Some more over land. If you end up low, then finding your enemy by NVG, would pretty much depend on the background scenery. Desert lands being the best scenery, urban centers being your worst scenario (good luck in not getting dizzy with the continuous black/white variations while trying to pinpoint your enemy and not losing him.)Better than clouds though or sea.

http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/973/shot0017.png

http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/2092/shot0004c.png

http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/6983/shot0008u.png

http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/506/shot0011h.png

The last one is a small town/village and it disturbs quite a bit the eye i suppose, in your effort to spot your enemy.

The others are empty lands which more or less facilitate your task, according to the terrain.

Not entirely true. The counterweight you mention is in reality a flat battery pack which is connected via wire to the ANVIS mount, which lacks any self-power in this case. That means you put some additional weight on your head but it is hardly noticeable.

I wear my own AN/AVS-9 goggles mounted on a PROTEC skate helmet without any rear counterweight and am perfectly able to operate them all night without neck strain, although I am sure that pilots feel it different. Anyway, eye fatigue is much worse, these goggles could really use manual gain function.

Just to make myself clear. I have never used a helmet mounted NVG myself, so i am not familiar with their battery packs.

What i said is simply what is referred in the video. It says that HAF prefers the “straightforward” method, which brings the NVG weight to the front and strains your neck. Other airforces, as RAF, have prefered to combat that with adding a “counterweight” on the opposite side (back) of the helmet.

Now, whether this battery pack is the counterweight (or can be considered as an effective counterweight), i don’t know.

I think that the Rafale vs Typhoon tit for that ends. What do you try to “prove”?

– An airshow is hardly the judge of an aircraft’s level in combat, you fly for show not for your life.

– Most aircrafts can actually lose to an inferior aircraft. It’s that small factor called “human pilot”. If one wants to come to certain conclusions over which aircraft is better, he should have a big sample of DACT results , so to minimize the human factor’s importance.

– I can’t see why the Rafale can’t lose from Gripen, F16, Typhoon, Super Hornet. As long as the pilot inside is a human, he can always lose.

– The rest of this story is a repeating of “my source is that, believe me” and “no, believe Me, because MY sources say the opposite”. Of course we others , have had no access to either sources, so imagine how funny-absurd this seems.

Freely translated:

Big “package” of industrial partecipation from Eurofighter to Greece was announced in Paris

In a briefing which took place during Paris Air Show 2009 (Le Bourget) from EADS, more information was given, while the commitments of the company were confirmed, in relation to the sale of Eurofighter as the 4th generation aircraft of HAF. Special mention was made about the price and it was clarified that as far as Greece is concerned the consortium has officially given a determined price.

According to exclusive information of defencenet.gr, the basic price which was given when the draft contract was presented, is 65 mln euros per unit and today a re-adaptation is made, which is equal to the Euribor.

Members of the consortium denied any comment on that.

According to officials of the consortium, in the eventuality that Typhoon is chosen, this will mean the automatic involvement of Greece in the completion of development of the Tranche 3 version and in weapons systems, such as the Meteor and the Captor-E.

Specially about the radar, the consortium made the commitment that for the completion of development and installation of production series aircrafts, a time of 36 months is required from signing the contract, which is exactly the time required for the production of the 1st greek aircraft.

As a result, if HAF selects the Captor-E , then the 1st greek aircraft will be delivered with it, without any extra delay.

It was underlined that the current meccanically scanning radar, is regarded as one of the world’s top and none of the current users of Eurofighter has asked for its replacement. Nonetheless, if HAF thinks that her operational needs require the AESA radar, the consortium is commited to offer it in the contract terms.

The delegation of the Greek Bureau of Arms Procurements visited the EADS stand for 1,5 hours and was informed about the latest program developments and the proposals of the consortium

http://www.defencenet.gr/defence/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8066&Itemid=49

1) If we assume the “exclusive information” as true, then the fly away price is 65 mln + euribor. That’s not bad, specially as long as the Euribor remains under 2. Should the Euribor start climbing though, the price would climb up. A fixed rate would be more safe solution. But that becomes less relevant if Greece intends to pay off the aircrafts in a short period of time. In this case, the risk of tying to Euribor is small.

2) The article forgot to mention who will pay for the Aesa development (Greece, as was mentioned in earlier articles?) and how will this affect the price. Probably the price of 70mln is more realistic, if we add such costs.

Yes, you are partially right here, for the sensors we have at hand. The mica IR sensor cannot do it, since we are talking about pixels. I’m starting to think about something else thought.

SPECTRA can triangulate in RF since it is capable of measuring phase differences in the X band (I assume). The plane dimensions are sufficient for that. Light (even in IR) is still RF with substantially bigger frequency.

So, you develop a narrow field IR sensor capable of calculating that kind of phase differences. You put 2 of these sensors on the wing tips and you control (point them) to the area OSF has targeted something. You should be able to measure range that way.

Probable. I am not expert enough to be positive about it though. Sounds good on principle.

But for now, i would be more than happy to know if currently the Rafale can do that as it is today.

Good luck Arthuro! 😀

Here’s a question for lovers of all things French; why can’t the French ever produce an aircraft with a retractable IFR probe? All of their leading aircraft have always had fixed external IFR probes. I think they look really ugly and spoil the lines of the aircraft.

That’s true. It’s like curse plaguing Dassault aircrafts.

Because, “what is not mechanical can not fail”. It would be a serious trouble if a pilot would want to refuel whil flying, say, over the ocean and not being able to deploy the probe, don’t you think ?

In short: When it is simpler, it is usually less complicated… or the contrary.

That’s also true… But it also ruins your RCS.

At Le Bourget

The Chief of the Indian Air Force, PV Naik sits in the Eurofighter Cockpit demonstrator watched by flying visitor Ioannis Giankos, Chief of the Hellenic Air Force and EADS test pilot Chris Worning. (picture from eurofighter.com)

Just to pick some of the stuff which didn’t appear in the press (many thing he said is already known), he told that when encountering F18 and F18 SH from the Roosevelt (dogfighting), the rafale didn’t suffer a single loss despite the fact that some of the hornets were equipped with JHMS+ Aim 9X. So he really balanced the quality of this feature. He recognized that they were a bit anxious before encountering such a type of threat but in the end it wasn’t really an issue. Second point he said that the SH looses a lot of energy when brutally changing of trajectory and then started to sink…In fact when their US navy counter parts couldn’t point their nose in the direction of the rafale to be within the aim9X firing envelope they strated to do this kind of brutal maneuver which made them loose their energy.

It just confirms what i ‘ve been saying that HOBs aren’t the panacea that some think. If you are outmanouvering your enemy rapidly enough and exiting the best part of the flight envelope of the missile, then HOBs won’t save you. HOBs does make a difference and does change the way dogfight is done, but it gives you 5-6 more seconds at max g, as one greek pilot said. If you have an inferior manouverability aircraft and you fail to keep up and shoot rapidly during the first pass after the merge, you won’t be able to do anything. The enemy will be gaining and gaining towards your tail and HE will eventually shoot you down with or without HOBs.

Other “scoop” concerning the rafale vs typhoon…This MN pilot already downed a typhoon with a two supersonic drop tank config (for the rafale) in a simulated gun dogfight. It took him three turns to take the advantage. So he didn’ felt that there was a big gap of performance between the two aircrafts in this area. He admitted that the outcome could have bee different as there is always a part of luck in this type of engagement but he insisted that both aircraft are quite similar for dog fighting skills. He also point out that it is impossible to know the real outcome of a BVR fight since many parameters are unknown. For instance rafale jamming war modes are never used in exercises just like other modern aircrafts.

Interesting. Maybe they had (like with the greek pilots) different opinions on how to count the kills in BVR.

For the OSF-it and the absence of IR channel he said that it was because the pilots didn’t really know how to use it…Just to say that it was not that useful in real life considering the mica IR can already provide IR imaging with a greta field of view. They are integrated in the weapon system. So they preferred to dedicate all the resources to get a very good updated TV channel.

First, i want to say that i have no idea on how a dual TV channel will perform in A2A. But i agree with the others, that the MICA IR can’t be seen as replacement of the IRST really. We also use the MICA IR on M2000-5mk2 , but it’s said that acts as “mini-IRST”, which given the fact that M2000-5 doesn’t have the real thing, is better than nothing and helps passive interceptions.

Other noteworthy things the rafale M displayed on Dassault static display has 4 meteors and 4 micas including two on the new outer wing pylons. Most of the reduced scale moke up in Dassault’s inside stand was fitted with micas on these new hard points.

That’s a very nice payload. I hope Dassault integrates the Meteor soon.

if you have some questions related to the rafale I can try to ask them…But don’t be too specific otherwise they won’t answer.

Well, since you volunteer, how about asking pilots opinion on how can the Rafale cope against a VLO threat? 😀 It would be interesting to hear his opinion about VLO, if it can be countered by Rafale, what tactics the Rafale could employ, etc. :diablo:

Thanks for all the info, Arthuro!

The Taranis UCAV (and the Neuron I believe) are about the size of a BAE Hawk, that’s almost fighter sized. Remember that the Global Hawk has flown from the USA to Germany in one go, so intercontinental wouldn’t exactly be my version of short range.

Thanks for the info. To tell the truth i ‘ve never seen the Taranis next to something i can directly compare sizes. While in the Neuron there is this, which gives a good idea of how it compares to the Rafale:

http://www.defesanet.com.br/rv/le_bourget_05/imagens/dassault/17_nEUROn.jpg

You ‘re right about Global Hawk, it does have a very long range (though the potential problems i mentioned remain). But in an UCAV configuration, carrying weapons it would have to reduce its range.

Note that Taranis’ big brother will be along in a few years that will almost certainly be a size increase.

Even better! I think the UCAVs can soon take at least a part of A2G missions without risking pilot lives. The technology exists for years. Maybe stealth UCAVs don’t fly yet operational, but non stealth do.

Just as a final note on Typhoon, not all of the upgrades that we are talking about as making it inferior are that necessary or need to be rushed, as the RAF force isn’t a one trick pony, we still have Tornadoes and Harriers to do a lot of the A2G work (See Afghanistan) and the F35 on the way in a few years that will be better suited to most of the jobs we’ve been talking about, as that what it’s designed to do. But if I were putting one up against a Typhoon I don’t think it’d be clear who would win.

It’s obvious that the Typhoon for the forseable enemies of RAF or Luftwaffe, is enough. And that specially RAF, can theoretically ignore further A2G development and use it only for A2A. The only issue with upgrading faster is, winning export competitions (for example the very lucrative Indian contract i think requires the AESA and despite the fact that you can deliver it, i can’t help thinking that the Typhoon will get lower score in that part of the criteria).