There are just reports that the “Wei Long” (meaning Powerful Dragon) had its maiden flight this morning !

Way Long 😀

The residents around the airfield have prepared chairs and tea cups for watching the maiden flight. The entertainment is not free,you konw.

Ahahaha! Planespotters with a taste for comfort. We must import the idea and make taverns in Greece with view over HAF’s airfields. Ghyros, beer and F16s! :p

Can’t say I like it. It’s unproportionally long with very small tails.

I agree. I don’t know anything about building aircrafts, so i won’t make judgements about how i think it flies, but i just have a feeling like “this is too long” when i see it. Maybe seen from another angle one gets another idea.

Hello Aspis,

I came across this in another forum , very interesting stuff..

What do you think about this..I am interested in your opinion..

Thanks dude..

Hello and Happy Holidays. Since i can’t claim to have read all the defence magazines that are sold in Greece, i first did a google search. So i found the original source in here:

http://www.strategypage.com/militaryforums/6-54927/page19.aspx

Unless memory fails me, the magazine in question is “Strategy” (Defencenet’s).

I won’t tell you what i think of the “highlights”, i will let you judge for your self, because often, when people try to give summaries, they often give mixed quality results. So here is my own translation at the best i can :

Rafale’s encounters with F14s and Harriers was said to be quite an easy job for the Rafales, while the F18s were more serious adversaries. The French claim, that due to its high agility, the Rafale was quickly gaining the tactical advantage, since the Hornet pilots had to continously take into consideration the flight envelope specially at low speeds. All these scenarios were concerning dogfights with use of Magic and guns, since the Americans didn’t want to face the Rafales in BVR combat, avoiding in such a way a confrontation between AMRAAM and MICA.

Rafale and Greek Fighters

A number of Super Etendards and Rafales that would take off from CDG, would pass from an area guarded by HAF aircrafts, in order to subsequently attack the Andravida airport, close to which, there had been designated a sector with protection from additional greek aircrafts. CDG’s position was at the Ionian Sea, several miles from the coast of Zakinthos island.
The composition of the french formation included 6 Rafales in the role of providing protection to the attack aircrafts, which was composed of 10 Super Etendards. The formation would be also supported by 1 E2C Hawkeye.
From the greek side, the partecipants were 4 F16 Block 52+ and 4 F4E AUP, covering the previously mentioned areas, in cooperation with the “Homer” ground radars that exist at Andravida AB and the image support given also by another ground radar, at the area of Lefkada island.

The two parties had telephone contact about the exercize scenario, with the provvision that no dogfights would occur, but only BVR combat. Theoretically, the French had the upper hand mainly because of the Hawkeye but also because of the Rafale’s capabilities.

In the materialization of the scenario, the french formation, that had been split in 4 groups of aircrafts, with the Rafales leading, was revealed by the APG-68(V)9 radar from quite a great distance, a fact that gave to the greek aircrafts to coordinate their reactions. The initial engagement was done with the F16s, which were in disadvantage because of the fact that didn’t have a RWR and so they couldn’t tell whether they had been locked by the Rafales. On the contrary it is certain that the French pilots had a complete image of the tactical situation, detemining with SPECTRA who was emitting and in what type of function. This was confirmed from the reactions of the french aircrafts, the pilots of which, were often declaring “abort”, when they had realised that they had been locked by some greek aircraft. Possibly overstimating AMRAAM’s capabilities and under the guidance of the E2C controllers, they wanted to avoid the further evolution of the BVR scenarios, in order to avoid BVR shots from the greek aircrafts.

The F16 crews had surely a better situation awareness, because of the radar but also the use of data links, exchanging targeting data, managing to make shots on 2-3 Rafales, but receiving shots from the french aircrafts as well, without the precise number being verified, since there was no debriefing after the end of the exercize. At the end, also because of the numerical superiority of the french aircrafts, the attack formation managed to pass through, after a very small number of Super Etendards received shots, despite the fact that the F4E AUP reacted satisfactory to the french protection threat. However, in this case too, the precise number of shot downs wasn’t verified, which seem to have been in favour of the french side.

A first conclusion is that the modern battlefield has more to do with the weapons platform and sensors and not so much with the aircraft itself. The greek aircrafts, not having RWR against the french airforce, couldn’t know if and when they had been locked. However, they managed to confront the french formation from long distance, while they were expecting that the Rafales would enter undetected in the scenario area.

But in order to arrive to safe conclusions, one would have to evaluate in parallel the data from both sides, comparing the time and position of aircrafts with the shots declared from each side. But since the character of this exercize was of low profile, with the scope of experience acquisition, mainly for the french side, there was no further debriefing.

So, there wasn’t possible the arrival to conclusions about the french 4th gen aircraft and mainly about some parameters about its radar. The RBE2 is PESA radar, the first of its kind in Europe. Its big advantage is the operational flexibility, since it has the ability to function in different modes at the same time and scanning different sectors. It incorporates a new datalink from air to air missiles, working at the same time with the scan and track function. In older systems, one had to rely to the aircraft-missile link, which was of much lower performance… But because of the passive nature, it is claimed that the detection range against aerial targets isn’t of the same magnitude as AESA radars, while the estimate that exists in HAF is that it must not be better than the APG-V9 of the Block52+ in this sector.

At the beginning of the summer, the French asked a new trainning session with HAF F16 block 52+, having apparently understood that the leven of the greek crews as well as aircrafts are in high level.

This time, they were used 4 Rafales, while the CDG was south of Crete, which were to confront HAF F16 Block 52+ in 4 vs 4. The weapons would be 4 MICA EM and 2 Magic II for the Rafale and 4 AMRAAM and 2 AIM-9L for the greek aircrafts. Because of the past experience the cooperation was at very good level, with detailed briefing about the scenarios from both sides.

Here i copy the text from older post (which is the same article continuing, so i don’t have to translate it from scratch):

This time the french aircrafts also used the trainning function of Spectra, in mild jamming mode, which were immediately detected from the greek aircrafts ECCM, which reply automatically with no pilot input.

The BVR tactics used by the French didn’t impress, while they reported all virtual shots as kills.But without wanting to go into detail, observing the route of the target in relation with the lock on it, keeping time (counting) in relation with the virtual launch, the greek pilots managed to arrive to safe conclusions. This time, the majority of the greek shots were inside the “no escape” envelope of AMRAAM, which gave clear advantage to the greek side. The tactic of using data link, where 2 different radars could lock onto 4 aircrafts, taking advantage of the function that the new aircraft gives, made obvious in practice the advantages of the new F16 version. With special tactics planned by our pilots, in quite some cases, they were approaching unobserved opposite to the french aircrafts, a fact that was shown by their reactions.

The success of the greek aircrafts against the Rafale M was afterwards confirmed by comparing the shot reports of the French with the F16 videos, where it was shown that most shots were of low Pk (kill probability).

As a general conclusion, one may say that any Rafale’s superiority, in the above scenarios, is marginal, with high kill percentage for the greek side. Also it should be noted that in that period of time, the CdG was cooperating with a greek EMB-145H Erieye with the aim to evaluate the interoperability of the 2 sides. More in detail Link 11 and Link 16 were tested. From the time of take-off from Elefsis airfield, within 10 minutes the greek aircraft had established contact with the french carrier, certifying capability of cooperation in network-centered operations for both sides.

Then there is the part mentioned from Bluewings, wich comes from interception.gr.

Then there is this:

..The greek pilots were called by their french colleagues as quite aggressive (“vicious”) in the air and in no way they were easy targets, neither they reminded F16 pilots of other allied nations with which the Rafale had the chance to partecipate in some other excercises.

According to the french pilots, the Rafale prevailed in the air combat. Initially it was mentioned that in the first missions, the capabilities of the MICA missiles weren’t correctly estimated by the opposite team. However, both sides made successful “shots” on the opponents.

The impressions of the greek pilots from the Rafale, were concentrated on the very good situation awareness , thanks to link 16 and the big touch screens. These were proved to provide very good image even in conditions of intensive sunshine, which often reduces visibility. In general, the cockpit layout, particularly impresses the greek pilots. Particularly interest also had the use of the Spectra, on the use of which, the french base some of their air tactics that have developed.

As far as the availability of the Rafale goes, in the duration of 18 sorties, it was proved high (94%), while only one flight was delayed and in one more there was a minor technical problem during flight.

http://www.ellinikos-stratos.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=1432

The original article of the above link, is quote from

http://www.diplomatia.gr magazine.

To keep in mind:

– Defencenet is anti-Rafale. Example in this article:

a) “On the contrary it is certain that the French pilots had a complete image of the tactical situation”

b) “The F16 crews had surely a better situation awareness because of the radar but also the use of data links”

c) “while the estimate that exists in HAF is that it must not be better than the APG-V9 of the Block52+ in this sector”

If the french had a complete image of the tactical situation, then how the F16s had better situational awareness. And if HAF’s estimates are that the RBE2 isn’t much better than the APG-V9, then again, how is the better situational awareness explained in the F16? F16s had ground radar support, Rafale F1 had AWACS support, so how is the better situational awareness?

– Interception.gr is blatantly pro-french. If you go to http://interception.gr/old.php?issue=40 and start clicking the tabs on top left hand, under “ΠΑΛΑΙΑ ΤΕΥΧΗ”, you will see almost all covers with french weapons on, especially Rafale.

– Diplomatia.gr i haven’t followed for long enough to make an opinion of allegiance.

Anyway, just like political newspapers support a political party and attack others, at the same way, defence magazines have their own “preferences” and you can see different magazines making entirely different reports on the same system, according to the interests they promote. For example, again for the Rafale, one was saying that the Rafales in Larissa were grounded very often due to failures and diplomatia.gr was giving 94% availability. So the only way for the reader to understand who’s lying, is to try to keep track of the magazines allegiances.

Also, just like in here there are people that support this or that aircraft, the same exists amongst greek enthusiasts. There are pro-american or pro-french or pro-russian ones. Give them the same article to read and they will come with 3 different summaries about what the text was saying. A thing to keep in mind. For example, when he reads “This time the french aircrafts also used the trainning function of Spectra, in mild jamming mode, which were immediately detected from the greek aircrafts ECCM, which reply automatically with no pilot input”, he comes to the conclusion that “5) The ECCM of the 52s worked smoothly when the Rafales used their Spectra ECM system. The active jamming on the Rafales was not able to break the lock of the APG-68(V)9s.” I come to the conclusion that the “active jamming of the SPECTRA in MILD trainning mode, didn’t affect the APG-68V9″. 2 people read the same text, but see 2 different things, don’t they…

Also, there are naive readers, usually teenagers, that take what magazines write as solid gold. For example, there are still Greek enthusiasts that in all good faith, believe that the F35 is something like a successor of A7, after reading various venomous articles in Defencenet’s magazines, which have Carlo Kopp as main source.

P.S.: That the greek F16s were without RWR is true, because… they still are. The Aspis II systems of the first batch has been delivered but not installed yet. Only the 2nd batch came with the system pre-installed. There was an article that the new MoD together with LM are pressuring together Raytheon to end this soon.

A Christmas HAF 🙂

(photos by Jerry Gunner).

Sorry, I edited my post slightly Aspis, whilst you were answering.

I agree with much of what you are saying. But nevertheless, I think secrecy has taken a backseat to advertising these days. Especially when the costing analysis comes through.

Well, it’s obvious that the amateurs photographers are winning the war, that’s for sure! 🙂 I would appreaciate a little more advertizing at this point from their end. Now they smudged the aircraft and left us with the tail fin… Like someone mentioned before, they give us “jet striptease”. God help us, what else are we going to see! 😀

Not too sure.

But certainly, their population density, and probably skillset in urban areas, largely dictates these things. Why create a seperate city in the middle of nowhere just for this? This would be a needless expense not seen since the ColdWar, which is no longer there.

Well, i haven’t been to China, but i expect that they should have some rather isolated bases not too close to their urban areas too. If so, they could expand the perimeter of one of these enough to avoid the first amateur with photocamera to get the picture.

If they don’t want to do that, then, against the average “joe”, they could have done other, simpler things. Like, plant dense trees inside the perimeter to cover the runway and hangars from the view from the outside fence or build a wooden (the least expensive and fast solution) wall leaving a corridor for patroling between this and the outer fence. It wouldn’t be *that* costly, if they want to keep a minimum of secrecy. Otherwise, the “quest for secrecy” is a contraddiction. I don’t think they will ever manage to “smudge” every picture out there. (They ‘ve already failed)

What i find weird with all this “censorship”-smudge thing, is how come the Chinese airforce doesn’t have some isolated airforce base, to test her own prototypes/secret projects. It seems that approaching the fence and getting pictures isn’t that hard. With the huge geographical extension of China, one would think that they could find a better way to hide something from indiscreet eyes, rather than chasing photos over the internet. :confused:

This is one issue about WikiLeaks which concerns me a bit. Apparently they seem willing to hand out material which might be connected to security issues for individuals and/or countries. Can they be trusted to take proper precautions before releasing potentially sensitive information (and I mean “sensitive” in terms of e.g. security, not embarrassment)?

This is in deed a question, to which i have no answer… The only “safe” way for the US goverment on this subject, is… guard better the confidential files so that they don’t leak. Theoretically, yes, they may leak sensitive information or even names of people that may end up in big trouble if they are in foreign soil. This is why i said that for the US gov obviously this is a bad thing. They have to rely on Assange’s team judgement on what is “sensitive”. Of course there is already some diplomatic damage, because when for example you describe foreign leaders with diminishing descriptions, it is not something you like. But the diplomatic damage can be repaired. Security issues as you say are the main problem…

Regarding some of the material related to Afghanistan, I’m not really sure if unfinished and potentially flawed reports/raw data necessarily will be of good value for the average citizen. I’m think that the use (and risks) of releasing such information can be discussed.

Yes, WikiLeaks’ actions might lead to attempts to increase information security here and there, potentially leading to less transparency in the future. Diplomatic correspondence might suffer due to a lack of trust. In the end, is this really good for the public?

How would you feel if someone released information which could compromise your safety?

As with every piece of news, Wikileaks must also be read critically. a) They are not “truth”, they are evaluation of situations or reports of events from a US point of view , b) the reader must try to correlate what he knows from other newsources to what he reads in Wikileaks and get a picture of his own.

I think, more ways of information are always good. Even if it doesn’t last for long. Up to now, there was no other similar event anyway, so there won’t be lost some transparency i think. I mean, before, the citizen couldn’t even see a confidential report of contemporary events anyway, so if they close the leak now, it will simply be like before, nothing lost.

To me, it is difficult to say what is good or bad for the average US citizen. Because they are events concerning his own goverment. As an outsider, i like Wikileaks. I also think that many Americans will benefit from reading the line of thought behind political decisions. I have the general idea that Americans trust a bit too much the official versions of the politicians, reading Wikileaks helps in understanding better the way the politicians think. I mean, it’s not like they will discover some ultrasecret operation, but for example, even by the leaks about the Brazilian AF competition, one can see how closely weapons companies and politicians work. As a matter of fact, diplomats work as promoters of the weapons companies. It then comes natural to think what kind of political ramifications weapons sales have.

For my domestic (greek) public, it’s certainly good! Greeks love such information and may even help mitigate a bit the conspiracy theorists. In Greece there is a conspiracy about everything. I mean, if you read blogs or fora, there are always people that have thought of the impossible, to the point that after reading so many plots, you become oversuspicious about everything. They even dispute events that seem pretty solid or they don’t have other logical alternatives. A leak, finally puts an end to some of these theorists, so that you don’t have to read or prove wrong every single weird theory by some lunatic. We have a joke about it: “There are only 2 countries in the world where intelligence services can’t operate efficiently: In Israel, because nobody talks and in Greece, because everyone talks*”.

I think i ‘d give a definitely positive vote on the utility of wikileaks for the US reader too, if they were released 5 years from the event.

(*Except in cases of scandals that involve both ruling parties, in which case, even if we hear about it at some point, they both become Israelis and work together to burry the issue).