There is no evidence you’ve seen of the contrary, too. So what ? Is that enough to dismiss the arguments you dislike ?
Nobody said the Rafale is a LO design, not even Dassault. Significant work has been done on RCS reduction where that matters, no more, no less. Some features are clearly visible to naked eyes, others are not, and the end result is said to be 1/10th to 1/20th that of a Mirage 2000.
The question is whether Eurofighter did such an extensive job in RCS reduction. They claim they did, of course, yet they managed to tell us that Typhoon RCS is 1/8 that of the Tornado. That put it in the F-16 league, with Mirage 2000, Gripen and Super Hornet doing better (to name a few).

It turns out that the 50 km range difference that was translated to 10x lower RCS reminded me of all that old stuff. Add to that many press releases that keep telling Rafale RCS is lower, and you begin to have a hard time to dispute what become increasingly obvious.
There’s no evidence per se, but there’s an increasing string of clues…

I dn’t think that people generally dismiss the lower RCS on the Rafale, what some people question is the margin. The 1/8th RCS in comparison to the Tornado was a requirement as far as I can recall, not the actual value. There are also other numbers floating around such as 1/5th if the F/A-18, 1/3th of the F-16 or 1/10th of the F-15. The problem with all these numbers is that they stem from a time when the RCS of the aircraft has not been measured at all. RCS testing was conducted at a much latter stage and there are in fact virtually no current values available, at least not that I’m aware of. The 40-50 km claim is also mere speculation than anything else and even IF the RBE2 can detect a Typhoon at twice the range it can detect a Rafale, is it a prove that the Rafale will have the radar detection advantage? The answer is no, as it doesn’t tell us anything about the performance of the Captor. I won’t go to speculate here, but I want to point out this very issue which seems to be overlooked by most people here among other things.

for example:

– EF has a more powerful radar, which all here agree upon
– Rafales in DACT had to act as fighters having only semi-active missiles on board
– EF was supposed to do its howeork and kill the “bad guys” (rafales in this example)

what happened?

A senior Eurofighter official stated that similar results happened the other way round, something which was outright dismissed as it was first reported by JL. Someone else wrote Eurofighter an email and got the same statement. While this haven’t been confirmed by the RAF, it hasn’t been dismissed either, neither by the RAF nor by the AdA. So if it is true, what does it tell us?

I definitely know that aircraft with a much weaker radar than Captor detected the Rafale at sufficient range and fired their simulated missiles, thus it’s hardly convincing that the Rafale is allegedly so stealthy as some insist here. It’s much about tactics, similar things have been reported from RAF sources vs F-15s, where the Eagles reportedly got killed without being aware what killed them.

Of course not ! If one doesn ‘t believe what the French pilots say , fair enough…

The reason why I have reservations about the French claims of better FCS and superior MMI and sensor fusion is owed to the fact that these pilots haven’t flown the Typhoon themselves. So I question their ability to judge about these things as they simply have no real base to do so. Coupled with the fact that they were clearly stating things which are wrong wrt the sensor fusion on the Typhoon simply demonstrates that they didn’t grasp the concept of Typhoon’s MMI. When I once talked to a Phantom driver who had a “show me your cockpit” session he said that the pilot on the Rafale could select targets on the HLD via touch, it is obviously wrong as the HLD is no touch screen, something I got confirmed by a Rafale technician when I had my own “show me your cockpit and I show your mine” session a year ago. What that demonstrates is that without hands on experience you may not fully understand how the cockpit works and that you may get things wrong.

but the one should simply look at the pit outfit and how and why it is made this way to make his/her mind up .
By analogy , a car dashboard is telling much about the technology onboard . We know cars and we see enough TV adds , don ‘t we ?
Sorry to go this “low” , but I had to make myself clear .

We aren’t comparing a 1960’s style cockpit with countless analogue dials and gauges with a modern era glass cockpit here! Different concepts doesn’t necessarily mean that one cockpit is “better” than another. No doubt Rafale’s cockpit looks more fancy with its touch screens, the HLD, joystick like throttle and side stick. It has fewer instruments on the front panel and fewer elements on the side consoles, but all this doesn’t tell you anything about how data are processed and presented to the pilot or how vaious actions are performed in the cockpit and that’s what makes out a MMI, not its looks. I respect your opinion, but it’s just that an opinion. Judging a MMI on its looks reflects a subjective feeling, but not an objective assessment. I neither claim that Rafale’s MMI is better, nor that Typhoon’s MMI is better for the simple reason that I don’t know enough about both to judge about it. There are a few elements I know about in both cockpits which I like and where I would say that this is “better”, but even that is just a subjective feeling. If there is some interest I could further elaborate on that, but as of now it would be beyond the subject matter.

Again , it goes down to the drawing board and the main ideas running the aircraft design . The Dassault Rafale has been designed to survive . It might sound weird and a bit “[I]Yeah right[/I” , but it is the truth.

The Typhoon has been designed as a BVR Killer] .
Then , the AtoG and Nuke capabilities were ,on Rafale , the secondary ideas . To fullfill its role , the aircraft had to be an “ear” rather than a “mouth” , if I may say . Passive long range detection to evade threats were more important than to destroy them because penetration was a must .
We put a LOT of work to provide excellent long range detection means and , obviously , a LOT of work to give to the pilot all he/she needs to know the easiest possible way .

That’s all fine and true about the Rafale, but your perception of the Typhoon is flawed, I don’t blame you for that in general, but sometimes it is better to ask people who may understand more about it before starting to make up your mind on issues like these. In contrast to what you claim the Typhoon has very much been designed to be survivable and passive detection was also important, as it was considered that the radar may not be reliable enough in heavy jamming environments and as radar silence could be required in a number of missions and situations. Otherwise you wouldn’t have a PIRATE, DASS, MIDS and some sort of EMCON (not the same as on the F-22).

The Typhoon followed a different way . For a plane of its size , the bet was on speed , raw power , big radar and powerful short range ECMs for protection .

That’s as oversimplified as are claims like the Rafale is an underpowered, pur low level bomb truck…

They don ‘t do the same job . Think about what you say Scorpion 😉 no bad intended 😉
Since we used both IR and TV on Rafale with the first gen OSF , we know what we talk about 🙂
Read the Tiger Meet debriefs and you ‘ll see what made the difference WRT ID the targets from far away . We used the TV , not the IRST/FLIR .
An IRST is not showing you the flags , colors , “cocardes” to ID once for all what you look at . A TV does .

May be owed to the fact that the IRST on the Rafale is not really a great tool at all and that it is not what it was meant to be. The more recent FoxThree vol. 14 in fact indicates that the IR-channel on the OSF is in fact long wave only and not a dual-band system as it should have been. It may not even incorporate any FLIR function at all and if it does mid wavelength are better suited for imaging, whereas long wavelength are better suited for the IRST role.

A TV may offer some advantages, but it has drawbacks as well. No solution is perfect in the end and if you take a look at the TV-images from OSF they don’t show you much colours at all, albeit certain details are better visible than on an IR image. The most important aspect is to ID the target type in the first place, everything else is nice to have and good luck in IDing markings on a aircraft at much range, even more so if the target is approaching or receding.

Scorpion :

I am not sure than that is RAM . It could be some kind of Radar Absorbant Paint as far as I can see.

Well it’s some sort of RAM coating, RAM structures are hardly visible and I understood your question as such.

You talk about the inlets , but the moving parts (!) doesn ‘t look like RAM covered , then , there is no RAM inside the inlets , just before the S-duct curve , why ?

The leading edges of the vary cowls have the same treatment as the wing leading edges, canards and fin. Don’t know about you but I have taken a personal look into the intakes of both aircraft close up and the internal layer (in white as visible in the pic you posted) is quite similar on both aircraft, even wrt the somewhat poriferous structure of the layers.

I am still trying to find a decent proof that the Typhoon has , at least , a RCS in range of the Rafale ‘s . So far , I failed .

The Rafale is more stealthy than the Typhoon it’s as simple as that. IR signature reduction measures are applied to its engines and its shape is somewhat better compliant with RCS reduction requirements. Thus I have no doubt that the Rafale’s RCS is lower from most, if not all aspect angles at least clean. Another question is the margin between the RCS values, but that’s hardly something one could observe and as such data are classified you’ll most likely not see any comparative data anytime soon.

The Eurofighter needs to improve in AtoG big time , we know it , but it also needs to improve the pilot workload , the MMI .

Really? Why? Because you say so?

WRT passive detection , PIRATE needs a long range TV because it allows to fire first 90% of the time , due to nowadays harsh RoEs , both in AtoA and AtoG .

Browse back 1 or 2 pages, Single Target Track Identification. Why a separate TV camera if your IRST/FLIR does the same job?

Basically it would be fine if people could cool down a little bit. In the end of the day everyone is free to believe what he wants, there is no need to agree on everything and we’ll in fact never do. Important is to respect other people’s opinions, at least as long as people don’t start to present no-brainers as facts.

Senseless topic as almost nothing is known about the Chinese fighters and the J-20 is many years away from entering service as well.

just my 2ct

At no point did i deny anything, that’s what the allegedlly was in there for :rolleyes:

Well maybe it’s a language issue, but “allegedly” expresses some sort of doubt.

In doing so i tripped over your (radar) size obsession, well that really should be an issue for your private life ;):D.

It has nothing to do with obsession at all, but there’re people here who are in a constant state of denial over the obvious.

Next time i’ll make sure that i check with everybody that i’m not going to upset them by trespassing on their particular area of obsession before asking for some supporting data.

Misunderstandings can happen, as easy as that and if they can be sorted out as in this case all is fine.

So is your personal opinion backed up by factual evidence or are you simply basing it on: “it’s (allegedly) got a bigger radar?”

Pictures tell more than thousand words, but that doesn’t prevent some people from denying things until someone “trustable” says so. Quite weird this kind of behaviour!