Attrition against what though? You want them to prepare for WW3, but they want to prepare for wars that are likely to happen.

That might be true for the largest and most powerful airforces. Not even countries like France and Britain can afford large numbers of fighters anymore. Or, rather are not willing to pay for them.

To smaller countries 2-4 squads of lower tech aircraft is probably a lot more useful than one squad of, say, Typhoons.

More low tech aircraft might be more useful, but aircraft cost is only one component of the cost of running the squadron. Having 1/4 of the squadrons is still 1/4 of the non-aircraft costs (basing, fuel, people, training, pensions…).

ppp , I know very well how Praetorian works , thank you .

It is an excellent piece of kit but its accuracy at pinpointing a threat is inferior compare to Spectra and its instantaneous bandwidth search is also inferior .
Praetorian uses dual superheterodyne receivers where Spectra uses multiple bragg cells channelizers (optical) .
One is prone to electrical noise as well as phase modulation (oscillation) , it does away with some clever filtering but in doing so , there is a speed loss during multiband search .
The other does not show this kind of behavior 😉
Also , it can “listen” more bands at once and the recieved signals are purer , if I may say , because the filtering is more efficient .
Spectra also uses AESA antennas for very fast frequency jumping .

It is very hot topic and proving the case would take pages and time .
Just take my word or do some research 🙂

Ariel works magic against AtoA missiles but it is “noisy” and can be “heard” by others around (mulidirectional jamming) where Spectra is more stealthy because it is using “pencil beam” , thanks to its AESA tech .
There is no need to “wake up” other radars or RWRs when you try to jam one 😉

Also , wingtips are better used for carrying short range IR missiles than carrying towed decoys .

Cheers .

Well you have as many pages as you like, do continue!

Yes, long ago has 1998, the then DASS was being described publicly by Eurofighter (and Luftwaffe pilots) has a quantum leap over the systems used in the Tornado ECR (that was published in Air international, the month cant remember, the 1998 magazines are at the bottom of quite a huge pile of another magazines). There are a few more recent articles who mention DASS/Praetorian capabilities.
Not to mention that the technical description made by PPP is indeed correct (and for that you can just go to the Selex site and see the latest brochures).

A capability that today, while real is a bit academic. Until some air ground stand off weapon is integrated in the Phoon, no one is going to use it to do DEAD (trying to go after a SAM site with a Paveway IV is a bite suicidal). Untill them the SEAD/DEAD capabilities of the aircraft are not going to appear at the forefront of Eurofighter sales brochures.

Cheers

True, but also, Typhoon has ALARM, so the need is not so pressing.

I think JDRADM is a really clever idea, and hope there will be a Meteor II with the same dual role.

Yup that would be excellent, though it would be good if they could do it without making the price too expensive relative to Meteor.

PPP :

I ‘m 47 , ex Air Force . I don ‘t need to copy/paste anyone , Sir 😎

Wrt Spectra , I know probably far more than you will ever know and it is why I asked you to do a bit of homework before to post nonsense . If you were a bit more aware of the NATO pilots reports , you would know that the French are highly regarded when it comes to ECMs .
Towed decoys are good but somehow counter-productive for few reasons :
– they take up space and pylons
– you use them once and there are gone after ejection
– they cost much to end up dropped
– they are omnidirectional noise jammers (non-stealthy)

Cheers .

None of which actually proves anything. As for what I do and do not know, thats for me to know. QRT to being qualified to talk about EW systems, being “in the air force” doesn’t really prove anything. Now if you were a senior engineer working on the algorithms or electronics for the SPECTRA system, then that would be proof, but you’d have to be able to prove you were said person as anyone could make such a claim. Such people of course have nice jobs and are unlikely to risk them by telling all on a public aviation forum. Furthermore, anyone connected with the Rafale or the AdA is hardly an objective source for information about Typhoon.

for example:

– during UAE exercises, SPECTRA allowed the rafales to detect SAM sites and destroy them, protecting the whole package all while performing their primary mission
– typhoons never managed to lock on rafales during the exercises where they got busted (and so much was written about), why? you can read all over these forusm that the rafale is dead meat because of its rcs.. strange, to say the least, no?

these are just two examples

Most EW suites can lock onto SAMs, this is nothing special, so stop acting as if it is.
With regards to using “exercises” as proof of any classified electronics, its completely pointless, and proves nothing. The fact that large numbers of equally stupid people repeat equally inaccurate rumours, does not make the inaccuate accurate.

I agree Nic .
PPP should do a bit of homework before to post such nonsense …

Cheers .

Keep on copy pasting from TMOR and Wingman. At least I can stand on my own two feet without needing to copy from members of other forums 😉

ROFL… 😀

rafale uses an integrated ECM suit (ever heard of SPECTRA?), they considered a towed decoy unnecessary. For SEAD, as it can locate a “radiation” target precisely and treat it with a weapon that the enemy can’t fool by stopping his emissions,

one last thing, the captor may sound nice on paper, but from what I’ve read not so long ago, without fundings the typhoon won’t get any like that in near future

sorry to burst your bubble, but what you talk about is mostly “marketing talk” and as for the “sales argument”, its easier to sell when you pay your customer to take some (like that austrian guy sitting in jail for corruption, or saudis who made pressure on blair government to stop investigation by british department of justice – it was talked over on BBC ad nauseum not so long ago)

keep dreaming if you like, but for now, the one doing his job, and well, in various roles is the rafale.

Yes, I’ve heard of Specta, its a favourite of the French fan boys, to which they credit it all kinds of capabilities, but in reality they are just standard EW system capabilties with a marketing twist. I’ve yet to see anything to suggests the French warfare systems have anything different or better in the EW systems and unless I see concrete proof we don’t consider those aspects. The fields where we have proof to the contrary are its lack of a towed decoy, see below. Particularly good was the “active stealth” rumour they started spreading about Spectra. As for Typhoons radar, I’m talking about the one that is fitted in there already. As for AESA, that too is going excellently, see Farnborough.

Rafale Unknown ECM < Typhoon Unknown ECM + Towed Decoy

if we simplify we get:

Rafale < Typhoon + Towed Decoy
0 < 0 + Towed Decoy

😎

As I recall Saab wanted to integrate the RACR radar on the Gripen, and the USA refused to let this happen in order to push the F-35. Or something to that effect.

http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/the-dewline/2010/12/wikileaks-shows-us-played-aesa.html

Scummy, huh?

Gripen uses a British AESA.

Sigh….

So much nonsense in one paragraph.

Political pressure, bribery, industrial offsets, package deals, etc, etc ….. there is a LOT of stuff you didn’t mention. Not necessarily against the Typhoon here, but almost every arms deal globally carries a faint whiff of assorted things that have nothing to do with the platform. It sounds as if you have very little idea on the backround scenes surrounding most arms packages.

I was going to ask why in your opinion the “Rafale is nowhere near as capable as the Typhoon”, but on reflection after re-reading your reply again, realise that it will cause much pain or tedium to other forum members, so will politely refrain.

Ahh, and the Frenchman previous mentioned everything? No he did not, and many like him do not either! Yet you didn’t complain, because you liked what he said. You only opened your mouth when you read what I said, because you didn’t like that I said. With such a bias in your actions by quietly turning a blind eye to things where it suits your purposes, you are really in no position to judge my statements for their content of fairness, as you’ve proven yourself a very biased and unfair judge yourself. You are clearly a pot, and should refrain from calling kettles names.

frunny how everybody likes to point out “the french”…

UK does the same (wants a leadership in any similar program)

The major problem with the European Air Force idea, as with European Union (nice name), is that you have a lot of countries which have centuries of history and tradition, culture and identity, that don’t want to loose all that.. and try to pull things their way.

There’s no real union, everybody considers himself as french, german, polish, etc… way before considering himself european. In such circumstances, saying “the next fighter will include all european aircraft makers” is at least optimistic, if not plain naive.

Every nation has its own goals, its own agenda, and there’s little to no chance at all that they all meet together in a single set of requirements, simply because the ones having lesser requirements will refuse to finance somebody else’s requirements, and as in a development you can’t make a clear separation, they’ll simply split away, again…

And, considering the “there’s no money” argument, from what I’ve read, the typhoon costs the participating nations more than the rafale costs france… not exactly an argument in favor of “doing stuff together, don’t you think? 😉

It was France that demanded the leadership in the future European fighter programme and that all other countries should be allocated work by Dassault, despite it only having a similar order level to Britain and Germany. Show us where Britain made the same demand in that programme.

The Rafale is nowhere near as capable as the Typhoon, the simple fact that Rafale is almost impossible to shift, despite the extremely generous deals offered by France, says it all. If it were as good as Typhoon then they’d be selling at a breathtaking rate if offered with the sorts of deals being offered by France at the moment. You get what you pay for.

Harpoon anti-ship missiles?

These are in service with the Nimrod, which is now leaving service. Whether we will continue to have Harpoon in service is uncertain.