Highly selective quoting, Nic.
The Swiss report was described as a “humiliating put down” to Typhoon. Pro-Typhoon propaganda? It looks like Typhoon got a bit of a shoeing to me.

I said that the first part of the article was a fair assessment, that including the put down of the Swiss eval, and the assessment of the MMRCA in the first part was fair. (There was a lot of interesting bits in the political part of the article at the end too)

However, & as usual, the article is more about defending the typhoon and claiming that those eval were showing the typhoon of the past, and that the typhoon of the future will be oh so much better than the Rafale.

I bought the magasine wanting to read a Rafale article, and I end up reading about how the results in Swizerland were misleading, and how the typhoon will catch up and surpass the Rafale.

Cake > Bread
Spitfire > Gladiator

See a pattern?

What’s almost funny, is that the article mentions that the swiss rated the Rafale higher in AtoA, then we talk about MMRCA, and Lake explains that the Indians must have chosen the Rafale because it’s more mature and more all around, despite the fact it is inferior in AtoA… You got to wonder if it’s the same person who wrote those parts of the article 😀

Nic

A piece of pro-typhoon propaganda hidden in Jon Lake’s article about (supposedly) the Rafale in Combat Aircrafts.

The article starts with a pretty fair assessment of the Swiss eval and MMRCA contest, to turn into a rafale vs eurofighter fest in the end.

wrt Cameron saying that the Typhoon has far better capabilities than the Rafale:

As it stands today, the Typhoon does not have ‘far better capabilities than the Rafale’, except, perhaps, in the narrow area of air to air operations…

Wish I knew where that came from, especially after he writes about the swiss evaluation which rated the Rafale higher than the Typhoon in AtoA. 😀

At the end of the day, it’s perhaps fair to say that the rafale offers the cast-iron guaranteed certainty of bread today, whereas the typhoon holds out a slightly more ephemeral promise of cake tomorrow.

It’s good for the Typhoon that Dassault and Thales engineers are sitting on their bums waiting for the Eurofighter to catch up wrt ECM, Radar, Weapon integration etc etc…

Now a part I love:

But the Typhoon’s relative immaturity may conceal an advantage, as BGC Partner’s senior aviation man Howard Wheeldon explained: “The typhoon, unlike the Rafale, is far from being a mature aircrat. The typhoon has time on its side – the Rafale does not. This is not the end of the road by any stretch of the imagination.”

Once again, good ole french engineers sitting on their asses. Nevermind the OSF IT & then NG, the RBE2 AESA which is in production now, the move to GAN modules for SPECTRA, the new DIRCM compatible IR MAWS, the talks of satcom or decrease in RCS for the Rafale’s MLU…

moreover, many believe that the Rafale badly needs more thrust, and the path to a new version of the M88 engine is no more certain than the Typhoon’s development roadmaps.

Classing JL/JN

Oh and the cherry on the cake:

Sometimes the apparent logic of buying proven gloster gladiator biplane fighters, rather than waiting a few short years for the superior supermarine spitfire, seems inescapable -especially when the gladiator is cheaper, and seems to be being offered by a more reliable partner. The indian bride has chosen not to wait for Mr Right, and has instead opted for Mr Right Now.

How can you call yourself a journalist mister Lake?

(BTW Combat Aircrafts has just been bought by Keypub)…

I was at the airport in Munich waiting my flight home and I bought the magasine only for the Rafale article, I didn’t think about checking who wrote it first. If I had, I wouldn’t have spent 12,5€ to read something I can find in Jackonicko’s posts here for free.

Nic

I barely recall the discussion, but am not sure whether it was related to T1s or T2s. Has this been taken into account? Lying always insists that you are aware of the truth and that you are intentionally telling the untruth. Whether it was the case here lies beyond my judgement. It might well be that people get things wrong, that doesn’t automatically mean that they are lying. Otherwise everyone of us would qualify as a liar as everyone is making errors or simply talks about things he believe to be true, albeit reality may sometimes be different. It’s a little bit annoying that “Jon Lake” is permanently brought up as some kind of beat dead argument, even if he had nothing to do with the discussion at hand in any form. It’s even used as an argument to justify some silly claims like those made by some named officers about Typhoons MMI for example and at some point I wonder what standards are actually applied to such disussions and whether that’s the only argument some people have.

In this month’s combat aircraft, Jon Lake says page 35 that: “[…] while german (typhoons) have a a significantly downgraded DASS”

Is that a lie? Or should we consider that lack of TRD and LWR is this kind of “significant downgrading”?

In any case it’s his explanation as to why the Typhoon was rated below the Rafale in ECM.

Nic

This should hardly be surprising. Even while it gave Typhoon something of a shoeing overall, the Swiss report placed Typhoon ahead of Rafale in performance, pilot workload and engagement – arguably the three important areas in WVR combat, after the merge.

“Typhoon is dominant in air-to-air” is really not news, nor is it surprising.

This is the perfect example of how mister jackonicko always twists the truth.

As we all know, the swiss report rated the Typhoon superior in all three categories, while the Rafale was rated superior in ALL the other categories relating to AtoA, and was judged better overall for every AtoA mission (DCA, OCA…).

But then jackonicko (lol I was writing Lake by mistake), mentions repeatedly those three categories, and left out the categories where the Rafale was judged superior, and concludes in the next sentence that: “Typhooon is dominant in air to air” is really not news nor is it surprising

Now count how many times he repeats that, in every forum…
Repeat countlessly the three strenghts of the Typhoon as per the swiss report, never repeat the strenghts of the rafales; conclude the typhoon is better.

That’s lying by omission.

Nic

Wrt Lake lying, it lies in the eye of the beyonder. Some of his claims more or less proved to be right. The Typhoon pilots supposedly commenting on Rafale’s “underpowered” engines may feel so in comparison with the Typhoon. The Italoan pilots remarks in the eurofighter world issue, Switzerlands scoring for Typhoon wrt ac performances and Lt. Col. Grüne’s comments are all pointing into that direction. Supercruise adbantages of the Typhoon reported wrt Singapore are now being pointed out by the Swiss as well, while no word about any supercruise capabilities of the Rafale has been made. We know from French pilot comments that the Rafale can supercruise to some extend, but is it really as significant when multiple sources appear to praise Typhoon for this, but not a single indepent source is conforming this for the Rafale? Maybe there is some truth in what is immediately dismissed as lies by you guys…

Those half truths or unconfirmed (by anyone else than Lake/jacko) aren’t what I call lies.

The first clear lie from Jackonicko was when he swore to us that the structure of the Typhoon was never reinforced (to carry atg load) so there was no reason for a weight increase, and someone came back with a link from BAe that said the structure of the Typhoon had been reinforced. That’s what I call a lie.

Nic

(I can happily accept that the Swiss preferred what they saw of Rafale to what they saw of Typhoon, just as the French ought to be happy to concede that the Saudis and the Singaporeans reached a different conclusion).

What are you on about? The saudis never test-flew the Rafale, nor did they ever make a competition.

And I dare say that if the british gov hadn’t shut down the investigations about alledged corruption in the Al Yamammah deal, there wouldn’t be a Typhoon is saudi colours.

Nic

Maybe because they were designed with the same type of role and targets in mind – the interception of bombers trying to enter huge continent sized countries?

The F-106 could be faster than an F-22 or T-50. Certainly fast enough to catch a BEAR bomber. Why would a MiG-25 or MiG-31 need to be any faster to do their job (shoot down ALCMs, B-52/B-1B) as well?

What you’re saying is that Mach 2.3 is, in your mind, enough for the role they were both designed for. Obviously the russians seem to differ. So did the americans since they went and try to make a Mach 3 interceptor in the A12. Anyway, whether M2.3 is enough is a totally different debate, and the fact remains that no single engine interceptor matches the speed of the Mig 25/31, or of the A12/SR71.

Nic