To be fair, I think the BBC article goes on to emphasize the father’s argument that the soldiers who go to afghanistan are pretty ill equipped. If anything this should serve them to put emphasis on this kind of stories.

Nic

Well IIRC the Stingers that the CIA provided the taliban are long past their shelf lives, so I think if there are to be manpads available to them, they have to come from some former easter block countries.

Nic

Airpower may not win a war alone, but NOBODY will win a war without air superiority… bottom line. You need to do a little more reading because daylight bombing of Germany and putting their factorys out of commision and destroying the fuel that ran the German forces did win the war. Without it, the men on the ground would have had a much harder time. Not to mention in the Pacific where there was very little ship on ship action… thats right it was air power destroying the Japanese navy and disrupting supply lines to the troops on the islands. Every war that has been militarily won (not politically lost) has done so with overwelming air power that makes the jobs of the men on the ground a whole hell of a lot easier than it would have been.

Vietnam?
Afghanistan vs Soviet Union?

Nic

AFAIK, it’s either 2 GBU-12 on the centerline (with an AUF2 adapter), or 4 Mk82 on the four fuselage HP (this applies to Mirage 2000C, 2000D and 2000N). The mix GBU-12 + Mk82 makes little sense to me.

since thales affair, french auttorities and gov are fighting corruption, anyway france in a real democraty, not as the crownies who can shut up thier justice when needed!

:rolleyes:

How do you put a user on the ignore list? I’m done with jackonicko.

Ah nevermind I found it. Let’s get back to the Rafale now.

I would like to hear more about the ROEs and how the situation developed. Did the engagement start in the heart of one planes envelope while the other was less effective in that speed / altitude range?
There have been so many engagements in which sounded bad for the F-22A getting caught in the gun-sights of an F/A-18 or a radar lock-on by a T-38 and not be able to maneuver away. Against the F/A-18 its pilot broke many rules to get that gun camera footage. In the case of the T-38, for that engagement the F-22A was limited to 5G’s!

I agree with you.

I think it’s entirely possible that a Rafale outurns a EF but it would be nice to know the conditions. Personally I would think the Rafale would win the day in DF the way a Mirage 2000 wins the day against a F16, which means if the pilot is good enough to close the fight soon enough. For a longer fight I’d think that the Typhoon would get the upper hand. I also thing the typhoon may have a little more kinematics/supersonic agility advantage for BVR fights. I wonder to what extent and if the 90KN M88 would change that?

When it comes to Rafale VS SH, I think it’s entirely possible that during a particular round of dogfights the Rafale managed to bag the SH without a loss. It doesn’t mean the SH hasn’t beaten Rafales in other exercises during dogfights or in other (BVR?) exercises. I also seem to remember that the pilots (both Rafale and SH) said they witheld some capabilities of their aircrafts. Did the SH pilots really use the full capability of JHCMS and AIM9X for instance? Or did they try without using them?

I’m really tired with jackonicko bringing in “sources” that told him different. Nevermind we never know what those sources are nor what “different” means.

I trust Arthuro on this and I trust the pilots he spoke too, but I would be very careful not to draw any conclusion from the fact that ON THAT PARTICULAR exercice the Rafale had no loss in dogfight. Maybe the US pilot was just in a bad day. Don’t forget that the pilot remains the most decisive factor in the issue of a dogfight.

BTW jack. The belgian F16/Jaguar or eve Typhoon kills were not achieved in dogfight exercises, so try to stick to what is being discussed instead of bringing unrelevant stuff all the time just to be misleading on purpose. Your spinning on all things rafale is really becoming tiresome.

Nic