djcross :

The “Package Q” F-16s had Pacer Mud/Have Glass RAM coating and carried AN/ALQ-131s. This made them the equivalent to today’s Rafales, Typhoons and Gripens.
Watch the “Package Q” F-16s get mission killed, then tell me the fantasy of how Rafales, Typhoons or Gripens will survive in contested airspace.

This is the kind of post we shouldn ‘t accept .
As an American , djcross thinks that an old F-16 with an old pod is the equivalent of the Eurocanards !
This is BS !
The F-teens are outdated , they can still do a good job but they are outdated . Just the idea to use a “pod” for EW/ECM is outdated (unless the pod is very recent and tailored for the ACTUAL threats) .
The EW systems onboard the Eurocanards are miles ahead of the US fighters ‘s systems . Even the F-22 has no ECMs !
I admit that updated F-15s have some good onboard gizmos but that ‘s about it .
Americans should be a bit more cautious and a bit more modest nowadays as their actual fleet of fighters is no longer the top of the range .
The F-35 is a massive disaster and even if it enters operational service in 2018-2020 , it will be a plague and most probably a hangar queen .
But nonetheless , we still have Americans lecturing Europeans on how to do things ! 😀 (not even talking about the B-737 “Dreamliner” lol)
It ‘s laughable …

Cheers .

Belethor :

Come on blue, you’ve got to do better then simply telling people to do their homework. I want to hear why he’s wrong.

I told him with my last sentence , which was :

Here , you show that you are still stuck in the 80s . Late EW system do NOT use “noise” anymore . They use various techniques to fool the emiter by manipulating the echos like range gate pull-off , cross eye jamming or even newer techniques , etc …
Blanketing multiple frequencies with white noise is what old systems like the ALQ-131 are doing . This is outdated stuff .

The Eurocanards have some good cards up their sleeves to defeat SAMs and their missiles . It ‘s all I wanted to say .

Belethor :

But how will the F-35 fair on a low level penetration mission? Will it be able to avoid the SAMs that djcross so fears and if it were to operate down low could it perhaps be more effective in that area than say the Rafale or F-15?

Maybe , maybe not . On a low level penetration mission with no external stores , the F-35 is short legged (less than 500 nmi , 1000 nmi for the Rafale) and its bang for pound factor is not great where Rafale has cruise missiles .
Surely , the F-35 would be harder to detect and its onboard sensors are excellent . Its ECM are excellent too . Is it a good low flying flyer ?
Anyway , on paper it looks good but … until it ‘s operational , who knows .

Cheers .

EE :

You’d better reply to Fedaykin from the last page

What ?

Cheers .

I also wonder whether Spectra, Praetorian and EWS 39 (including the JAS 39E/F variant) are truly equivalent to an ALQ-131 pod.

The ALQ-131 is two generations behind Praetorian/EWS 39 and 2.5 generations behind Spectra . It is really out-dated stuff … The ALQ-184/187 are a bit newer but still can ‘t be compared with the latest European Systems .

Cheers .

The Rafale prototype (ACX) first flew in 1986, so development time = 18 years

The Rafale project suffered many stops for lack of will and lack of funding but never because of technical problems , never .
Even after 1986 , things could have been done much quicker but again , the French GoV didn ‘t put the money in as fast as previously planned .

Technicaly speaking , Rafale was ready around the year 2000 .
Thanks to the M4000 and the M2000 , development time took around 12-14 years .

The F-35 program is a complete and massive f**k up .

Cheers .

I ‘m not gonna give names , it ‘s not important . It was at the time when Rafale bashing was a daily game for many …

Funny how things turns out , 3 wars already for the “pedestrian bomb truck” and … nothing coming for the “outstanding” F-35 for the years to come .

Cheers .

Levsha :

All that is true, so I wonder why we spend so much time comparing aircraft A with aircraft B on this forum when there are so many other factors to take into account?

Because there are always differences in between aircraft A and aircraft B and because we like it 🙂

Myself , I beleive that the Flanker is somehow a better flyier than the Eagle but it is somehow lacking the “gizmos” to make it a real winner . It is nevertheless a deadly adversary not to be taken lightly .

Cheers .

MSphere :

The fraction of radar-guided air kills throughout the history of aerial combat has been quite minimal so far and I don’t think it’s gonna change anytime soon. Quite on the contrary, we can observe relatively rapid rise of low observability measures to reduce the aircraft’s RCS or enhance the ECM coverage but the apparent measures to reduce the IR signature are somewhat lacking. I can’t see an F-22 shooting down a J-20 using radar guidance anytime soon.

Good post , I agree .

Cheers .