TooCool_12fdon’t know much about UK defence industry, but in france, dassault has a significant knowledge that may be useful in making a 5th gen fighter.. the problem being: nobody will finance such development for years overhere…
frence considers such aircraft as being an overkill for its needs, a little like the Mirage 4000 a couple of decades ago, “too big and too complicated” which results in “too costly”, all that in regard to the needs of AdlA, and the result was a Mirage 2000, a simpler, smaller and, most of all, cheaper version of the aircraft.
The rafale is a bit like that: a small airframe with lots of stuff inside but made to be as cheap as possible while doing everything it does; it has to replace basically any fighter-sized aircraft in french inventory, earth or naval variant…. the idea being that it would simplify maintainance and reduce costs in the end (common parts and less aircraft overall).
TooCool_12f@ Fedaykin
let’s just stop on it for a second:
– 7-1 score: does it mean the typhoon is a lemon? or the rafale a world beater? no, it doesn’t mean either of these two. it just means that in that particular confrontation, the rafale guys outflew the typhoon ones. Simply and only that. It’s just one result on one particular day. The only eventual thing we may take as conclusion is taht the rafale is maybe not such a “lemon” in a2a as some (mostly US and Typhoon officials/crowd) have presented it to be
– some put forward that the “context” wasn’t fair or similar statements… yet, nobody ever could propose anything to support that PoV. We only had “hints”, “anonymous statements”, even mails posted by “eurofighter communications department” that were shown… neither gave any solid facts as to what happened in UAE
– about degraded mode, if rafale carried the MICA and the typhoon the sidewinder, it’s easy to understand why the rafale would be “in degraded mode”, the MICA being a medium range missile with dogfight capabilities (basically, you can shoot it at 40km or at 1.5km from your target) and the sidewinder is a purely short range missile (max range of about 8-10km or something like that)
– finally, considering that the UAE organised these exercises in order also to see what various countries can propose, it would seem highly unlikely that anyone expecting to sell combat aircraft would play a role in a direct confrontation in order to give an advantage to a commercial competitor.
The typhoon and the rafale are in competition whenever there is a market to take and I can’t believe for a second that the RAF would accept to go fight the rafale without doing its best to win the fight and, also, score points for a potential future market for a british fighter
TooCool_12fseems logical to me too 😉
TooCool_12fer, how would you do the intergration into a complete system (everything interconnected) without have the codes for that? Dassault will have to do it. Btw, UAE asked Dassault to integrate the SLAM-ER (not “slammer”, which, if my understanding is correct is the nickname of the AMRAAM), they didn’t say they were willing to do it themselves, which goes the way: US will have to approve the integration and let Dassault do it, which seems pretty unlikely to me…
TooCool_12fThe diference is that Europe (read GBritain, German, France and Sweden) has the technology but no will, China has the will, but not the technology (that should change shortly).
it depends… some technologies you can learn rapidly or even copy, others take long time to acquire (and there aren’t many shortcuts)
there was a documentary on TV a couple of weeks ago where a Snecma engineer explained that they sold older engines to the chinese some 20 years back… still, while the engines were copied, the copies couldn’t perform as well as originals, the problem being that hot parts didn’t receive the right treatment and couldn’t stand as high temperatures as the french built engines, and that the chinese still lacked that technology, which prevented them from making the parts that would be reliable enough.
They are learning, but they need to advance at their own pace, since nobody will sell them the latest tech intel. And that is compared to french engines. now, take into account the performance you get in an engine like the F135, there’s certainly another level of chemical treatment so the exhaust turbine blades can stand even higher temperatures, in order to achieve such high level of thrust.
To make a long story short: the chinese are developing their technology, but other nations continue to work and progress… and right now, the chinese lag a long way behind in some areas… areas in which they’ll need a good amount of time to catch up
TooCool_12fin france, there’s a saying that “only the truth can hurt”
maybe that is an indication? 😉
TooCool_12fWill Boeing and the US government allow SLAM-ER to be integrated on the Rafale? Or can it be done without them?
taht’s always the same story. In another topic, someone said that the rafale buyers would have to make do with french weapons because dassault would refuse to integrate other nations’ weaponry. It doesn’t work that way. dassault will tailor the fighter to any weapon asked, if the customer pays the price, and if they can manage to have the right to do so.
Usually, it’s mostly the competition that doesn’t want to see other competitors integrate some stuff.. and, talking about Boeing missiles, it’s the USA which can put their veto on it, tying dassaults hands on the matter
TooCool_12fYes context is important, nobody has stated if Eurofighter took the gloves off properly in the exercise, I seriously doubt it.
sure, the typhoon just went out to get slaughtered in front of the rare nations that can afford fighters of such a price… seems so logical.
The AdlA statement (official and all that) is that confrontations took place besides the official exercises and that the rafale was in a degraded mode. Nobody (nobody having any competence as to what happened overthere) came to contest that version, so:
Unless you have some serious source (not neighbor’s kid’s pal’s uncle whose mother in law is a secretary in a dental office where the grand mother of a villager living within less than 50miles from an air base), such “doubt” seems to be mostly fanboyism rather than a thought through opinion
TooCool_12fas I said, it’s my guess… for now, I’ve read things from various parts spanning from “it’s almost done” to “it’s a paper plane”, so, I’m guessing 😉
TooCool_12fReally? Then why is SAAB now calling it NG? Or, to be precise, ‘Gripen NG Demonstrator‘?
They’ve been calling it ‘NG Demonstrator’ for months. Of course, it isn’t the finished NG, but it is the prototype for it.
my guess would be it’s called “NG demonstrator” because it demonstrates things that NG would do if it was ever developed.
There was the rafale demonstrator in the 1980’s, and it shares nothing, except maybe the general shape, even if its dimensions are different) with the rafale as it was developed in the end.. it just demonstrated the shape and some features the final product has.
If the NG demonstartor was a final version NG, there would be no development to do since the thing would be flying already.. and that’s the whole argument SAAB tries to put forward in brasil market: common development between brasilians and swedes
TooCool_12fSharing a dozen two-dimensional plots with quasi-accurate vectors and velocities is a far cry from what is shared today. Your comparison is disengenuous at best. Quite frankly the whole acceptable notion of how the interfaces display the data is changing ever few years. Your future displays in 5th generation aircraft will resemble today’s crop of video games. The old tri-color triangles and plot lines is too limited for displaying the shear scale of information available.
er, the nature of data that’s shared is besides the point… Mig-31 did it long ago (share its data), while it was presented like something new and revolutionary when F-22 came out…
you can increase the resolution and detection capabilities (normal, it would be a shame if F-22s radar was a lesser performer than the ’70s tech USSR radar) and you can add eyecandy all you like, but the fact is, datalink between fighters has been done before, giving them the ability to get firing solutions from their buddies… which is what counts. That’s not something unique to the F-22, or something that the F-22 devs invented (maybe on US side), and, as I stated too, the Rafale also does it, at an even higher degree, since it combines all data it has access to, regardless of its source (radar, IR, SPECTRA, AWACS, etc…)
TooCool_12fFrankly without context I am highly cynical about the stories coming out of the AdA. We have heard pretty much nothing out of the other services involved except that it was a training exercise.
Maybe it was a 7-1 for Rafale vs Typhoon but without the context of the engagements it means nothing. What if the Typhoons were acting as Red force with intentionally limited tactics and systems use? The whole point of Red force is to die!
I also don’t think the F22 is quite the magic bullet it is made out to be, against late generation aircraft with the gloves properly taken off (ie proper use of electronic jamming and detection equipment) I think the US might be a bit surprised.
well, let’s see what’s been said:
besides exercises (meaning, nobody was “acting red or blue”, but only “us against them”), there were several confrontations, Rafale vs Typonn in degraded mode (MICA range artifically reduced) and WVR confrontations Rafale vs F-22.
so, in clear terms: head on confrontation, and let the best win (the day’s best at least, not that one result gives a definitive and undisputable rating).
that “I want to see the context” start to look like if you watched the wimbledon final, Rafael Nadal wins against Federer, and when you tell your buddy (Federer fan), he answers:
“gee, I don’t know, I want to see the context before considering that a victory”
what context? it was in daylight… on grass… plenty of people around the court watching the game… simple tennis game…
TooCool_12fno not really…nineties electronics is nineties electronics…
Upgrades can only be done with certain limitations. Example APG77 will probably never be swash plated.
Thats why they get old in the end, and you start from scratch.
But then again, this generation of hardware we talk about will be state of the art for a long time. upgrades of some parts and lots of software will ensure that. One thing APG77 does that i dont think any other coming AESA do at the moment is enabled to datalink info to other APG77..
3 gen systems for example wasnt that much software….though not that upgradeble.
er, datalinking radar data is something that Mig-31 used to do a couple of decades ago…
as far as rafale goes: you have on thales page:
“Sensor data fusion draws on the computing power of the MDPU to process data from the AESA RBE2 radar, the Front-Sector Optronic system, the SPECTRA system, the IFF, the missile seekers and the data-link (L16 or custom).”
“…Thales has developed a complete range of Tactical Data Link (TDL) solutions. Onboard the Rafale, these solutions offer a secure source of tactical data, including situation awareness, command & control, electronic warfare, orders and reports, flight pass and fighter-to-fighter information. Among other key players in combined air operations, this data is used with fellow aircraft in the formation, airborne and surface command and control centres, forward air controllers, etc.”
and the entire page:
http://www.thalesgroup.com/News_and_events/Countries/Spain/100209Rafale/
basically, it’s capable of sharing every information onboard, regardless of the source it comes from: radar, OSF, RWR, or anything else…
as someone said previously, the F-22 was alone in its class when it entered service, but it can’t stay that way forever… others keeps working and developing new stuff, and, as technology progresses, the features that may have seemed unique at the time aren’t so unique anymore.. and will be more and more common in future years… it’s perfectly normal.
TooCool_12fHow about as a replacement for the Super Etendard?
Rafale was made to accomplish any mission you can ask from a carrier aircraft (except AWACS, even if it can act as one for other rafales through L16 if I’m not mistaken).
It can do:
– fleet protection (interceptor, CAP, etc)
– air superiority fighter over frontline areas
– ground attack (troops close air support, tactical strike and even nuclear missile launcher if necessary)
– anti-ship strike aircraft (with exocet missile)
– wild weasel aircraft
– air reconnaissance
– buddy-buddy refueling
and it’s also capable of doing several of these mission during the same flight… and I’m sure I forget a thing or two… what use would the navalized gripen bring to the french navy?
TooCool_12fthing is, they refuse to use the radar in exercises with foreign countries (using AWACS if available, or, otherwise, not going BVR), so not having its emissions detected isn’t so surprising…
You can take any radar, if it’s not working it doesn’t emit 😀
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