Its funny that while the losers of the deal have kept their mouth shut about corruption and lauded the thorough process of evaluation, the French have already started crying corruption despite their fighter still being in the competiton.

No wonder Rafale has no exports to date.

You might want to re-read this article…

Asked about the M-MRCA, and US disappointment, the French Minister said, “The US might be sad [about its two aircraft being eliminated in the IAF M-MRCA contest], but with 50 per cent of the world arms market, they no doubt have other satisfactions.” He added, “We have full confidence in Indian procedures. The government wants full transparency, and Dassault has been completely transparent.” A team of US government officials met the Indian defence minister yesterday.

The Gripen is the aircraft the UK should/could buy – including a Sea Gripen version for the FAA – to provide a hi/lo partner for Typhoon, like the F-15/F-16 mix in the USAF. The F-35 is no longer necessary – now that the UK has dropped the STOVL requirement – and the F-35 programme has become ridiculuously expensive: it’s doubtful if even the US can continue paying for it.

I disagree…

The RAF should rationalise on a Typhoon only fleet once the Tornados are retired to bring the operating and purchase cost of the Typhoons down. Ditch the F35 altogether and focus on developing a top strike UCAV for the missions that are considered too risky for a 4.5 gen fighter.

For the FAA, just purchase some Rafales off the shelf, and integrate whatever short range IR weapon you want. The brimstone might even already be integrated by the french, and Storm Shadow instead of Scalp EG would be seamless. Purchase a couple E2C/D, and pool training (both for the Hawkeyes and Rafales) with the Aéronavale.

Nic

I think that the pilots of designs like the Hawker Hunter, the Folland Gnat, the Saab Draken, the F-5A, the F-5E, the Mirage F1, the BAC Lightning, the F-8 crusader, F-11 Tiger, etc would disagree with that bit about “been more manoeuvrable and agile”.
IF the Mig-17 and Mig-21 were, for their time highly agile and manoeuvrable designs, the MIG-23 wasnt, and untill the SU-27, almost every Sukhoi had its strenghts but agility wasnt exactly one of them.

Maybe you want to replace Mirage F1 by Mirage III 🙂

Nic

Me too, but I wonder how well it would work if at all when it is still carried by the aircraft.

Nic

Bluewings seemed to think his documents validated AC, from that post the opposite would appear to be true. He then makes several assertions that I disagreed with, I did not intend for my tone to come across as ‘mocking’

Regarding your other post on the subject, the trouble is that as various part sof the airframe flex, so the spike will change, both in magnitude and relative position in space of the EM spike. As such you still have to know how exactly every part of the airframe will change with every applied force. So even if you are concentrating on a few spikes across the airframe, you still require prodigious amounts of information to know how intense and where your radar returns are in order to cancel them.

Which is confirms what bluewings said about the document he has found. Nobody ever said it was going to be easy to do.

I’m wondering if ASMP/A or SCALP can benefit from active cancellation, and if they can still use it while being carried by the aircraft to cancel their own RCS independently from the Rafale.

Nic

A look up table might help, but the sheer amount of simulation work that would have to go into populating such a library is probably prohibitive in itself.

The fact is that while AC is theoretically viable, it’s implementation would be very complex and you’d be left wondering what the point was if airframe shaping ala F-22 does the job anyway!

I see the “stealth” contept of the Rafale as Ero Senin does: concentrate the RCS of the Rafale in a few “pikes” and then treat those pikes (and only those) with ECM/active cancellation. For instance the Active Cancellation could theoretically be used only for the weapon loadout, and the refueling probe (to please some posters here), and to the tail (to please mmalaya).

Then you don’t need to calculate every single position change of the airframe (or maybe even then you do, as bluewings said).

Nic

http://www.airliners.net/photo/UK—Air/Eurofighter-EF-2000-Typhoon/1496598/L/&sid=31944e40db6d9d8308018b25bded47e3

I love this one!