Flying & fighting in the Dassault Rafale: Interview with a Rafale combat veteran
How you rate the Rafale M in the following categories?
Instantaneous turn/High alpha/Sustained turn
“It’s good, it’s very good. you have two types of ‘flying the aircraft’: you have the air-to air mode where you pull +9 Gs up to 11.Then you have with bombs and full tanks, when your performance is not as good: about +5g and about 200 degree roll rate less – so it’s two different aircraft. When you’re in air-to-air all this stuff is pretty good. Instantaneous turn and sustained turn pretty good. So it’s two different aircraft – when it’s in air-to-air mode it’s very good. It depends what you make of it – I’ve never had any issues.”
Sustained turn
“Sustained turn is good.”
High alpha
“Less than a Hornet, but still good. High alpha could be better, but it’s really what you make out of it — I’ve never had any issue.”
Which aircraft have you flown DACT against?
“Against F-16, against Typhoon, against Super Hornets. Against Harrier. Against Alpha Jet. Against Mirage 2000.”
…which was the most challenging? 9.52
“The F-16 is pretty cool. Typhoon is a joke, very easy to shoot. F-16 actually was a good surprise actually, I found it to be a pretty good aircraft. I think the most challenging was the F-16, it’s a pretty small jet so it’s easy to lose sight of it. So I think that was the big one. The Harrier can really turn around pretty fast, so you have to play it very close so you have to be careful with that. And with the Alpha Jet don’t go into a slow fight with it. It can manoeuvre and do some rolls at pretty low speed, some barrel rolls at pretty low speeds so you really want to pay attention. You can easily be tricked at low speed by an Alpha Jet. So you want to keep your energy high.”
Against a Super Hornet? “Honestly the issue is comparing aircraft all the time. Life isn’t that easy. Combat is unfair. It’s never going to be fair. It isn’t designed to be fair. If you get into fair close combat you’re a bad pilot. Don’t put yourself in a fair fight in real life as that’s stupid. Manoeuvre — take advantage and surprise your enemy. It’s not about one individual defeating an enemy, you’re here to get results. We are result-driven personnel. It’s not all about me. You’ve got thousands of people building a Rafale, and building and maintaining carrier. There’s thousands of people making sure I can take-off -— if I want to go fair-against-fair, I’m stupid. What I want to is make sure I win. Why do I say that?
If I’m going to fight against a Super Hornet, I’m going to find a tricky way to defeat him. Look at the Messerschmitt 262 back in World War Two, most of them got shot down on landing. An aircraft shot down still makes the count. If we have to face the US Navy, it’s going to be disproportionate in terms of numbers – it’s going bring entire tactics to another level. Now, you want me to do a fair 1-v-1 fight with a Hornet in close combat, actually I’d rather a Super Hornet; I find the C to be more manoeuvrable than the Super Hornet. As a Rafale we can take an advantage on a Hornet again. What I would be careful of is their AIM-9X and helmet visors. So I would be very careful about that.”
The Rafale and Typhoon are often compared, how confident would you be fighting against a Typhoon? And why?
“I don’t know why they’re compared so often – it’s really not the same design, ideas or philosophy. We’re a truly omnirole platform. Typhoons are great, they like to use their big engines at 40,000 feet. I can’t count how many times I’ve shot down Typhoons at 45,000 feet in the contrails. And my radar off, everything off, I was coming from 100 feet below, supersonic in the climb from below. Absolutely undetected. So I have absolutely no fear of the Typhoons. Both the tactics used by the Typhoons, the agility and the cockpit of the aircraft make it easier for us to take the advantage — basically we have better fusion of the sensors — so we can be way more aggressive in terms of tactics. It’s a great aircraft at high level, but we’re not dumb enough to try to fight Typhoons at 50,000 feet or 45,000 feet. We’re going to put them outside their comfort zone. Against devious tactics. Now if you want to rate a Typhoon with AMRAAMs against a Rafale at 50,000 ft, then, yeah, Typhoon is going to have better performances for sure. But as a Rafale pilot, I’m stupid if I take him on like that, so I’m going to move the combat a bit. I”l fake a combat at 50,000 feet and I’m going to send a guy sneakily low level to surprise the Typhoon, it’s more easy than you think!”
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