhoon as well, for one simple reason. Stefan Zoller told FlugRevue with regards to the cuts that are coming for the Luftwaffe, that Cassidian wants to take their chances in emerging markets like India. He sees growth potential for Cassidian only in those emerging markets and is willing to invest money into those countries and set-up factories for highly skilled wokers there.

I’m certain Eurofighter will do its utmost to get the deal, it’s just to important to them, but it would be wrong to assume that the French take it light. Now where they have been down selected Dassault etc. are certainly more confident and they will do their best to secure the deal as well. Eurofighter might be in a somewhat better position due the fact that the Eurofighter programme is much larger and backed by multiple governments, albeit the future on the home markets looks less bright at the moment. The latter fact may turn out to be the achilles heel of the Eurofighter offer. What’s speaks against the Rafale are the current rumours of bribing and it’s actually not the first time in this competition. Even if these rumours turn out to be wrong, a bad press at this stage is certainly not going to help. It has been stated that decision is now up to the costs and not to the merits of the platform itself. We’ll see who is able to make a better offer in the end. At the moment I wouldn’t bet my **** on either contender, both may have their pros and cons, not only wrt the capabilities/performance of the platforms itself, but wrt costs, offsets and ToT as well. Without more detailed information about the offers it’s currently impossible to say who is in a better position. Like Snowmonkey I view the aviationweek article as rather poor reasoning.

More problematic is that, according to this logic that F-35 is similar to both F-16 AND F-22, which means F-22 is similar to/no better than F-16…

You have to view the context, similar subsonic acceleration and similar manoeuvring performance at high subsonic speeds/transsonic speeds. The difference for the latter is not significant for any modern fighter as stated before. Wrt acceleration the F-16 has a very good acceleration at subsonic speeds, especially the newer variants without CFTs and their much more powerful engines.

@Taygibay & Kovy,
thanks thus I’m hopefully up to date now.:)

Btw.
I just read that the batch 1 examples will be redelivered in 2014 only (in a current aviation mag), but that Flottile 11F is supposed to convert to Rafale from next year. I was of the impression that these upgraded batch 1 examples would form the base for the conversion of the 11F. It has been stated that the F1 to F3 upgrade will take between 12 and 18 month per airframe and the contract was signed at the end of 2009 (among batch 4 order IIRC). Is there any current news on this? Have the batch 1 examples entered the upgrade yet or is it yet to come?

Yes it’s said thatDassault has designed new intakes, but never fitted them to the Rafale as the original M88-3 was never approved in the end, albeit prototypes were bench tested. At least the front end of the intakes appears to be removable so that it can be replaced with a new one.

@Pinko,
the pic in post 99 is a pic from a flight simulator.:diablo: