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Subject: What is wrong with the Rafale?
Rufus    5/9/2009 10:16:10 AM
I have noticed a lot of discussion on here lately about the Rafale and its inability to compete with the various other late 4th generation designs on the market today. In an effort to shed some light on this issue I have taken a moment to list some of the Rafale's major crippling flaws and their origins. The single biggest issue with the Rafale, and the common thread throughout most of its major design flaws, is that its design team simply lacked sufficient vision of where the future of fighter aviation was heading. Throughout the Rafale's design process its designers chose to go with incremental improvements rather than generational leaps in technology. The Rafale was intended to catch up to, rather than leap ahead of, aircraft that were designed years earlier such as the F-16 and Mig-29. The end result is a somewhat refined, but badly overpriced aircraft that has struggled to even compete with the aircraft it was designed to match, and utterly lacks the potential to compete with newer designs. The most obvious area where this lack of vision is displayed is in the Rafale's overall layout and its notable lack of signature reduction design features. The Rafale exhibits numerous features that would simply never be incorporated into any design intended to have a reduced RCS, including its prominent intakes, a huge vertical stabilizer, canards, a non-retractable refueling probe, and numerous other probes, protrusions, and other serious RCS offenders. What does this mean? Late in the Rafale's design process its engineers realized that they had failed to anticipate the key role RCS reduction would play in future designs and scambled to find ways to reduce the Rafale's RCS. With minimal experience with RCS reduction and an airframe that was already too far along in its design to be fixed, the end result was of course disappointing. Shaping is the single most important consideration in RCS reduction and the Rafale has too many major flaws to ever be considered stealthy. RAM coatings and last minute saw-tooth edge features are at best minimally effective on an aircraft that is otherwise designed all wrong from the start. Not only that, but the Rafale's maneuverability proved to be disappointing, comparable to, but only marginally better than that already offered by earlier 4th generation designs and noticably lacking in comparison to its bigger brother, the Eurofighter. As the US/Israel found with the Lavi design, the improvement in aerodynamic performance available with such a design was insufficient to justfy the cost of creating an entire new airframe and a generational leap in performance would require a new approach. Like its airframe, the Rafale's pit and interfaces sought to close the gap with earlier 4th generation designs. Drawing its inspiration from the US, the Rafale design team sought to replicate the hands on throttle and stick interface the US had adopted by the time the Rafale entered its design phase. While the Rafale was largely successful in matching the interfaces seen in US fighters in the early 90s, its designers failed to see the direction future designs were heading. Today the Rafale's pit and human interface are at best mediocre in comparison to those found in other aircraft in production. It lacks a helmet mounted site, a serious flaw in a WVR fight, and numerous other advanced features such as the Super Hornet's fully decoupled interfaces. Most critically, the Rafale's man machine interface lacks the defining features of a 5th generation design, such as advanced sensor fusion and sophisticated multi-purpose helmet mounted displays. Probably the most famous and inexcusable design flaw in the Rafale is its unusually small and short ranged radar. While the US launched fully funded AESA programs and prepared for a generational leap in radar performance, for some reason the Rafale was designed with a PESA radar, a technological dead-end. Worse, the Rafale was simply not designed to accomodate a radar of sufficient size to operate effectively autonomously. Now, although France is working to retrofit an AESA antenna onto its PESA back-end in the Rafale, the nose of the Rafale will simply not accomodate a competitive radar. The best the Rafale can hope to do is close some of its radar performance gap with aircraft like the F-16, but will never be capable of competing with designs like the Eurofighter or Super Hornet. Finally, one of the most critcal flaws in the Rafale's design is its widely misunderstood "Spectra" self protection jammer and RWR suite. As was done with the F-16 and Super Hornet, the Rafale design team sought to incorporate an internal self protection jammer into the Rafale to improve its survivability against radar guided threats. The major failure of Spectra was that its development cycle was far far too long and France's semiconductor and computer industry was simply incapable of providing the necessary components to create a truely cutti
 
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cwDeici       5/14/2009 6:52:09 AM
It is rather pathetic of him to attempt to copulate with advanced arguments only to end up calling the posters liards... and then crowning his ill faith in all its glory by pathetically scrubbing anyone anyone at any level of sympathy for information.
 
It would be a greater contribution to this forum if everyone of his posts were autoscrubbed and replaced with 'I love the Rafale' over a background of the French flag, but I understand the importance of free speech and all.
If someone who thinks the Rafale is a wonderful machine would take the time to disabuse him of even half his idiocy that would be a stellar achievement.
 
He is entertaining, like a clown, but circuses are out of style, and this is not a circus (cloned reports on Pakistan aside, seriously they could replace all their reports on Pakistan with whatever I lift from longwarjournal or my own searches).
 
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cwDeici       5/14/2009 6:54:49 AM
And lastly (this is my third post, unless the second one got swallowed by the ether) I would comparing Bluewings with Pakistan... on one hand he's honestly delusional like some of the Pakistanis, but on the other hand he is like the government, perpetually peddling disinformation. And his fervor is almost on a religious level...
 
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cwDeici       5/14/2009 7:19:28 AM
I for one found the OP well-written and englightening while in conjecture with all major international sources on the Rafale. I can not understand even one third of what he wrote but the gist, but as I said its in conjecture so its reasonably reliable, AT LEAST.
 
He may be wrong on points however, I wouldn't know.
 
Why are the French so nationalistic? I know a lot of Americans are, but at least they're realistic about their equipment, although I suppose that's easy when you have the best in the world. Perhaps it is that France has a proud history and has just begun to lag behind the last several decades. Denial dies last.
 
There was something I was going to say, but I've forgotten it... it was a profound point.
Let me make another instead:
 
Go find someone in France with a lot of responsibility for the Rafale, and ask them about it's capabilities and what peer-nations it could compete with. The answer would be rosy, but barely within the boundaries of realism... and you will not hear 35 or likely even 18. They'll probably try to brag by saying it's better than the 16 or competive with the Eurofighter (though they'd be lying).
 
Or heck, let's just go and find a Frenchman who HATES the Rafale... see how long it takes for BW to call him a traitor. Since afterall anyone who disagrees with him fiercely to the end to the effect that the Rafale is a lemon must be lying, deluded, evil, stupid, etc. etc.
 
In fact I'm 'a go find it and post it... Someone needs to bring BW away from the sanctum of the inner abode of the keep of the fortress of the castle of the citadel of the capital of lala-land..
 
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cwDeici       5/14/2009 7:35:22 AM

Well I found something close to it on google after five seconds, enjoy:

 

 
 
and here:
 
This is old news that was cast in doubt (but probably jus to save face). Note that the F16 is still in the competition.
I suppose this must be the evil defense ministry stabbing the bird and Dassault in the back and has nothing to do with its capabilities...
 
...fails to meet minimum technical requirements...
 
 
More discussion... note how all the defenders resort to the anti-french argument.
 
 
 
I guess that's all you've really got... conspiracy theories and budget theories... there's something called 'denial' and 'confirmation bias'. I recommend you do a thorough check on these terms bluewings and take tests in accordance with the topic at hand.
 
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cwDeici       5/14/2009 7:38:25 AM
So to start off with in 'denial' you need to study for a few hundred hours about basic aviation topics. Then you'll find the errors you've made regarding basic assumptions. After that you can go on to argument and conclusion... but that's a long way off.
 
 
 
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cwDeici       5/14/2009 7:38:51 AM
So to start off with in 'denial' you need to study for a few hundred hours about basic aviation topics. Then you'll find the errors you've made regarding basic assumptions. After that you can go on to argument and conclusion... but that's a long way off.
 
 
 
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cwDeici       5/14/2009 7:42:22 AM

Confirmation bias is a cognitive bias whereby one tends to notice and look for information that confirms one's existing beliefs, whilst ignoring anything that contradicts those beliefs. It is a type of selective thinking.

"Confirmation bias is the technical name for people's desire to find information that agrees with their existing view."
Montier (2002)
 
 
It lacks basic capabilities, like radar and stealth. These are facts... to go looking for positive arguments on the Rafale's tacked on minimal stealth capability and trying to argue why its radar which has been proven to have a LOWER performance than the top radards is a perfect example of confirmation bias.
Well, I just wanted to add something about the Rafale there at the end since the disconnection cut out the links I pasted.
 
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cwDeici       5/14/2009 7:44:56 AM
Basically there are some tangents on the internet argueing that it's a good aircraft, based on the fact that it's a late 4'th generation model which gives it good performance in some limited areas. But for every such good argument and performance there are several damning flaws.
 
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cwDeici       5/14/2009 8:14:16 AM
 
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cwDeici       5/14/2009 8:22:53 AM
 
Congratulations, looks like you might have managed to sell 14.
 
And Benillim, about your first post. I disagree, if its biggest disadvantage was price and it was nearly equal to the 35 like BW says then it would sell reasonably to nations who can't get 35s.
 
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