DASSAULT AVIATION COMPLETES F3-R STANDARD BEFORE ENTERING THE FORCES
Early 2014, the French Ministry of Defense, the Directorate General of Armament (DGA) and Dassault Aviation officially announce the launch of work for the development of the standard F3-R on Rafale M of the Navy and the Rafale Air (C / B) of the Air Force. Four years later, this work is about to end and the standard is about to join the French armed forces.
Indeed, according to our information,
all the work done by the companies involved in this new version of the Rafale have been completed and are validated by the end of May 2018,
as planned when the contract was signed. , notably between Dassault Aviation, THALES, SAFRAN, MBDA and the DGA.
But the end of the development and testing of the F3-R standard does not mean its direct integration into the armed forces. The modernization of the Rafale M / C / B currently being delivered and operating with the F3-4 + standard will not be done until the third quarter of this year, around September 2018, according to our information.
In addition, the Rafale EM / DM of the Egyptian Air Force and Qatari Air Force EQ / DQ who have come out of the Dassault Aviation factories will also have to be brought to this new standard. However, it would only take a few hours to integrate the F3-R into the aircraft system.
In addition, the validation of all the F3-R standard tests by manufacturers has yet to go through the experimentation stage.Indeed, in a few months, the Air Force Air Force Expertise Center (CEAM) at Mont-de-Marsan, and the Naval Aeronautics Practical Experiments and Reception Center (CEPA / 10S) at the Naval Air Station Hyères will have to define the instructions for use of these systems.
What exactly is this experimentation?
Flight crews and ground staff will be responsible for designing the user manual for all new equipment that make up this F3-R standard. When signing contracts, manufacturers are responsible only for the design of the system and their equipment, their integration on Rafale and test them in all possible flight configurations to see if they work well, or not (all altitudes, speeds, configurations, aircraft-armament separation, with failures, etc ...).
For CEAM and CEPA, the objective is therefore to test this same material in an environment representative of an operational context. Whether it is a flight aid system, an offensive or defensive armament, the two centers will conduct experiments in flight taking into account new issues. For example, they will verify that everything works normally even in the presence of jamming, in the absence of GPS, with adverse threats, in which situations such weaponry is more suitable and what are its capabilities, etc ...
It is necessary that the function that is tested does not take the hand without the pilot wanting it, but also and above all, that it is analyzed with all the types of missions, the configurations and capacities that the crews are brought to meet on the theaters of operations. The work is immense because it must take into account absolutely everything: load factors, speed, wind, altitude, aircraft mass and armament, tilt, attack profile, maneuvers, etc ...
All these tests carried out, user manuals established, always with the support of industry, the operational commissioning of the standard F3-R can then be pronounced. It should be, according to our information, in the course of 2019.
What is included in the F3-R standard?
Above all, one of the major changes with the arrival of this new standard is the METEOR long-range air-to-air missile.Announced exclusively in April 2017 on Defens'Aero and recently confirmed by Dassault Aviation, the integration was effective on April 06, 2017, when firing a fourth and last METEOR missile since the Rafale B301.
This integration campaign was conducted by the Directorate General of Armament (DGA), in cooperation with Dassault Aviation, the missile MBDA and the industrial Thales. Designed for the mission of defense and air superiority to very long range, it is equipped with a ramjet and equipped with the mode "draws and forgets".
Thanks to the performance of the RBE2 radar with active antenna equipped with the Rafale (the only European combat aircraft equipped with this type of radar), it will be able to intercept very long-range targets, in addition to the current missiles MICA IR or EM (InfraRed or ElectroMagnetic), also used for combat and self-defense but at closer distances.
With a top speed of Mach 4, the METEOR has a range of more than 100 kilometers. However, for obvious operational reasons, the actual range of the missile was never disclosed. It can be fired with a Rafale equipped with PESA or AESA radar.
This new standard will also allow the integration of the new laser designation nacelle, the TALIOS, to replace the DAMOCLES nacelles, which are suffering from a technological delay against its American competitors, including the SNIPER, which has been selected by Qatar . All the tests are now completed, after a flight test campaign which opened at the end of April 2016.
According to our information, the delivery of the first TALIOS series nacelles must occur at the beginning of the year 2019 in order to be able to start the experiments by the CEAM and the CEPA / 10S. However, even if the gondola is now integrated on Rafale, that does not mean that its development is stopped. Indeed, at the manufacturer Thales, development and testing are continuing to make the pod even more efficient.
In terms of air-to-ground capability, the pilot will be able to select the impact mode of the guided laser / GPS AASM bomb.In addition, the Rafale will also be able to fire the GBU-16 Paveway II guided laser bomb, whose guide kit is mounted on a bomb body Mk 83. Weighing 500 kg, the explosive charge is 200kg. it is now used by M2000D only. Its integration will allow the Rafale to hit hard targets with a small to medium size.
In the cockpit and in a less visible manner, the Rafale will have a new IFF mode 5 / S, the SPECTRA system will be reinforced with better electronic warfare capabilities and the NATO encrypted communication system, the L16 Link, will be improved. In addition, the radar RBE2-AESA (active antenna or Active Electronically Scanned Array) will be modernized and the Rafale has an AGCAS system (Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System) which allows to recover the aircraft in case of a loss of control.
We will also find the system SAASM (Selective availability anti-spoofing module). The latter makes it possible, among other things, to avoid
electronic jamming of the GPS data by the adversary. Finally, for the Rafale Marine only, buddy-buddy refueling will be carried out with the NARANG nacelle (New Generation Refueling Cradle). Its skills must allow it to have a higher kerosene flow than the one in service.
