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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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Rufus       5/18/2009 2:09:10 AM
"A lot is going on in the time it takes any missile to fly several tens of km. How is the IR missile being kept aware of that AFTER it leaves the firing platform and BEFORE it has acquired the target? Simply detecting something does not complete the kill chain BW. If IR missiles had that much of an advantage then they would be in much more wide spread use. A long range IR missile is still going to need the aircraft to cue it until the terminal phase with FC quality data otherwise it/s not going to know where to look when it gets there."
 
 
Exactly!  This isn't something that someone with any actual experience would even suggest as the flaws are too obvious.
 
Being aware an enemy is out there is only the first step!
 
 
 
 
 
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Lynstyne       5/18/2009 6:15:01 AM

Rufus , for reasons unknown to you and to most civilians , the USA have been "at War" with France on the economical chessboard since our refusal to endorse GW 2 .

There is no need at all to discuss such internals matters on an open forum . You trust me or not , I do not care ...


 


""Fact, the Rafale was designed by a team of engineers with only the very most basic understanding of stealth""

 

No this is not fact but again your opinion . Stop this attitude please . We have and had engineers working on stealth for a long time . We already said that funding and political will were the culprits , not the technology . Building a F-22 alike would have cost us an arm .


 


""The Mica is the product of France's limited budget and engineering resources.  Designing two missiles was simply asking too much""

 

??? Excuse me ? We could have upgraded the Magic-2 and made a more performing Matra Super-530D but we choose not  to , the Mica is a new breed and until the missile sees combat , it will be constantly looked down by amateurs . We don 't care us French , in fact we do like this attitude , the wake-up call be will be even harsher for the attacker .


 


""The french fanboys would like to pretend that the Mica has somehow managed to achieve parity with the AMRAAM despite the vast disparity in resources dedicated to the two, but that is simply not the case.""

 

Not the case ? PROVE IT . (I 'm already waiting for some more opinions presented as facts)

 


""The Mica's overall level of development is similar to that of the initial 'C' model AMRAAMs.""

 

Wrong . Mica 's EM seeker is two generation ahead of the initial "C" model and its ECCMs are probably better .


Then , the "C" doesn 't have the initial velocity and the end game , far from it . 

Then , where is the IR AMRAAM or the IR equivalent of Meteor ???


If you want an enemy fighter to take you seriously in BVR , get a proper long range IR missile .

Seriously Gentlemen , why do you think that the Rafale is believed to be a very serious threat BVR to every foreign Air Force ? Sure , the aircraft has its good points but the IR Mica is a threat very hard to counter .


 


""At lower speeds and low altitude the advantage goes to the Super Hornet and at higher altitudes the advantages goes to the F-15 or Eurofighter""

 

Again , half of this is wrong , the other half is opinion . The Rafale beats the SH at any altitude or speed .

At high speed and high altitude Rafale has the first look/lock on the Eagle (RCS) and its flight characteristics allow the jet to take evasive mesures an Eagle can only dream of . Versus the Typhoon , the Italians Eurofighter Drivers and French Rafale (F1) drivers had a go at each other over the Med Sea and the result seems to be a draw .


Many posters around on many different sites believe that the Typhoon is superior to the Rafale in A2A .

To this day , the only encounter seems to be a draw .


 

The French Drivers said they had nothing to envy to the Typhoon and they kept the score straight .

To most people in the know , the first encounter means nothing .


Since the Rafale has no problem to deal with F-teen generation aircrafts in the air , the Typhoon is as good (some say better) .

The most talked thing is the supposed superiority of the Typhoon over the Rafale because of a more or
 
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french stratege       5/18/2009 9:04:20 AM
The Mica is slightly larger than its competitors, which does impact its agility, but it is not far larger, especially when you consider its relatively heavy casing, control surfaces and warhead.  An 80km shot with a Mica IR is pure fantasy.  France does not have magic pixie dust that allows its missiles to fly twice as far with only a few extra pounds of propellant.
I tried to show you in the first page of this thread that Pentagon rank France very high for technologies but you refused to read and acknowledge.
On mica
Drag is proportional to frontal surface and if you compare two BVR missiles you have to take in account that
AMRAAM is 152 kg and diminishing its diameter accordingly from 178 mm to 160 would lead to a 124 kg missile on first order on drag considerations.
Moreover Mica 12 kg warhead is lighter than AMRAAM (18 kg for AMRAAM C, 23 for B/A) so lead to further weight economy.
Moreover for the autodirector it is lighter than AMRAAM for RF version and also IR
Indeed it is more miniaturized than AMRAAM.
MICA was introduced in 1996 instead of 1991 and benefit of a better technology than initial AMRAAM.
 
As I said but you refuse ot read as you are very narrow minded, MICA was initially the Northrop/Motorola/Matra competitor of AMRAAM but said too risky because relying on too advanced technologies at this time
French went alone and even improved technology thank to a British technological breakthrought on electronic tube BTW.
Hyperfrequency electronic of MICA is much lighter than the AMRAAM TWT and its highvoltage supply.
This is well and publicly documented.
 
Now for the MICA IR it has roughly the same range than the RF version so about 80 km and can auto lock after the inertial guidance phase
Have you considered that if you find yourself repeating something 1000 times to people who actually know what they are talking about YOU are the one who doesn't understand what is going on?  This certainly seems to be the case.
It seems that I'm the only one who know what he is speaking about on SP considering french capabilities relatively to USA.
I provided links and official ones unless amateur like you.
As I says 1000 apes would not write the Encyclopedia, but few smarts men can.
So obvious ____ forces have bought the Mica IR.  (Fill in the blank bluewings!)  Most top tier airforces already have an IR missile that gives them 90% of the range of  a Mica IR, but with better performance at short range.  That is why there is so little demand for the Mica IR.
False.Mica IT have more than double the range of any advanced AIM9X or Python 5
MICA IR is not cleared for export as too sensitive.
(it could be probably for some NATO countries but they would have to buy the Rafale or M2000-5)
 
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french stratege       5/18/2009 9:11:30 AM
USA have their magic silver bullet and it is the F22.
Best fighter platform in world and we recognize it
 
Now Rafale F3 PLUS Mica IR is the second one (with PESA only and wull be better with AESA) and to F22 only, and we would be pleased if you recognize it because it is the true and I think to be insulted as a french engineer when you deny us this achievment.
We do not currently produce a lot of weapons within a 2% GDP defense budget, but we succeeded well in maintaining our technological capabilities.
 
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Herald12345    falsehoods.   5/18/2009 9:31:22 AM

I don 't have time to answer everybody , sorry in advance .

French posters on SP spend 95% of their time correcting the various and numerous mistake made by posters who do not know the Rafale and its armory .

Incompetent posters. (Not restricted to nationality, we have plenty of American BSers on the board just like this poster)  spend  most of their tome posting this type  of CRAP. 92% huh?

Sometimes the mistakes are so basic that it forces us to repeat 1000 times the same thing . Exemple : I read that some posters are making a difference in between the EM Mica and the IR Mica . Beside the seeker , there is none . In fact , you unscrew the EM head and you screw an IR head , it is as simple as that : it is the same missile with the same max range of about 80km . As you know , ASRAAM , AIM-9s , Python , Archer , etc , can 't kill a target at more than 30km and in the best case scenario .

The GCU sodftware and hardware is different in each missile because there are different intercept and  pursuit logics depending on the seeker configuration, poster. That mistake, alone, shows that you don't know what you discuss. 
 

So why a long range IR missile should be more dangerous than an EM missile ? I shouln 't have to answer that as the reasons are obvious !

Poster does have to answer because he needs to prove competence.

To start with , some posters should now that when you 're equipped with active BVR missiles (fire and forget) you do not need to "paint" the adverse fighter with your radar , a quick 'pass' is more than enough to get a missile off the rail . If the opposition is equipped with decent RWR , the thing will go "bleep" for a split second , then nothing after just silence . As a pilot , this is worrying but not too much . Sure , somebody has probably seen you but did not lock you . Unfortunatly for you , a missile is already coming .
 
That is so stupid a statement that it is riduculous. Missiles at BVR are corrected to reduce bearing offset error as the missile flys out. The reason is simple.The quickest way to evade a missile kaunched at you is to change vector immediately at as 90 degree an angle to its approach bearing as  you can so that it has to turn to meet. Especially with a crap missile like MICA this bleeds speed through drag, so that the potential energy advantage that the miissile needs (3x jerk) to correct for aircraft final dodge falls rapidly to 1.5x  and this a guaranteed miss. This comes back to corrected point and what the missile sees when the seeker finally snaps on as well. With its boitched RH seeker, the MICA needs to keep the target within its forward  70 degree asrc. If the target evades on a radian of asearch cone base outside that FoV the result is that the missile sees nothing when it arrives. This is true in the MICA case because the RAFALE to MICA update fails and there is no corrective telemetry action to keerp the missile nose POINTED at the changing updated drop window in its rather shallow and narrow drop basket.   The RH seeker on a MICA cannot see beyond 7000 meters. So how will the nissile know where to go for the first 20,000 meters of fly-out in the lob if the RAFALE doesn't TRACK and target position update as the Sukhoi evades?
 
Obviously , Pilots nowadays know that a simple "radar pass" is enough to fire an active BVR missile in anger , so the best they have to do is to break straight away just in case . Some other Pilots will wait and see if they get seen again (RWR going "bleep" again) or even wait for the RWR to go berserk because it did spot a fast closing EM missile going "live" . Here time is short , the Pilot should have moved earlier to try not to be in the missile seeker cone when it goes live .

Pilots actually hang on to their ordnance till the other fellow commits too early before they launch.. Since there os no static tau zero solution in an air battle or ANY battle the need to update position in real time is continuous. That is just physics.

Now , imagine that the BVR missile is an IR missile . You did get a "bleep" from your RWR then nothing . 1.54 minute later , you and your aircraft simply disapear from the radars , you 're gone . You did not even see the thing who killed you .

Bull. Even the Rafale carries an IR detect
 
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Herald12345    falsehoods. (GAGH: TYPOS!)   5/18/2009 9:45:04 AM




I don 't have time to answer everybody , sorry in advance .



French posters on SP spend 95% of their time correcting the various and numerous mistake made by posters who do not know the Rafale and its armory .



Incompetent posters. (Not restricted to nationality, we have plenty of American BSers on the board just like this poster)  spend  most of their tome posting this type  of CRAP. 92% huh?




Sometimes the mistakes are so basic that it forces us to repeat 1000 times the same thing . Example : I read that some posters are making a difference in between the EM Mica and the IR Mica . Beside the seeker , there is none . In fact , you unscrew the EM head and you screw an IR head , it is as simple as that : it is the same missile with the same max range of about 80km . As you know , ASRAAM , AIM-9s , Python , Archer , etc , can 't kill a target at more than 30km and in the best case scenario .




The GCU sodftware and hardware is different in each missile because there are different intercept and  pursuit logics depending on the seeker configuration, poster. That mistake, alone, shows that you don't know what you discuss. 

 



So why a long range IR missile should be more dangerous than an EM missile ? I shouln 't have to answer that as the reasons are obvious !



Poster does have to answer because he needs to prove competence.




To start with , some posters should now that when you 're equipped with active BVR missiles (fire and forget) you do not need to "paint" the adverse fighter with your radar , a quick 'pass' is more than enough to get a missile off the rail . If the opposition is equipped with decent RWR , the thing will go "bleep" for a split second , then nothing after just silence . As a pilot , this is worrying but not too much . Sure , somebody has probably seen you but did not lock you . Unfortunatly for you , a missile is already coming .

 

That is so stupid a statement that it is riduculous. Missiles at BVR are corrected to reduce bearing offset error as the missile flys out. The reason is simple.The quickest way to evade a missile launched at you is to change vector immediately at as 90 degree an angle to its approach bearing as  you can so that it has to turn to meet to you. Especially with a crap missile like MICA this bleeds speed through drag (barndoor effect), so that the potential energy advantage that the missile needs (3x jerk) to correct for aircraft final dodge falls rapidly to 1.5x; and this a guaranteed miss. This comes back to corrected point toward target, and what the missile sees when the seeker finally snaps on as well. With its botched RH seeker, the MICA needs to keep the target within its forward  70 degree arc FoV. If the target evades on a radian of the search cone base outside that FoV: the result is that the missile sees nothing when it arrives. This is true in the MICA case because the RAFALE to MICA update fail,s and there is no corrective telemetry action to keep the missile nose POINTED at the changing updated drop window in its rather shallow and narrow drop basket where the enemy is excpected to arrive.   The RH seeker on a MICA cannot see beyond 7000 meters. So how will the missile know where to go for the first 20,000 meters of fly-out in the lob if the RAFALE doesn't TRACK and target position update, as the Sukhoi evades?

Obviously , Pilots nowadays know that a simple "radar pass" is enough to fire an active BVR missile in anger , so the best they have to do is to break straight away just in case . Some other Pilots will wait and see if they get seen again (RWR going "bleep" again) or even wait for the RWR to go berserk because it did spot a fast closing EM missile going "live" . Here time is short , the Pilot should have moved earlier to try not to be in the missile seeker cone when it goes live .

Pilots actually hang on to their ordnance till the other fellow commits too early before they launch.. Since there os no static tau zero solution in an air battle or ANY battle the need to update position in real time is continuous. That is just physics.


 
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french stratege       5/18/2009 9:46:36 AM
Your analysis of french MICA is pure fantasy Herald.
You have no access to its performance data.
What is funny is that MICA derivated to a common US french design more advanced than AMRAAM.
USA withdrawn and France continued alone to develop it.
 
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Herald12345       5/18/2009 10:05:51 AM

Your analysis of french MICA is pure fantasy Herald.

You have no access to its performance data.

What is funny is that MICA derivated to a common US french design more advanced than AMRAAM.

USA withdrawn and France continued alone to develop it.

That last statement is a lie. You were never part of the NATO joint missile development agreement.
 
As to the rest, you take that crap missile and use the well known French limitations in, servo motors, and electronics and you  apply aerodynamic principles plus the best pyro chemistry possible to predict missile performance.
 
The only unknown to me is fuel fraction. 
 
At 75% fuel fraction the missile has an MER same altitude against dumb target head on (straight and level) at 7000 meters of about 35000-50,000  meters using a lob profile.
 
Want to really push it? The maximum slant fired from a surface launcher is 18000 meters. In the air at 7000 meters altitude with MACH 1 shove first step you can go about 4x that distance; or 72,000 meters with ANY missile so restricted in surface launch admitted data, based on that missile cylinder L/W ratio, lift strake configuration and tail fins seen.
 
Now do you really want to pursue this discussion?
 
 

 
 
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DarthAmerica    MICA IR is not a DEW   5/18/2009 10:48:28 AM

"A lot is going on in the time it takes any missile to fly several tens of km. How is the IR missile being kept aware of that AFTER it leaves the firing platform and BEFORE it has acquired the target? Simply detecting something does not complete the kill chain BW. If IR missiles had that much of an advantage then they would be in much more wide spread use. A long range IR missile is still going to need the aircraft to cue it until the terminal phase with FC quality data otherwise it/s not going to know where to look when it gets there."

 
Exactly!  This isn't something that someone with any actual experience would even suggest as the flaws are too obvious.

Being aware an enemy is out there is only the first step!


 It's almost as if some here think the MICA IR is a DEW, point-shoot-bang! It doesn't work that way. If they look at the MICA IR performance parameters, especially the seeker, then they know it has to get the same mid course updates in order to maximize it's kinematic advantage for the actual intercept. Otherwise its a very short ranged BVR weapon in the AIM-9 category in direct pursuit. I've actually designed an IR sensor before from scratch. A consistent problem was the determination of range and discrimination at range. I'm sure the French Military establishment is far in advance of a civil project however there are some fundamental PHYSICS involved and just a look at the MICA IR aeroshell, seeker and performance parameters I can tell it cannot be blindly fired at BVR ranges and hope to hit a fast moving target. It's going to need updates in the mid course and external cuing to know where to look. That's going to involve RF. Now that doesn't mean that they can't use clever tactics to maintain subtlety through the engagement. Certainly. Just speculating, maybe the firing platform is only feeding updates to the missile using RF data from a third party who is tracking the threat at range. SOmething like that. Otherwise, the firing platform is going to have to provide precise enough location data on the target so that MICA IR arrives at the right place and time. It's possible at that point that an opponent may be surprised because there will not be RWR data on an active missile seeker to warn of terminal approach. In this stage seconds are precious and this is a good capability. However, it's important to be objective and consider the weapons limits. Remember, if it were the end all be all and worked as some seem to think, why would the French waste money on an RF version?


-DA 

 

 

 

 
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Bluewings12       5/18/2009 11:22:56 AM
Rufus , please would you stop your non-senses and do your homework before to come to me with silly comments , thank you .
You might not like me or what I post but what I say can always be verified . So , let me enlight you .
You said :
""The Rafale is at no better than parity with the various other Western 4th generation designs and is particularly handicapped by its poor radar and short ranged BVR missile""
 
The French Pilots demonstrated that the Rafale has the upper hand against various types of 4th generation aircrafts .
The PESA RBE2 is certainly not a "poor" radar as you call it . It plays in the same league than latest Vipers , SH , Typhoon , F-15,  etc ... Its 150km range has never be a problem for any Pilot , at the contrary they all praise it .
Stop your fanboy attitude and read a bit more about French Rafales deployements and Operations .
Mica is not short ranged , the official MBDA Mica webpage give a range of <500m to >80km for both version (EM and IR)
 
""The Rafale has nothing like the advanced sensor fusion and networking capabilities of 5th generation types""
 
??? Rafale sensor fusion is on the par with F-22, then its networking capabilities are doing an excellent job , thank you . I think the F-35 's highly sophisticated EW system is no more advanced than the Rafale 's , in fact I tend to rate them equally . Both aircrafts have an excellent awareness and boost excellent ECM and ECCM systems .
 
""Its self protection jammer is at the better end of the group, but is not up to the level of those available on the F-16, Super Hornet, or Eurofighter.""
 
Wrong on all accounts . Latest Blk-52s , SHs and Typhoons have nothing remotly comparable to Spectra F3 . Can you show me where the extremely precise active ECM AESA antennas are on the F-teens and Typhoon ? 
 
""The Super Hornet is already well beyond the Rafale both in its stealthiness and its self protection jammer. ""
 
lol ! Are you sure that you 're not confusing the Mirage IIIE with the Rafale F3 ?
 
""The obsolete antennas and computers that make up the bulk of Spectra are simply not up to the standards of those in the Super Hornet""
 
lol ! (again)
 
""the Rafale still lacks a towed decoy""
 
We don 't want any , there is no need for and towed decoys are a burden and can take up to two pylons . Dassault and Thalès went a different way .
 
""You clearly need to do some reading before trying to participate in these discussions.  It is good that you have an interest in aircraft, but when you try to speak above your knowledge level you get yourself into trouble.""
 
Coming from someone like you , it is laughable . The fact is that you know Rafale program very little so you try to compare it in a totally wrong manner with other aircrafts . As I already told you , do your homework before posting non sense .
 
DA :
""A lot is going on in the time it takes any missile to fly several tens of km. How is the IR missile being kept aware of that AFTER it leaves the firing platform and BEFORE it has acquired the target?""
 
A decent BVR missile will cover the first 60km in about 90 seconds , it is a relatively short time . I also explained that unless the adverse fighter is aware of being shot at , it will not change course because flight plans have to be respected , aircrafts do not fly in zig-zag when there is no detected threat around . That means that the BVR missile will find its target because the target will be exactly
 
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