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Subject: 6*F-22 vs 6*Typhoon vs 6*Rafale in the UAE?!
giblets    11/16/2009 4:48:58 AM
According to both Flight Global, and Defence News, other than attending the Dubai airshow, the USAF, RAF, and FAF each sent 6 of their finest fighter aircraft to the desert Kingdom to take part in multinational exercises. Other than adding much fuel to the fire for forum members here! It raises many questions (such as why the USAF was unable to send 1 F-22 to Paris, and can now send 6 to the UAE, despite no drop in operational tempo). And will the F22 and Typhoon not be in the air at the same time again?
 
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StobieWan       12/22/2009 7:03:24 AM
Another thing that bothers me on the Rafale r teh best posts - the constant references to MICA and a passive engagement - the Typhoon is equipped with a IRST, carries AIM-132, which can lock on after launch, take mid course updates and even do an over the shoulder attack, cued by HMS - how is this less unique than the Rafale + MICA? Certainly the guns tracking shots of the Tiffie may well have gone a bit differently if that capability were permitted by exercise constraints.

I like the Rafale, it's a good looking aircraft and I'm really pleased that our allies (and the French were there in GW1 as well as Afghanistan) have a capable, modern swing role fighter. Trouble is, there's a few really ardent fan boys with fake credentials who make unsupportable claims about capabilities that plain don't hold water. 

There's not a lot of Rafale bashing per se (Hamilcar/Herald being the exception in that he hates all things French but that can't be helped) - but there is  a weariness about the Rafale camp.

To summarise:

The Rafale works, is a decent platform which is starved for development funds as it's a single nation platform thus far - we (the British) went through all of this with the Lightning decades back and it's an ugly chicken/egg situation - get the export orders and your unit cost and integration costs are spread more thinly, but getting the orders can be hard work as every time a new customer comes up to look at the hardware, adding any new weapon or sensor will cost a disproportionate amount.

I'm still a bit gutted that we couldn't get the EAP into production as a British fighter but now recognise that without a multinational effort, we'd have been kidding ourselves, even if the final product might have arrived more quickly.

Best of luck to Dassault in the new year to get an export order or two but please, please, no more magic pixie dust posts from the Rafale zealots.

Ian


 
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MK       12/22/2009 7:49:27 AM
@Hellfire,
the MICA IRs offboresight capability is +/-60°.
 
@Stobiewan,
the ASRAAM doesn't pose the range of the MICA IR and as of now it lacks a datalink for McG either. MICA IR can be fired behind the aircraft as well, as demonstrated a while ago using offboard target data from another Rafale received by MIDS.
 
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benellim4       12/22/2009 9:56:23 AM


There's not a lot of Rafale bashing per se (Hamilcar/Herald being the exception in that he hates all things French but that can't be helped) - but there is  a weariness about the Rafale camp.


Ian, I think you should read Herald's posts more closely. He doesn't hate everything French. He has praised French SLBMs and French submarines. If I recall correctly, he even praised the overall design of the Rafale. It's French missiles, radars and EW systems he is suspect of. 
 
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Hellfire       12/22/2009 10:44:26 AM
@MK,

The other missiles have LOAL capability. The ASRAAM has full sphere capability.

At close range chances are good that your opponent will be on AB and that should increase significantly the detection range. Given the very sophisticated  seekers of those missiles they can probably get a lock at their maximum range. 

If the ASRAAM or IRIS-T are launched in LOAL mode they will extrapolate the coordinates of the targets for ONLY A FEW SECONDS.  It's not like an AMRAAM which wouldn't have any update for like 1 minute.

For shots of up to 20-25km maximum a datalink is not of paramount importance, although they will probably all get a DL sooner or later. The 9X block 2 will have a DL. The IRIS-T SL will have a DL so it can be retrofitted on the a/a variant it it's worth it. The ASRAAM may well get a DL one day.

To summarize, the MICA-IR gives an advantage in the ~25-40km range, that's it. That advantage is largely compensated by worse WVR capabilities and worse kinematics for the MICA-EM.

The Mica length was originaly limited by the mirage 2000. This picture shows that clearly:

They thought about it and they realized that making a IR variant of it would be cost effective instead of making a new missile to replace the Magic. And it certainly made sense. But without the original restriction on the size of the missile, they would probably have chosen a mix of longer range BVR missiles and short range WVR missiles, like everyone else. And BTW they never talk about an IR variant of the meteor.

In other words the MICA was a special case where it was worth it to have 2 versions of 1 missile.



 
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StobieWan       12/22/2009 10:50:14 AM



I was just teasing :) I could more accurately have said "all things Thales" I think. My main point stands - there's no great antipathy towards the Rafale - the main struggle is the need to repeatedly refute things which have come and gone with the regularity of the seasons (active stealth being the most recent example)

Ian







Ian, I think you should read Herald's posts more closely. He doesn't hate everything French. He has praised French SLBMs and French submarines. If I recall correctly, he even praised the overall design of the Rafale. It's French missiles, radars and EW systems he is suspect of. 


 
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benellim4       12/22/2009 11:13:00 AM
He's said some nasty things about LockMart as well as Thales.http://www.strategypage.com/Images/emwink.gif" alt="" />
 
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Reactive       12/22/2009 1:56:26 PM

Jamming yes - on the frequency last transmitted, certainly. Cancellation, no. Better minds than I have explained this to both yourself and BW, but once again - an LPI radar skips frequencies rapidly in a pseudo random sequence, across a wide bandwidth. To jam an LPI radar isn't impossible but it's certainly very hard for a target platform to do as it'd have to cover a large bandwidth with a lot of power.



Active stealth or cancellation on the other hand, simply cannot work against an LPI radar  - you'd have to measure the signal, calculate your own signal return based on what angle the transmitter was, what aspect you were showing the target and what overall signal return you were likely to be generating. Calculating all of that, you'd then have to send the information back in time as the transmitting radar will have shifted frequencies by the time you'd have done all that. There's nothing miraculous about an LPI radar and there's nothing miraculous about SPECTRA - it's just easier for an LPI equipped fighter to generate enough power on the right wavelengths to track the target than it is for a small fighter with limited jamming power to block off a wide enough chunk of the spectrum to prevent a solid lock being obtained. 




Add to which, the AIM-120's most reliable backup mode is home on jam...




Active stealth/signal cancellation/Romulan cloaking/Magic pixie dust just isn't physically possible reliably. Certainly the SPECTRA system doesn't mount enough antennae and isn't backed by enough power to reliably counter the full range of an inquisitive LPI radar in a manner which could be considered silent. It can jam and interfere with the opposition but it'll be noticeable and can draw more attention to itself than the LO equivalent on the F35 for instance.

And that's why shaping is important - that's why panel fits are important, that's why unnecessary protrusions are important, because the scatter they cause is impossible to CALCULATE let alone mitigate in real time. I think you just need to visualise for a second how numerically-challenging such a feat would be, even if you have antannae mounted all over the airframe and supplied them with a lot of power, you would need to know the PRECISE scattering characteristics of every single protrusion, panel, bolt, and then do the same for all other surfaces, flaps, missiles, protrusions, hardpoints on the airframe. This is why the idea that "protrusions/panel fit" isn't massively crucial because of active cancellation is particularly fallacious - it is PRECISELY these things that make the idea impossible even if LPI radars didnt. Even if the protrusion/feature was RAM coated (and it isn't), it would still need to be accounted for in any active management.
 
There's simply too many surfaces that generate forward scatter on the rafale or any other 4+ gen plane to mitigate by any fictional or non fictional cancellation method. You would need as many antennae as you had "features" each of which generate a return.
 
So we're back to square one.
 
Weak Engines
Low service ceiling for air-superiority
Short-Medium Range Missiles
Inferior Radar 
Uncertain Future
 
Which is why it's hard to sell them - if they were half as good as BW and FS pretended they would be on every nation's wish list and the problem would be manufacturing enough, not, as it is today, manufacturing barely any.


 













 
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Lynstyne       12/22/2009 2:58:44 PM
 
 
have been generally nosing around the net.
 
I will refrain from posting umpteen links that state the typhoon has the smallest frontal aspect RCS of anything short of the F22, or that its the most advanced Multi role aircraft out there.
 
Or the umpteen links citing similar for the Shornet.
 
I recognise Sales blurb, pity others dont. 
 
Any way more on topic I found an article stating the refuel probe is removable, now from the tone of the article i took this to mean mission removable not just can be taken off.
 
Can any one elabrate further on this - it does make sense to only fly without the thing fitted but i cant recall seeing a picture of the aircraft without it.   (but this may be just for simplicity)
 
Incidently whats the chances that the Rafales Uber low RCS is for an aircraft SANS probe
 
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MK       12/22/2009 3:16:38 PM
@MK,
The other missiles have LOAL capability. The ASRAAM has full sphere capability.

MICA IR has LOAL as well, nothing special so far. And the MICA IR can be launched well beyond the +/-60° envelope.
 
To summarize, the MICA-IR gives an advantage in the ~25-40km range, that's it. That advantage is largely compensated by worse WVR capabilities and worse kinematics for the MICA-EM.

Who says that the MICA IR doesn't fare well close in? The missile provides the required LOAL/HOBS capabilities, TVC enabled agility and poses a robust BVR capability if required. The seeker can even be used as a mini IRST.
 
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gf0012-aust       12/22/2009 4:52:44 PM
The seeker can even be used as a mini IRST.

thats not a unique capability though.  pilots have used their bussed/railed weapons as complimentary seekers for decades.  Heater seekers have been used not only for defacto or complimentary IRST but also as complmentary defacto GMTI
 
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