Nicolas10The Typhoon carries four AAM’s in a conformal configuration which although not as effective as internal carriage should still offer a substantial reduction in RCS contribution over the same weapons being hung under-wing on pylons. This in itself may give the Typhoon a lower RCS than the Rafale for some AtA missions even if the Rafale has a slightly lower signature when flying clean. I would expect that for the majority of missions though the RCS of both aircraft will be quite comparable, with any difference in airframe RCS being far outweighed by the addition of weapons and fuel tanks being carried.
Keep in mind that two of the Rafale’s missiles are on the wing tips, contrubuting not much more to the Rafales’ RCS than the ECM pods on the typhoon. And two of them are pretty much hidden behind the engine intakes from the front, and not much more exposed than the Typhoon’s missiles from other aspects. Honeslty I don’t think that the Rafale is at a disadvantage here, quite the contrary. I would add that Mica’s versatility enables carriage of less missiles, since Mica IR can combine both SRAM and BVRAM functions.
EADS also has at least one half scale model of the Typhoon which is dedicated to signature analysis work.
The Typhoon has many features which were not present on any of the original EFA proposals such as the distinctive ‘smiling’ canted intakes and I’m sure I remember reading somewhere that this was in part due to lessons they learnt from RCS testing models of those same EFA designs. During development full scale anechoic testing was carried out by both EADS at their Manching facility and BAE at Warton as well as the anechoic testing used in developing materials and components such as the radome. Studies were also conducted by BAE in the 90’s to assess the feasibility of a stealthy Typhoon variant as a candidate for the RAF’s FOAS requirement, and EADS proposal for South Korea’s original KFX requirement was supposedly also a variant of the Typhoon. So I think that their has probably been a lot of research into signature reduction going on behind closed doors that isn’t necessarily publicly acknowledged, and that work would seem to be an ongoing effort.
Interesting.
Nic
Nicolas10(could elaborate if there is the interest).
Actually that’s what this thread is about 😀
Nic
Nicolas10Damn I love the Mirage 2000D/N 😮
Nicolas10As if the MKI (esp with the coming upgrades) and the latest model F 15s dont carry EW gear and Defensive Aides of their own.
Who said they don’t?
Nic
Nicolas10It’s not necessarily as easy as that. Ranging a moving emitter is a quite tricky task, especially aircraft which are quite fast and at long ranges even a slight deviance will produce an error margin, which might be unacceptable and how do you support the weapon at such long range? The pk is going to be quite small if launching a Meteor at let’s say some 150 km and don’t provide MCG. That’s why at least 3rd party support is required if you don’t want to use your own radar. Long range shots without MCG have a high probability of flying blind straight into nowhere. It would be interesting whether MCG could be provided by the AESA radar for example, without it being active spare for occasional updates, that might be a solution to live with. At the end the radar is still useful and important as it offers greater accuracy at range and as it can gather much more data than passive sensors could (altitude, speed, closure rate, accurate range, heading of the target…). These data are necessary to generate a good firing solution, like ever there is no perfect solution and the “if it emits it dies” claim is somewhat exaggerated. The circumstances must be right and the conditions must be met, otherwise you maybe aware of an enemy and his direction, but not much more and that’s not enough to set up a missile launch.
I know it’s not that easy, but you sure need to think twice before scanning the skies with such big radars now. Even if you don’t allow for a passive shot for EW, you give a lot of options to the opponent, including the one to lock you very quickly with radar or IRST since he knows where you are, or ask an AWACS/ground radar to provide him a lock, or even get your wingman into position to either lock or shoot him, or if it’s bomb ladden to avoid the fighters and continue their strike mission.
Air combat has always been about who sees the other one first, and that isn’t about to change. It beats me why everyone keeps talking about how the bigger the radar and so on. I’m completely sold on the theory that your radar only needs to be big enough to bear your longest range weapon.
Nic
Nicolas10IMO they chose derby for Tejas as the radar on it is pretty much still El-2032. They are already using derby on Sea Harriers with EL-2032, so its the best stop gap solution till Astra-1 comes online. Now Astra-1 will be pretty much the standard missile from now on, on every fighter, starting with Mki and M2k, followed by Tejas and Mig-29 and later MMRCA. METEOR is a different game altogether, it is definitely going to be there on MMRCA but do Tejas and M2k have the required datalinks ?
Now the Russians are letting Indians integrate Astra on their planes…hmmm…. now the fanboy in me wants to see a METEOR on Mki :p
Probably won’t happen, but it seems to be the perfect armament for aircrafts with massive radars (F-22, F-15, Flankers), flying solo on air patrol without AWACS:cool:
In this day and age having a big radar is not necessarily a huge advantage. SPECTRA or DASS will pick up the signals from a F15 / MKI radar much earlier than those radars will get a lock or even detect them, and they will do it accurately enough to shoot a Meteor up its radome.
Nic
Nicolas10I freely admit the cost of the JSF is laughable… ~60mUSD LMAO
Cheers
I seriously doubt the costs for the other planes as well. Typhoon less expensive than the Super Hornet? I don’t think so!
Nic
Nicolas10The MMRCA winner will use Meteor/Mica (depending if is EF or Rafale) or will get the indigenous Astra Bvraam?
Rafale will use Meteor just like the EF.
Nic
Nicolas10Thanks for the pics! You’re an EF goldmine!
Nic
Nicolas10It’s basically the way it’s done, minimize the reflections at relevant angles and either direct the waves somewhere else or in the ideal condition split them up, weaken them by using absorbing structures and materials and direct the remaining reflections to somewhere else.
No doubt that RCS reduction was a requirement, but like any design it’s a compromise which is found on the Rafale and given some obvious counter productive features it sounds somewhat dubious what some people want to sell us as facts.
I was just saying that doing through such a program is much better than adding RAM and RCS absorbing paint as an afterthought, so it’s no suprising that the Eurocanards have a lower RCS than other planes (VLO planes excluded).
I do believe that the Rafale has a lower RCS than the EF, for the same reasons that bluewings does (pilots accounts etc).
Also I do believe it benefited from the Rafale D program (or at least from every feature from the Rafale D that was cost effective). Besides, there must be good reason that an anechoic chamber was built especially for the Rafale/Spectra program, and that it spent quite some time in there 🙂
Was there such research during the development of the EF?
Nic
Nicolas10Easily maybe!
Nicolas10The sawtooth patterns have without doubt an effect I agree, otherwise they wouldn’t be there, but I seriously doubt that the effect is THAT big as suggested. In the end of the day I’m open for more information and don’t exclude the possibility that this may have a greater effect than I think it may have. Who knows. I don’t think that the sawtooth patterns add much to the maintainance workload at all, though it somewhat looks like they are just thicker layers of RAM paint and not part of the structure, I could be wrong on this but that was my impression when looking at it close up.
Actually the Rafale was designed in a way to “concentrate” the RCS in a few tiny spots that are THEN treated (be it by RAM/electronically… I don’t know).
I don’t know anything about RCS, but maybe it can be concentrated to those places and then dispersed by the sawtooth patterns + RAM?
Basically RCS reduction was there a major feature of the design of the Rafale.
Nic
Nicolas10also, i had a question about AASM flight profile… it`s widely touted as having more flexible flight profile, etc, does that mean the user can direct it to take a vertical descent profile, for instance? or a 10* ultra-shallow approach from a specific direction? (not necessarily in-line with plane`s movement)
Yes.
Nic
Nicolas10My guess would be that Rafale is better than EF when the emitter is above the plane, while EF could have an advantage when the emitter is below the plane.
You mean something like 5-10km and not 40-50. Especially considering the semi-recessed carriage of the radar guided missiles on the EF.
A reduction of the RCS by 25% typically just means a detection range reduction by something like 7-10%. If you want to reduce the detection range to 1/2 you need to reduce the RCS by over 90%. I doubt that the difference is so big between Rafale and Typhoon.
Surprisingly the refueling probe is above the aircraft too :rolleyes:
Nic
Nicolas10No it just proves that typhoon pilots do brag when they kick some ass. Some here would call them unprofessional.
Nic
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