I hope they do well and everyone gets home safe.

 

Check Six

 

Rocky

Thanks Phaid for this post. This is good news for the Rafale. An actual combat deployment in direct support of troops will allow Dassault to refine the Rafale in a real world environment that will present situations that are impractical to simulate. The end result will pay off huge. Any idea how long it will be before the Rafale is able to self designate or deploy satellite guided weapons specifically AASM?


DA

Regarding LGBs, their use was tested too, with integration of the Damocles pod to the Rafale. It works, problem is, there's no Damocles pod in service in the AdA. Another thing that needs to be procured too!

Anyway. This deployment is good news. Not only for the Rafale, but also for the French commitment on the war against radical islam. 

Small wars like Iraq or Afghanistan are not really war testing for an aircraft except on maintenance issues and to test communication equipement and GtoA/AtoG procedures. But today aircraft are extensively tested.

These kind of wars where there is no real opposition or modern airdefense do not prove anything.

I said it for F15,F16 or F18 which never seen real combat a part for fighting in overwhelming numbers, subpar aircrafts with sub par missiles, manned by subpar pilots, and not supported by any decent systems like AWACs.

The last time western aircraft were confronted vs a ennemy not too bad on equipement was in Yom Kippour war and in a less extend, clash between Syrian and israelis in 1982.

Since any air war were jokes for western camp and prove nothing.As for MTB.

Now, it is good for image that rafale do not stay an hangar queen.

If people here will lend credibility to these sites' claims,

 

(Airforce-Technology.Com): link

WEAPONS

The Rafale can carry payloads of over 9t on 14 hardpoints for the Air Force version, and 13 for the naval version. The range of weapons includes: Mica, Magic, Sidewinder, ASRAAM and AMRAAM air-to-air missiles; Apache, AS30L, ALARM, HARM, Maverick and PGM100 air-to-ground missiles; and Exocet/AM39, Penguin 3 and Harpoon anti-ship missiles.

For a strategic mission the Rafale can deliver the MBDA (formerly Aerospatiale) ASMP standoff nuclear missile. In December 2004, the MBDA Storm Shadow / Scalp EG stand-off cruise missile was qualified on the Rafale.

In September 2005, the first flight of the MBDA Meteor BVRAAM beyond visual range air-to-air missile was conducted on a Rafale fighter. In December 2005, successful flight trials were carried out from the Charles de Gaulle of the range of Rafale's weapon systems – Exocet, Scalp-EG, Mica, ASMP-A (to replace the ASMP) and Meteor missiles.

From 2007, the Rafale will also be armed with the Sagem AASM precision-guided bomb, which has both GPS/inertial guidance and, optionally, imaging infrared terminal guidance.

The Rafale has a twin-gun pod and a GIAT 30mm DEFA 791B cannon which can fire 2,500 rounds per minute.

It is something[real combat data] Dassault needs to package in its sales pitch. A purchase commission looks at combat data.  Its why Russia could say to RoK, we have Sukhoi combat data A2A against MiGs and in the CAS mission in the Eritrea War, whereas the best Dassault could do was cite air combat exercises.

Herald  

Could this be what's finally needed to get customers?
Seems Gripen managed to do it without any credible combat record.

Title

The claims in red are if the US supplies the sourcecode and the weapon matching interfaces. This the Rafale does not currently have, not even for SIDEWINDER

.
False, we have the source code for sidewinder interface.BTW it is a almost NATO standard.And compatible with ASRAAM.
But not for AMRAAM it seems.
Does F16 have source code of Mica?

On Bekka valley in 82, I said that it was less a valuable exemple and experience return than 73 as Israelis had an overwhelming superiority not only for Eagle as they had E2C.
And BTW F15 shoot mainly old Mig21 and 23.
Moreover at this time Russian were not supplying their latest equipement to Syrian but subpar (especially on electronic), and of course Syrian pilots were inferior in training.
Since, small wars are more realistic manoeuvers than real wars.

PS: if you reread my post on Afganistan you would notice I spoke about AtoG procedures.

rafale accept Sidewinder, Magic, ASRAAM, mica, french and standard NATO bombs and LBG, Apache, SCALP, Exocet (considered as qualified and software developped), AASM(considered as qualified and software developped), ALARM, and Meteor in few years.

Damocles pod can ne considered as qualified by constructor if not in a formalized acceptance par ADA.

When I said "do you have MICA source code" it was to say ironically that not having AMRAAM is not a inferiority in diversity of weapons.

Herald

I'm quite sure Rafale is compatible with any Sidewinder including AM9X since AM9X is backward compatible with any AM9L/M launcher using the analog signal including for seeker slave mode.

Moreover I 'm quite sure that AM9X MIL-STD-1760 numerical interface is the same than MDBA ASRAAM.So Rafale is likely already compatible with AM9X.