add in the fact that a considerable number of existing JSF members are also in the Link-22 prog, then you have another capability vector that is a golden league away from what Rafale can deliver in the next 5 years. These are nations that have a Link16 footprint between air land and sea, with the same requirement for Link22.  The french have it on AWACs and some Rafales.  In absolute terms, in 5 years time(assuming no change in national military policies)  the Turks will have a larger and more capable air organic electronic sensor warfighting footprint than France.

 

Rafale is ideally suited for the French military posture: it is capable of doing basic interception over its homeland or a CVBG, and just survivable enough to launch reprisal strikes against known point targets (and, as BW pointed out, one-way nuclear strikes against Russia).  Its air to air capability is an incremental improvement over the Mirage 2000-5 and its ground attack capability is an incremental improvement over the Mirage 2000N, and it combines the two.  It is not intended or equipped to perform most missions that would be required of expeditionary warfare: no CAS, no SEAD, no reconnaissance, no offensive counter-air.  Unfortunately, it keeps being put into competitions where it is expected to demonstrate those capabilities, and pitted against aircraft which have done so.

 

Because, seriously:

This doesn't mean Rafale is useless; it is well suited to fulfilling French military ambitions of presenting a reasonably credible nuclear threat and showing the flag in coalitions.  Unfortunately for Dassault, most potential buyers need aircraft that are more well-rounded, and for that there are simply too many airplanes that either do the same missions as Rafale more effectively, more efficiently, or both.

This thread is so full of vile and unjustified comment that I feel a nobligation to correct.

 

Not yet. We hope this will be corrected. Doesn't mean the aircraft is bad (look at the TSR1: great performer, killed for political reasons under US pressure in favour of the much less capable =and much less sovereign= F111, which the RAF was finally wise enough not to acquire). Reasons for this may include any of the following : I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but the US do tend to dislike world class contenders to their own products, and were particularly harsh to France during the post Irak 2003 years / Dassault have great engineers but obnoxious salesmen / all technical aspects put aside, it is more conforting for a government to trust 4 European countries for quality, cost effectiveness and longevity of a fighter, than one single country, plus more diplomatic benefits. Only problem, too much national pride and legit national sovereignty /industry concerns tend to create, rather than alleviate, design flaws and cost / time overruns. Ever seen the cartoon describing "a horse designed by a committee?" You end up getting a camel. That's what the Eurofighter really is.

True. One of the least satisfying compromises, which will require money and time once it is decided to go ahead with the integration. This looks unescapable, eventually, it'll become a "need to have" especially for the export market. Probably the best response (and the reason the FAF and FrNavy general staffs considered acceptable to drop the requirement), is that the SA you have before the merge and the efficiency of the data fusion, including fighter  to fighter  datalink (L16) are such that once friends and foes are mixed up (you're never supposed to be alone in a fight), a WVR enemy has virtually no chance to escape being tracked by at least one hence vulnerable to all the Rafales in the furball. Ever heard of the Rafale's "over the shoulder" kill? Using offboard missile cueing from a wingie during a live fire test, a Rafale actually managed to shoot down a target located 7 o'clock at several nautical miles range. Has this ever been done on a F-22 or a Typhoon? Don't thinh so

ECM is not my best area of expertise but with no numbers to support it, the above assertion is pointless. From the user's point of view all I can say is the FAF and FrNavy has never met anything close to SPECTRA, regardless of what you may think of its marketing prowesses, both in sensing accuracy and jamming efficiency. EW is an area where the French are top notch: anybody who has flown in Red Flag against French ECM, including older generation on M2000 and even Mirage F1 and Jaguar, will understand exactly what I mean.

8 - production rate of less than one aircraft per month leading to serious quality and support supplier issues. I'm not sure about the outcome in terms of service to the customer, but it certianly sucks, plus you end up paying idle workers and the unit price might be going up again.

9 - terrible reliability (one of the four Rafales at Red Flag had to be grounded and cannibalized for parts to support the other 3). All aircraft experience failures. The two important points to ponder when raising reliability issues are : how often, and what does it take to fix it? Making a general rule of one observation in Red Flag (I'm assuming, for lack of contrary information, that what you write is accurate, although it would need double checking, given the amount of bad faith circulated in this thread) is not relevant as anyone with an elementary understanding of statistics will understand. What I have seen in real life: a Rafale on a foreign field with a limited logistic suite, aborted startup due to APU failure. French guys say "it'll be fixed in an hour", foreign technicians incredulous at first then sneering when the Rafale was towed inside the hangar. Result, less than an hour later the thing was actually airborne and the guys stopped laughing. Why? Excellent self diagnosis capability, all they had to do was replace the failed APU, which was done in a matter of minutes thanks to excellent design for maintenance. And I could quote many other such examples.

10 - tiny radar aperture (550mm) insufficient for an air superiority fighter and limits radar performance regardless of future AESA. I don't give crap about the size of the antenna. It is small on Rafale to improve over the nose visibility during carrier landings (remember, intelligent compromises and optimisation, we're good at that in France because contrary to our transatlantic cousins we don't believe we can afford throwing billions out of the window). What I want of my radar, or rather : system, is a good SA at long/medium range to adoptthe best tactics and a good probability of detection and accuracy within the weapons' envelope that I won't miss any shot opportunities to underperforming sensors. Paired with data from C2 assets and L16, the Rafale does fine. Contrary to the assertion above, the AESA will do a heck of a difference concerning both the range and the quality of date, whichis critical for the PK of a missile navigating on datalinked info, before missile acquisition of the target by its own active seeker.

Not yet. We hope this will be corrected. Doesn't mean the aircraft is bad (look at the TSR1: great performer, killed for political reasons under US pressure in favour of the much less capable =and much less sovereign= F111, which the RAF was finally wise enough not to acquire).

11. No towed decoy (unlike the F-15, F-16, F-18, EF, etc etc) I agree with BW: towed decoy is not a requirement, it's one of many possible solutions to the requirement of avoiding and defeating incoming threats. Was considered for Rafale on basis of cost effectiveness and robustness. The same as thrust vectoring or swept wing, who sound and look very sexy but whose added weight and complexity are self defeating. All three have one common flaw: they violate the KISS rule (keep it simple, stupid!)

The towed decoy is an avionics upgrade path and is more than a decoy. This is a case of pence wise and pound foolish.

14. No reconnaissance pod Wrong. Like EW,  recce is one of France's fortes (remember Saint Exupery and the "little prince"? He was also a recce pilot). Rafale F3 has the "Reco NG" pod, by far the best around town. Can be used at any altitude or speed:  at low or med alt, envelope of all tac recce pod mounted on F-16s or Tornado that I can think of, it's suited for tactical recce, replacing the Mirage F1 CRin the FAF inventory. With the high altitude capability, it replaces the strategic recce capability that we temporarily lost when retiring our Mirage IV P. This asset, combined with national satellite imagery, kept us from any stupid misperceptions - not to say deliberate deceit - during the run-up to Irak 2003, thank god, and we've reacquired the capability now. With the added benefit of digital imagery and in-flight datalink capability, which allows in flight retransmission of the imagery for rapid ground procession and distribution iof the extracted data, before the acft ever touches down.

15. No anti-radiation missile : once again, not a requirement. An AASM shot with near-metric precision at an emitter located with decametric precision by SPECTRA (ther he is again) will discourage the bravest radar operators and either destroy or silence anyone emitting with a SAM system.

SPECTRA has a severe range, bearing, and area search limit. It is purely an aircraft self defense system. I won't say any more about this numerically except that it cannot substitute for a dedicated EW aircraft. I've explained the why of it in genereal terms above and elsewhere.         
 

By what standards? That's certainly just an opinion. "Best" depends on requirements. Because if we are looking solely at absolute capability in a vacuum I think the late model F-15 variants and the F/A-18E/F could also be called "second best".

-DA 

Softwar :

JP , kudos for coming here from time to time . Maybe you shouldn 't ...

You could take Herald in the back seat , he still would hold the same talk and attitude . Poor him ...

 

Cheers .

 

Eurofighter's aerodynamics are better than F-15.  F-15 is probably better on offense with its fuel load but Typhoon is better on defense or the classic message board "joust over neutral territory with 50% fuel and no AWACS."  F-15 with AESA will win unless Typhoon has Meteor.  When Typhoon has AESA and Meteor it gets close to F-22 capability in terms of engaging Su's.

Who's aerodynamics are better is debatable and depends on the mission profile. Its like saying an Mustang GT is better handling than an H2 Hummer. Thats true on the road. But not so true on the dirt. Without specifics that statement by itself is insufficient for any objective analysis. Also, over neutral airspace with no AWACS and 50% full only happens in video games and fanboy threads. I'm always talking about operationally configured and integrated into a system. Thats how wars are fought. With regard to Typhoon and Meteor, I like it and on paper it looks formidable. But Meteor will not be the only next generation weapon system nor will next-gen weapons be limited to Typhoons. For all we know F-15s could be hauling HELLADS pods with the weapons systems operator controlling teathered UCAVs configured for air combat....

 

...So we cannot simply assert that Typhoon is going to be better because we know about Meteor. Because there are things that are going to be integrated into the capabilities of other aircraft that will be equally or even more deadly as illustrated above for instance. 

Now having said all that I have no doubt that the Typhoon is a great fighter and properly employed would be quite a deadly opponent FOR ANY PLANE. But thats a far stretch for calling it "second best".

-DA 

BW,

Try not to get wrapped up in the "Herald" stuff. Just post things you know, and the stuff you don't, don't. Also, take an objective look at the situation. If X is clearly greater than Y, then simply say so. There is no shame in that. It's just when you say things like, France could integrate a complex subsystem for operational use "in hours". It makes your credibility fall. Just take a look at the computer you are reading this on. If the manufacturer decided to switch or add a major component. That could take months or more and that assumes we are talking about a part that already exist and works. Remember, this is just for a simple PC or MAC. Imagine something as complex as fighter avionics. Avoid things like that that clearly don't make sense and I think a lot of people would take your post more seriously. Your passion for the weapons your country makes is admirable. Just because you are not an expert at it technically speaking doesn't mean you can't teach us things from the French point of view. Your armed forces do have some meaningful combat operations to speak of in the last two decades to include the Rafale. If you would focus more on sharing that with your unique perspective we would all benefit.  

-DA 

JP :

DA , I copy you loud and clear .

Just let me do my stuff .

 

Cheers .

Since we all want to keep the thread nice and cool :-) , I propose an 8 minutes video of the Rafale CO1 who was the black prototype used during some of the testings . The connoisseurs will notice the overall stealthy shape when clean , as well as the manoeuvrability (8gs Max with this aircraft) .

The CO1 also had early engines but its acceleration is already , well ... quiet good (!)

 

ht*p://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VPEU6GlGUI

Cheers .