one hting one should remeber is that G-limits are there to prevent the thing to break up… but as it’s supposed to fly for many hours and sustain many times that “maximum G-load” you can’t make a fighter and allow it to sustain operationally 6G if it breaks @ 6.2Gs

after a few pulls, it would just break down in pieces

when you have a 6G operational limit, your aircraft (new) can sustain something like 10-12G before breaking up… once..

after that, you’ll have cracks a little bit everywhere, bent parts and so on…..

let’s take an aircraft with no G-limiter built in (anything with hydraulic controls will work). If the pilot goes fast enough and pulls insanely on the stick, he’ll pull possibly more G’s than he’s supposed to. The problem is that it will reduce aircraft’s lifespan as the effort to be sustained exceeds what’s been calculated, resulting in early retirement (in the best case scenario) or inflight breakup (worst case scenario) some time later.

Here in France, there was a time where pilots would proudly claim how “their Cap-10” (aerobatics schools aircraft) can sustain 7Gs, 7.5GS, and so on.. while it is a 6G aircraft, normally… that time ended when these nice little aircrafts started breaking spars in flight, even during benign maneuvers… all of a sudden, you wouldn’t hear anymore of those “super Cap-10 aircraft” that can sustain more than it was supposed to…

Now, back to the comparison, in a dogfight, the F-106 has a few nice things for it, like the powerful engine, large wing area combined with the delta shape that makes it pretty immune to stall, so, if the pilot is “crazy enough”, he can, by aggressive flying get onto his adversaries tail, provided the other guy isn’t good enough. Mig-21 has a similar capability (always the delta wing) which makes it quite good at it too… but again, it’s up to the pilot to be sufficiently aggressive to use the last bit of performance the aircraft can give to him.

My favorite would be the F-8 though, very powerful, with very good agility, and with its 4 20mm canons it should be the best out there for snapshots, while the others may just as well see their target pass through their bullets stream unscathed…

overall, it’s mostly up to the pilot, I’d say, with a slight advantage to the Crusader

Suddenly the Rafale is a stealth aircraft and the Rafale will be able to approach and destroy and Su-35 before it is detected? :rolleyes:

People want to believe what they want to believe…

A big powerful radar is an advantage, no way around it. The Rafale has a lot of advantages of its own, but its radar isn’t one of them, and it is most certainly not a stealth aircraft in the sense some around here seem to wish it was.

In fact, compared to the Su-27 and derivatives, pretty much any fighter built in the last 30 years has a big advantage in RCS…

the most recent obviously more than its contemporarires

You can try to convince yourself with your own beliefs, but as far as I can see, pretty much everybody around here points out the lacks in your “theories”… maybe that should ring a bell?

Certainly if the India deal comes through it would be a big boost, but like you already said, only 18 of those are likely to be produced in France.

This could raise long term viability questions for the Rafale… you can only shrink/slow things so much before they just don’t make economic sense anymore.

The EF approach certainly wasn’t ideal, but at least it guaranteed a critical mass of orders.

bad example, as every country wanted to produce its part… there’s no economy of scale as production facilities are redundant… in the end, the thing costs more than the rafale to buy and operate while being behind in its development

besides, aircraft fully produced in france about 18, but for the rest, there will be significant number of parts made in france and more or less assembled in india

SPECTRA will not be able to pin-point the Su-35 position, it will tell its being radiated from a certain sector, +200km away is quite the distance you know.

Don’t buy into all those adv.. there is nothing magical about SPECTRA. A Radar in general is much more suited for this purpose you know..

the day any fighter sees a fighter like a rafale from 200km away is still quite far away…

now, considering my statement, it’s just BS like the statement from that russian guy explaining that the indias rafale deal is in any way desconsidered…

@ hopsalot

your radar gives you away… no way you go around that… once your opponent knows where you are (no need for a pin point location, a bearing is enough at that time) he can maneuver to get out of your way while scanning in your direction with more passive ways. it’s not specific to the rafale… it’s about pilot training and applying the right tactics to get closer

anyway, as I just said, that statement from the russian guy saying “the rafale will stand no chance against chinese Su-35″… he doesn’t know squat about that as he has access to sukhois data but can only speculate on rafales abilities…

if they ever get to fight for real, we’ll know, before that, it’s just gesticulation and speculation

Edit: besides, the Rafale has been made to last until at least 2035-2040, if it was already obsolete compared to an aircraft in production today and derived from a 1970’s design, there would be some serious problems @ Dassault right now… to me, it is clear that Indian pilots can be confident about their new aircraft

1- pentagon showed no interest in CUDA now but not sure in the future 😉 LM just see in the long term , CUDA can get customer from other country as well given the small bay of F-35 it just very likely that they will get funded
2- Aim-9X in test dont have warhead and still managed to hit target 😉 , and while 1 CUDA may be not as good as 1 ASRAAM , 2 CUDA may be better 😀

hitting a non manouvering drone is one thing… a manouvering fighter in a heavy ECM environment is another…

there always were dozens of project propositions that never go beyond the initial (usually unworkable) idea … having a 10kg warhead on a missile of that size is peanuts, and if you want range, make it an air-breathing missile and you’ll get plenty… the way it’s done is the best way to waste investment money, which seems to be the real LM competence of today, much more than making aircraft or missiles…

I guess you know better than Lockheed Martin and Rafael…

:p

they know it as well, but, as they try to sell it, as any vendor, they claim it’s the best thing out there since the sliced bread.. it’s called “publicity” 😉

Remember how Mc Donnel claimed that cannon is a thing of the past and made the F-4 without it, as everything was going to be done with missiles…

and guess what? once in real combat, they had to manage in a hurry to squeeze a canon inside it after all… but hey, if someone had said “it still is useful to have one” you’d probably have answered: “I guess you know better than Mc Donnel…”

as for the CUDA:

I still have to see a single element of proof that the pentagon showed any interest in it… until then, all I’ve seen is LM’s claims that it will be grat… like here (most recent stuff):

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/details-emerge-about-lockheeds-cuda-missile-382670/

they even go as far as to claim that the missile will hit a preselected weak point of the enemy… one has to wonder; if they have such a good seeker and such precise maneuvering capability, then today’s missiles (with explosive warheads and proximity fuses) should already have had a proven 100% pk for quite some time…

pretty much what I said in my previous post 😀

er, they were building decoys continuously…

they moved out of kosovo after Milosevic decided to stop the war… almost all of their ground forces were as operational as on day one

another possibility is that countries in question buy either a more affordable aircraft like a gripen, or, if their needs are for a more powerful thingy, go for a bit bigger, and a bit more costly but fully operational fighter like the Rafale…

with either of these, they’d have an aircraft that will perform up to the claimed performance levels, with a solid upgrade path and costs that one can, actually, evaluate by this day