Yes, its a bit dated, but the only alternative book that i know is in German…
And while i agree that you (and Eagle1, Kovy, etc) dont need to read it (you have too much knowledge and more importantly, common sense) but there are a few chaps who should read it IF they are truly interested in the program (in oposition to being interested in rubishing the program).

I, for one, am glad to find good info on the Typhoon here, in a condensed form. So thanks to those who bring it !

I agree with you that this statement is surprising to say the least. I don’t believe that Thales has 5 years on Selex for instance, much less on the US companies. Unless there are some developments that we don’t know, and they are almost ready to develop 360° coverage with a single aperture mixed radar/ESM suite that does it all. It seems quite a strech to be honest.

Nic

It was probably a bit of hyperbole. Not to say that Thales doesn’t have some lead (after all, the Rafale will get an AESA first), but I believe it’s more due to the politicos behind Eurofighter dragging their feet more than French ones in the past few years.
Anyway, a few pro-Rafale media statements are merely payback for those years of JOUST hype :p

Well, if vaporizing millions of people in one go isn’t an important mission, I don’t know what is.:confused:

Also known as nuke delivery which…

…happens to be the most important mission of the Rafale.

Well, I got ninja’d it seems 🙂

Quoted for delusions.

lol, did you also think m2000 was incomparably better than anything when it came out?

ARe you actually telling me you think Rafale (in any configuration) can make it undetected to Moscow? Dear lord…

Big deal, a Cessna could do it :p j/k
Although more seriously I’d hope a Rafale on nuclear mission would – at least close enough to launch an ASMP. Because that’s part of its job. Rafale is also a nuclear bomber.

More likely, everyone’s lying to the public about the exact characteristics of their sensitive military radars.
But the counting method (power/TRs, etc) has some merit for speculation.
Personally, I’d think that Dassault/Thales would not “max out” the power output of the current RBE-2 AA. Why ? Simply to leave some power available for the future planned side arrays, and Spectra as well.

@Colibri

Let’s some it up. The FoxThree 8 from early 2005 states “around 1000 TRMs” and in the Fox Three 11 issue from 2007 it is said “more than 1000 TRMs”. We have this article from April 2009 (I stand corrected on this one) stating that an array with 1000 TRMs has been completed by late 2006.

So far so good. But now this, in late 2008 when the start of the LRIP was announced an image of the RBE2AA appeared showing it in a lab. It was the first time that it was possible to count the number of TRMs and the result was something like 838 or so. Given the date it is impossible that this was an LRIP variant as the LRIP was just launched, so it must have been a prototype. In the two images posted above the TRM count is ~840 as well and the latter “onboard” pic was just recently released.

Now the Rafale camp has two explainations:
1.) It is just a prototype with a lower module count
2.) It’s a sanitized picture to hide the true number of TRMs

Both explanations are feasible in general, but if…

1.) Why do you fit an 840 TRM array to the prototype if you have just made a 1000 TRM array?

& if…

2.)What’s the purpose of sanitizing an image to make people believe it has just 840 TRMs when you publicly state it has 1000+?

These are the main questions that bother me and to be honest given the facts it makes no sense!

As aforementioned the AN/APG-80 has reportedly between 800 & 900 TRMs (exact number classified) and reportedly offers a slightly better range than the RBE2AA in its current form. So if the RBE2AA has 1000 TRMs in its current form, what did Thales wrong to be still shorter ranged in comparison to a several years older radar with between 80-90% the number of the modules?

Is the available power output the limiting factor? This would be an explanation and BW states that the current power output is 9.6 kW (I think it was stated in an article). If we assume that the power output is at least 10 W per module than the power wouldn’t be sufficient to let all TRMs performing with max performance at the same time. We can assume that the peak power output is in fact higher than 10 W per TRM as technology has matured and advanced since 2006, which would make the situation even worse in comparison wrt potential power output vs actual power output. BW states that it is planned to increase the output to a mere 14 kW (~50% more!) which would insist that they either plan to use much more powerful TRMs or already use them! Cooling could be another issue, who knows.

I’m not stating that 1000 TRMs isn’t possible, there is in fact some free space on the array as seen on the images and I don’t say that Thales/Dassault has lied. Maybe they just found out the more than 840 TRMs isn’t feasible right now possibly because of cooling/power constraints or whatever. It is just a thought based on the questions which developed out of the images, reports and the explanations brought up by the Rafale club. This is NOT meant as bashing or anything of that kind and it would be nice if people just start to think about this instead of calling others deluded, bashers and what not…

Well, the article BW was referencing, stated that the power increase from 9 to 14 kW involved replacing the Coolanol pump… so maybe the TRs weren’t performing at their max theoretical power. Possibly.

The machine translation’s atrocious 😮 But everyone should get the general gist : the stuff on show is vetted so that spies can’t get away with sensitive information just by looking at it (or worse, stealing it…).