“data” “checked” and “verified”. By who???

Physically checkable and verifiable. E.g. non-conformal AAM carriage, wide canard span, non-retractable IFR probe, smaller fixed vertical radar with no capability for jamming, passive detection or use as a datalink, lack of HMDS, DDM-NG only provides MAWS feautre at present according to MBDA datasheet, not all round targeting and detection capabilities like DAS… all easily verifiable. But no mind, you heard a pilot story and the Rafale can detect and jam an F-35 and is superior to all other conceivable aircraft. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good multi-role aircraft, but it’s no stealth aircraft and other non-stealth aircraft are better suited to air-superiority duties because they were designed for that, so much so that it actually compromised their A2G capabilities. All aircraft have strengths and weaknesses, get over it. The F-35’s likely weakness is that it isn’t as energetic or manoeuvrable as its non-stealth counterparts, that trade-off was necessary in order to provide it with stealth strike capability and unparalled sensory data acquisition. The Typhoon’s weakness is the that the bottom intakes and recessed BVRAAM carriage call for a landing gear arrangement that restricts use of the inner pylon and lowers the load bearing ability of the central hardpoint. On the plus side, those features and associated features improve engine performance at higher-AoAs whilst lowering drag and RCS. The Rafale’s weakness is that it’s a multi-role design, which means it isn’t ideally suited any particular role but does all roles competently, unlike the Typhoon and F-35, which were designed to excel in air superiority and strike respectively. The Rafale therefore can’t remain undetected as well as an F-35 and can’t accelerate, climb or recover from instantaneous manoeuvres as fast as a Typhoon, especially in the supersonic regime and has a smaller fixed radar that’s vertically mounted, a wider canard span and non-ideal pylon mounted BVRAAMs.

We can all tell tales and look at leaked reports from training exercises but based on some of those leaks, NATO’s airforces are outmatched by the Pakistani airforce, so draw your own conclusions.

Because land borders facilitate invasion. Other things being equal, the nation on your border is a much more serious threat than the nation that isn’t.

But nothing else is equal. An invasion of Switzerland by a neighbouring country is less likely than an alien invasion or it being wiped out by a giant meteor. France invaded Britain in 1066 but that doesn’t mean that UK military planners have a French invasion at the top of their risk list. People don’t generally plan for a war with their allies and you have to assess the pros and cons of what one would gain by an invasion of Switzerland and the cons massively outweigh the pros, e.g. pariah status, economy crippling sanctions, inability to trade with the rest of Europe. Then you have to look at intent and nobody in Europe holds any existing claim to Swiss territory and the closest thing to a disagreement is its use as a tax haven but I don’t think there’s a precedent for invading a country based on tax evasion.

That is not a demonstrator.

Helps though, that is what’s swaying customers at present.

Oh, it does.

Nope.

There are no indications about “extremely limited capabilities of RBE2-AA relative to other modern AESAs”. It’s definitely no worse than Captor-E, which, too, retains much of the back-end hardware from existing Captors. Likewise, the APG-81 is, too, based on previous designs, basically a combination of back-ends from APG-77 combined with TRMs from APG-80.

Lack of RF jamming capability and ability to be used as a datalink are two. Both of which APG-81 and Captor-E do. Nope, doesn’t retain the back-end hardware of existing Captors. More garbage.

A jammer only needs to generate as much power as to be able to cover up the reflected signal which greatly depends on range. There are more important factors to consider, especially used techniques and algorhitms about which we all here know squat as I cannot imagine more classified topic than this one.

Power also depends on RCS because the reflection does, and the Rafale’s RCS is relatively large.

Load of guesswork. You have no clue about how these designs actually perform..

Neither do you and that’s my point. I was referring to commercially available processors and computer GPUs with my 5 years comment.

Another load of guesswork, this time in clear contradiction to what has been actually tested and evaluated. The only huge advantage AESA offers is getting better selling points and higher MTBO. Sure, it would completely dominate in the improbable scenarios where you’re guiding four missiles at three targets while doing SAR mapping and throwing bombs in the same moment but these are only book examples to demonstrate capabilities, without much relevance to practical life.

I, too, agree that AESA is an amazing piece of machinery and the technology behind it is impressive just like we were all impressed with the first flat screens a decade ago. As the TRMs get more and more affordable, we will see all mechanical arrays slowly vanish in history just like we won’t find any CRT screens in production today. But the fact is that you could do most graphics work on an old CRT monitor every bit as effectively as you do with a modern OLED display. Well, yes, your eyes would hurt more but that’s about it..

It’s guesswork on your part because… YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY TESTED!

Anti-jamming, anti-detection, huge X-Band jamming power, better detection, all major advantages. Your example is stupid and incorrect. Design work on a small CRT monitor of old, would take longer, due to scrolling time and zooming in and out incessantly. First we have people who say that radars aren’t needed, then we have people who say AESAs are no better than MSAs. What next? Wings aren’t useful?

Because you knowanything about rafale RCS ans spectra capabilities? And RBE2? lucky boy!

Yeah, this is the other part of the ‘spectra is all-conquering’ card. The veil of secrecy excuse that quickly descends when people make rational points about why it isn’t all-conquering. With a fixed vertically mounted radar, large canard span, higher fin, non-recessed BVRAAM carriage and non-retractable fuel probe, I can make my own reasonable judgments about its RCS and the only counter judgments will be based on wishful rather than rational thinking. What next? A pilot story you heard?

Italy, Germany, and France are larger nations that can project power into Switzerland with relative ease and speed as they share common borders. Sweden is a smaller nation that is separated from Switzerland both geographically and geopolitically (buffer states). As such, Switzerland has less reason to fear Swedish belligerence than Italian, German, or French belligerence.

French/etc. belligerence? Please elaborate. When exactly have the French/etc. threatened Switzerland recently? Is Napoleon about to make a comeback tour, did I miss something? Is it 1803 again?

It’s pretty clear they themselves don’t perceive any such threat, otherwise, the Rafale and Typhoon wouldn’t even be in the running. The main likely threat is terrorism, e.g. hijacked planes, terrorists on private planes etc.

And if “terrorism” is all you’ve got, then it’s clear that Switzerland simply doesn’t need a fast jet capability, given that there are about a million more cost-effective ways to invest in counter-terrorism, even within the narrow field of military spending, which is of course horrifically inefficient for that purpose. If Germany, France, and Italy are not considered a sufficiently credible threat to call for maintaining a fast jet capability, then the capability isn’t needed.

I don’t see it that way. You can’t guarantee the security levels at airports outside your own domain, so whilst incoming international flights exist, there is always the risk of a hijacked plane, or a renegade private jet, and time to intercept is crucial. Within the last year Typhoons have been scrambled supersonic to intercept airliners that stopped communicating. False alarms but the threat is there and it’s a time critical mission.

Ha, thats pretty much what sensible builders do these days!

Sell the house based on generic plans, then build and customise to the client’s wishes.

Not without having a show home first. At the moment there is no demonstrator, and that’s the weakness.

As for Sweden during the cold war ‘dispersed sites’ were pre-prepared airbases all around Sweden (not too far away from their regular airbases). Let´s say in the 80´s and Sweden had 400 fighters there could be over 150 dispersed sites manned during wartime, it could be a stretch of ordinary roadway where the planes was just camouflaged in the woods or had mountain shelters. If it was bombed out the enginers was suppose to have it up and running within a day. The idea was to disperse it in huge numbers so an attack on an airbase would not knock out a lot of planes. So it meant that the enemy had to direct 100´s of bombers day after day just to knock out the support of the SwAF. But in order to have this system you have to have a fighter that can operate from a 500 meters of straight roadway, and the logistics takes a lot of men.

Right so dispersed sites aren’t a particularly cheap philosophy anyway. I think any fighter worth its salt can operate from 500m of runway.