It seems that APG-81 and Captor-E will be all-singing, all-dancing AESAs with RF warfare capability, unlike the RBE2-AA, which appears to have been a more rushed effort for a marketing tick in the box, rather than the pursuit of end capability.

as you said, it should , especially for the money spent.. problem is, it doesn’t look that way.

Except that the sdb’s are half size of the ones on the picture (250lbs vs 500lbs for the Rafale here).

What’s more, that is the configuration in uncontested air space. In case enemy aviation may be present, the Rafale, on the same configuration, can add up to 4 more A2A missiles

What can a 500lb bomb do that a 250lb bomb can’t? Most of the targets were vehicles in Libya, so you could even replace those 500lb bombs with 100lb missiles in the case of Brimstone, or 200lb missiles in the case of SPEAR. Hit the target from 120+km away and save a 200km return trip to the target area.

In terms of missile count, the more you add, the more drag you add, the lower the performance and the more likely you are to be detected and have to jettison the A2G load. You also have to look at the likelihood of being outnumbered 2:1. The combined airforces of every other nation in the world wouldn’t be able to achieve that against NATO. And I’d imagine that the Rafale in that picture no longer has better TWR and wing loading figures relative to an F-35 with 8 SDB/Brimstone/SPEAR and 2 AMRAMM/Meteor/ASRAAM. Furthermore, in terms of carrying extra AAMs, I’d say the Typhoon has the advantage over the Rafale in being able to carry 4 AMRAAM/Meteor with zero affect on drag index, and ultimately carry 6 Brimstones, with a combined weight not much over one AASM 250 and far less drag.

Anyway, to answer the question properly, the configuration in contested airspace is other aircraft flying CAP.:D

http://www.eurofighter.com/downloads/TecGuide.pdf

Page 21

RARAR CROSS SECTION (RCS)
REDUCTION
People often consider that RCS is an absolute
– you are either stealthy or you not. This is not
the case. There are fighters with a relatively
large RCS like the F-15 and Flanker; at the other
end of the scale the F-22. Eurofighter
Typhoon and Gripen sit somewhere in the middle,
with high composite structures giving a
balanced relatively low RCS but stores mounted
externally. But what many do not realise is
that one of the principle reflectors back to an
enemy aircraft is your own fighter antenna.
When we look at a fighter jet what we see
is an aerodynamic masterpiece: a sleek nose;
a wafer thin profile, and the reflection of many
hours of work by thousands of talented people.
That’s not what an enemy radar sees.
Consider that the aircraft nose is designed to
be completely invisible to radar. It has to be,
for the aircraft’s radar to work. What their
radar sees is, more often than not, a huge reflection
straight back off an antenna pointed
straight at them.
Think of it like this and, instantly, you have
a different image of the world of fighter-jets –
each flying around with a massive reflector on
the front saying ‘I’m here, shoot me first!’
Now many of the most recent AESA antennas
are tilted up or down 30° from the horizontal.
As a result, most of an enemy radar’s
incoming energy is harmlessly reflected away
from the enemy aircraft. This gives a big reduction
in effective RCS.
Examples where the AESA antenna is still
mounted vertically are either older designs (F-
15), or aircraft whose nose size only enables a
smaller antenna (F-16 and Rafale). If you already
have a small antenna an additional 15%
reduction in power (roughly the loss to the
aperture at 30°) to achieve an RCS reduction
is probably a poor pay-off.
For Eurofighter Typhoon this is not an issue,
our antenna is big enough to mount well
over 1400 TRM’s on a large swash-plate.
Now you might think that a big reflector
may make us vulnerable. Well it would do if
the swash-plate didn’t allow us to angle the
plate to minimise its profile to enemy eyes.
None of our serious competitors with a decent
sized antenna, are able to move their radar arrays.
They are fixed, usually at about 30° facing
upwards and forwards – the usual position
for a fixed plate AESA radar.
Ours though has a unique range of movement
on the swash-plate which maximises its
effectiveness and which can minimize vulnerability.
You need to consider that we now
have a large moveable radar array which has
significant reach and which has the best field
of regard of any radar out there. It gives us a
major advantage.

The Germans won’t even call them ‘Typhoons’.

Acig is tom.cooper.
All references go back to tom cooper.

Etc…

An F-16D also shot down an Iraqi MiG-25 in 1992.

It doesn’t have to be the SH. Maurer just mentioned “an american type”. Typhoon isn’t completely out aswell. It’s “not a favourite”. I wouldn’t bet money on EF though.

Depends what happens between now and 2017. If the collective partners get off their a55 and finally integrate Captor-E, Meteor, Brimstone, SPEAR, CFTs and these new twin store pylons that have been seen, along with the newer ESM system then that could definitely sway things. Sadly though the previous intent seems to have been to try win exports to pay for these things, which is like trying to sell a house before it’s built.

https://twitter.com/tonylive1978/status/570476850704723970

How so, the F-14 radar could acquire targets at 100 miles range?