Know Your 'Rafale'

[Godless-Kafir]

Rack up:

India = 200-300
Brasil = 100-120
ME = 120
Malaysia = 24
Suisse = 18

Its good times... lets see what future opportunities exist as F-35 continues bungling and other Eurocandards end up cancelled.

Thanks to India putting the seal of approval for BRIC and NAM nations.

 

[bhramos]

Dassault-India's jet deal to have 'serious implications' for UK: UK trade union - The Economic Times

 

[bhramos]

 

[sayareakd]

India 200 MMRCA + 40 nuclear strike and 60 Navy,

Armand we have to please others unless you are giving us 3-4 free nuclear submarines or at least nuclear power scorpene submarines with TOT. Remember Rafale plant would have closed after French order, it is because of us that production line would be working and other will buy your plane.

 

[arundo]

The Defence Evaluation and Research Agency once made a study about aircraft effectiveness against SU-35 eq. enemies. In this study the Rafale was rated below the F-15E, which was below the EF.

I agree (except the above mentioned).

You mean this: Datei:BVR combat rating against Upgraded Su-27 Flanker (Core).PNG – Wikipedia

I guess you know that DERA was a part of UK MoD and dissolved in 2001. Therefore the study is quite old (I think it was even done in the 90's). It was based on computer simulation, not on real life evaluation and used data from aircraft in a very early stage of development. The study was only done on BvR. In my opinion it has no significance today.

 

[nitesh]

Well, Gripen NG demonstrator (one-seater) was allegdly tested in India and Brazil... what does Indian sources say about this?
I am not saying that the Rafale is bad in A2A, but it is for sure not significantly better than the other contenders (e.g. the EF has better avionics and more A2A weapons integrated), which can not be said about the A2G role. As the F-5 was never significantly better in A2A than other aircraft of the same era, nothing speaks against replacing the F-5 with Gripens (both being "lighter" fighters than Rafale/EF).

This was the news I had, Gripen NG didn't came for the trials: Here

I didn't find any news following that it actually came for trials, correct me if I am wrong here. But overall the point remains that it is not ready in it's final configuration.

My point regarding Rafale was that their was a deliberate campaign that it doesn't fair well in A2A combat as compared to others, this report paints a different picture all together.

 

[Armand2REP]

Gripen NG demo never came to India. Evaluators had to go to Sweden.

Rafale is superior in A2A due to it's sensor fusion, high acquisition tracking capabilities and off-boresight missiles. HMD was not presented to the Suisse evaluation but TopSight-E is selected for India.

 

[p2prada]

Actually the green bars denote early flight evaluation in 2008 - then the evalutation was stopped for some time and the whole stuff was debatted again. After some time another evaluation was done a second time (red bars). At both times the Gripen wasn't tested in NG configuration, whereas the configuration and tests of EF and Rafale also remain unclear. I'm pretty sure that Tranche 1 EF (as operated by Austria) are less capable than late-tranch Rafale in nearly every aspect (and that early tranche Rafales are inferior in nearly every aspect too late tranche EF). What I am not sure is that late EF should be inferior to late Rafale or that late Gripen are inferior in most aspects than late EF/Rafale.. but the late Gripen was not tested.

Wow. No wonder there is so much criticism of the deal. It looks like Gripen NG would most definitely cater to Swiss air force's requirements once it is fully developed.

France didn't have up-to-date ground-attack crafts and therefore wanted an omnirole fighter. The other countries all had some pretty new ground-attack planes (in most countries the Tornado) and therefore wanted a proper air-superiority fighter, with ground-attack and recce missions being only a secondary feature.

We are facing the same dilemma. The MRCA deal is the only way for IAF to get their hands on a strike fighter like the Rafale. If the deal goes to EF then we will be an air superiority air force with ancient strike fighters like Jaguars, right up to 2030.

IAF may end up being forced to buy Su-34s, which does not make much sense to us IMO.

Currently GoI does not want to get into a single vendor contract unless there is absolutely no choice at all. IAF wants the Airbus refueler, but the presence of the IL-76 is forcing IAF to release a tender. I guess the current tender will be heavily biased towards Airbus. So, we may end up seeing a strike fighter tender, which may not make sense in the long run. With a Rafale victory the Navy will have it easier to deal with Dassault too and they have vocally voiced their support to fielding Rafales many times, quite like the IAF.

The Dutch values might include a lot of different tasks where the Rafale can score and the EF can't ATM, like air-to-ground missions, recce etc. The F-35 would also be then top in strike missions, because of the ability to ignore enemy SAMs in most scenarios. The Defence Evaluation and Research Agency once made a study about aircraft effectiveness against SU-35 eq. enemies. In this study the Rafale was rated below the F-15E, which was below the EF.

I would definitely agree that Rafale would be inferior to the EF in A2A. In Singapore, 1 Rafale or EF or F-15E went up against 3 F-16s Block 52s. The Rafale and F-15 failed to kill all 3 while only EF managed to make all 3 kills in both BVR and WVR within the same mission. EF was the only aircraft which managed supersonic speeds within their own air space, which is mighty small.

However the final round saw only F-15E and Rafale. The EF, despite it's superior air to air capabilities, was rejected.

What's funny is PAF and PLAAF are currently working towards a Block 52 equivalent aircraft today while the aircraft we are buying will surpass even the currently dominating Rafale/EF version.

 

[Armand2REP]

What exercise of Singapore are you talking about?

 

[p2prada]

Well, Gripen NG demonstrator (one-seater) was allegdly tested in India and Brazil... what does Indian sources say about this?
I am not saying that the Rafale is bad in A2A, but it is for sure not significantly better than the other contenders (e.g. the EF has better avionics and more A2A weapons integrated), which can not be said about the A2G role. As the F-5 was never significantly better in A2A than other aircraft of the same era, nothing speaks against replacing the F-5 with Gripens (both being "lighter" fighters than Rafale/EF).

According to IAF pilots, the Gripen D which was tested in India, is good enough to conform to the MRCA requirements. Rafale and EF surpassed most of the requirements while all other contenders failed at many test points, even crucial ones like taking off from Leh airbase.

After one year of testing, Gripen Demo was released for IAF tests and this aircraft took off from Leh quite comfortably. The Demo repeated all the tests D version had gone through and did even better.

Reports suggest no aircraft managed to pass all 643 test points.

Of course, we don't know the rankings.

 

[p2prada]

Aircraft generations are sometimes a joke. Early generations were pretty clear, as they were defined after these aircraft were already existing. But F-22 and F-35 were labelled to be 5th generation before they were finished. What if no other stealth fighter will be made in the next decade and new technology then available makes them a "6th generation fighter"... then F-22 and F-35 would be the only 5th generation aircrafts ever made.

Generation categorization is different for different countries. Russia terms MKI as 4+, US would term the MKI as only 4. The Chinese would call MKI 3rd gen. Russia called the Su-35 4+, but without AESA the Su-35 is 4th for US and 3rd for China. The Super MKI will be a 4++ in Russia, 4.5 in US and 3.5 in China.

If India followed the same rules as China, then AMCA would be our 3rd generation fighter as compared to 5th in the US.

So, if Russia skips the American 5th generation, then what is 6th gen for US would be termed 5th gen in Russia. But I guess politics will prevail and all countries will give an equivalent generation designation except for China. They will forever remain a generation behind.

 

[p2prada]

What exercise of Singapore are you talking about?

In 2005, when Singapore chose the F-15E in a tender with 4 other aircraft.

Edit: In every tender that Rafale and EF were pitted against each other, Rafale came out on top. South Korea, Singapore, Netherlands and Switzerland. India's results are still classified, but we know Rafale is either first or second.

I guess this has a lot to do with Rafale's strike capabilities that it is able to compete with the upgraded F-15E. Sadly, the decision to delay EF's strike role is turning out to be severely detrimental to it's prospects for a foreign sale.

After the first loss in South Korea, Dassault announced it would never participate in another tender in the country. It was a political decision. FYI, Su-35 received the lowest score in Korea. While Dassault received "Excellent" for all roles. F-15 received Excellent for some and "Good" for some others, same as EF. But Su-35 received "Ordinary" for all 5 parameters.

But after so many losses, despite being on top every time, Dassault learnt the politics of the game and utilized it to the fullest extent in India.

 

[anoop_mig25]

What's funny is PAF and PLAAF are currently working towards a Block 52 equivalent aircraft today while the aircraft we are buying will surpass even the currently dominating Rafale/EF version.

which bird they are developing i mean they must have designated something atleast china must have . and what is chinese way of Generation categorization.do think they are better then american when they categorized f-22/jsf as 3 gen??

 

[Godless-Kafir]

Gripen NG demo never came to India. Evaluators had to go to Sweden.

Rafale is superior in A2A due to it's sensor fusion, high acquisition tracking capabilities and off-boresight missiles. HMD was not presented to the Suisse evaluation but TopSight-E is selected for India.

It was present in Aero India and went to Leh airport for cold start and high altitude tests as well!

 

[p2prada]

which bird they are developing i mean they must have designated something atleast china must have . and what is chinese way of Generation categorization.do think they are better then american when they categorized f-22/jsf as 3 gen??

The Chinese never made the first generation fighter, so their first generation is equivalent to the American second generation. What we call 5th gen the Chinese call 4th gen. They categorize F-22 and F-35 as 4th gen, the same as their J-20 and our PAKFA.

They call J-20 as 4th gen. JF-17 and J-10 are 3rd gen.

There is nothing wrong with this. It's only an internal designation which became famous in the media.

The same way, tanks like Abrams and T-90 are third generation. We have such generation designation for ships and submarines too. Here also the Chinese make their own generation classifications.

 

[Armand2REP]

Gripen NG demo never was at Leh or any other Indian trial. Gripen D was used.

 

[Godless-Kafir]

Gripen NG demo never was at Leh or any other Indian trial. Gripen D was used.

GripenIN is the GripenNG. It was offered as IN which stands for India.

 

[Neil]

A dogfight over Delhi

Sir Stephen Dalton, the UK's chief of air staff, hurtled down the runway behind the controls of a Russian-designed Sukhoi-30 at the Kalaikunda air base in West Bengal. The deafening roar of the engines of the mainstay of the Indian Air Force swept over a small band of observers gathered just over a year ago in the rising tropical heat.

Minutes later, a Royal Air Force Eurofighter Typhoon built by a British, German, Italian and Spanish consortium took to the skies as part of a staged dogfight with India's French Mirages and Russian aircraft, designed to impress officials seeking to modernise an ageing fleet. Its near-vertical take-off was met with awed admiration.

Within the sights of Sir Stephen, a veteran of the first Gulf war - as well as his political masters and hundreds of aerospace executives - was one of the world's most sought-after jet fighter contracts. London, Paris and Washington were all vying to re-equip the world's largest democracy with 126 fighters — about one-10th of the force — seeing it as a chance to put a seal on a defining bilateral relationship of the 21st century.

The deal to supply India — with its fast-growing economy and geopolitical status, and concern about the threat from Pakistan to the north and China to the east — offered a European defence establishment suffering shrinking military budgets back home the chance to reshape the industry landscape.

But the mock battle was the closest the Typhoon came to the target. New Delhi chose Dassault's Rafale over the Eurofighter at the end of an eight-year competition. The significance of the agreement is being compared to that of the UK's record al-Yamama deal with with Saudi Arabia, signed in the 1980s. Optimists say it could be signed within eight months, joining a $9.3bn agreement for France to supply India with two nuclear plants and another to build it a modern conventional submarine fleet worth $4bn.

"This is a major win for France, and a major loss for the UK... French political backing has been essential in strengthening the French bid and the Rafale win is therefore also a major victory for President Nicolas Sarkozy," says Endre Lunde, an aerospace and defence consultant at IHS Jane's, a defence consultancy.

Rafale's selection is a bitter disappointment for all four nations in the consortium, and highlights Indian doubts about a pan-European partnership at a time of financial and political strain on the continent.

It has a particular sting for David Cameron. The UK prime minister identified the Indian market as one of the most important for Britain's exporters — but this opening gambit to his premiership has shown scant return even though accompanied by £1bn of aid in the next four years.

Eurofighter's backers thought it the lead contender, bringing more advanced technology and strategic clout than the Rafale, which had not been sold outside France. Their confidence soared after US rivals — Boeing's F/A-18 Super Hornet and Lockheed Martin's F-16 Super Viper — were knocked out of the highly secretive medium multi-role combat aircraft contest last year.

In London and Berlin, contractors salivated at the idea of harnessing via industrial partnership a greater share of India's $36bn annual defence budget. A big European purchase would shift India away from reliance on Russia and show the US was not the only alternative as Delhi sought to rearm itself in light of mounting concerns about a more assertive Beijing.

The executives of the consortium partners were convinced Eurofighter offered a superior so-called "4th generation" aircraft suited to aerial combat and able to strike targets on the ground. They were also confident they had priced it competitively, in spite of some analysts' claims that the Rafale was up to 10 per cent cheaper.

But they overlooked Indian misgivings about security of supply for an aircraft built by four countries across a continent in financial turmoil and amid worries about the aircraft's radar capabilities. "The upside is that Eurofighter delivers you four countries as strategic partners," says Douglas Barrie of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, but "the down side is they have to negotiate with each other before they negotiate with you".

Eurofighter executives want a "detailed explanation" from India's Ministry of Defence of how calculations were made. They doubt that Dassault, which conducted its campaign from within the grey concrete walls of the French embassy, can deliver on its promises in terms of price and schedule.

Meantime, there is grim denial that the contest is over, and that India has overlooked a partnership that they say includes two of the more robust European economies, Germany and the UK, in favour of one with a country recently stripped of its triple A credit status. One veteran of the Eurofighter campaign vows not to give up until India makes the first down payment to the French, which might not be for years, claiming that arms deals of this magnitude are in play "until money is in the bank". BAE, one of the Eurofighter group partners, signalled that it was prepared to drop the price.

Delhi's version of events is that, in an era of corruption scandals and an activist Supreme Court, it has played the selection process entirely by the book. Defence officials say that, once the two models passed technical trials, the deciding factor was always going to be which was offered at the lowest price. They say the choice of Rafale, which some say came in $5m cheaper per aircraft, was one of the cleanest decisions in India's arms procurement history, with the minimum of political interference.

Defence experts, however, say other factors came into play in the form of investment agreements, whereby they were required to invest half the value of the contract back into India, and technology transfer. "The deal is beyond the aircraft," says Uday Bhaskar, a Delhi-based defence analyst. "If I was in the shoes of France looking at India, I would go beyond the fighter to the next big-ticket items of civil nuclear power and the [nuclear] submarine arena."

Bharat Karnad, a defence expert at the Centre for Policy Research in Delhi, says a likely bargaining chip was the prospect of the use of nuclear testing facilities in Bordeaux to shore up the thermonuclear shortcomings of India's nuclear arsenal. "The Indian government can't be blamed for misleading anyone. It was government-to-government from the very beginning.We wanted to know what things we would get with the fighter," he says.

Competitors suspect the nuclear element played a part in the decision. "Dassault got very aggressive on price and then Sarkozy rounded out the deal at the very end, possibly with some side-deal involving nuclear energy," one German official says.

Mr Sarkozy, months away from a presidential election that promises to be a bitter fight, and Dassault are quietly triumphant. He has underlined his determination by saying the final negotiations had "the full support of the French authorities" and would include technology transfers "guaranteed" by the state.

"Sarko is willing to give them whatever [technology] they want," says a French defence industry executive. "It's fair to say the technology has been around a while now so is not quite leading-edge. Remember we were talking about selling the Rafale to Gaddafi in Libya, so there are no qualms really."

Internal critiques on how the deal was lost will almost certainly heap blame on Germany — and, in some quarters, deepen existing regret that the UK, India's former colonial master, did not take the lead role in a more dynamic bid.

The German-led bid was excessively technical and lacked glossy display of what the Typhoon could do in conflicts, according to one critic. While Dassault's bid was captured in 20 pages, Eurofighter's ran to 150.

"The German government was very German. It helped as best it thought it could," explains one Berlin official. "But it was always trammelled by German public aversion to arms sales, and by the fact that it doesn't pursue a statist industrial policy like Paris... The fact that some countries do packages and the Germans don't is a fact you have to accept."



A dogfight over Delhi - Indian Express

 

[Armand2REP]

GripenIN is the GripenNG. It was offered as IN which stands for India.

Saab brought the Gripen D for trials because the demo wasn't ready. There is no such plane as Gripen IN, there is Gripen Demo which is an upgraded Gripen D.

 

[Godless-Kafir]

Saab brought the Gripen D for trials because the demo wasn't ready. There is no such plane as Gripen IN, there is Gripen Demo which is an upgraded Gripen D.

The Gripen was a contender for the Indian MRCA competition for 126 multirole combat aircraft.[122] In April 2008, Gripen International offered the Next Generation Gripen for India's tender[123] and opened an office in New Delhi in order to support its efforts in the Indian market.[124] On 4 February 2009, Saab announced that it had partnered with India's Tata Group to develop the new Gripen variant to fit India's needs.[125]

The Indian Air Force (IAF) conducted extensive field trials and evaluated Gripen's flight performance, logistics capability, weapons systems, advanced sensors and weapons firing.[126] In April 2011, the IAF rejected Gripen's bid in favour of Eurofighter Typhoon and Dassault Rafale.[127] Senior Indian Air Force officials while happy with the improved capabilities of Gripen NG, identified its high reliance on US-supplied hardware, including electronics, weaponry, and GE F414 engine as a factor that may hamper its export potential.[128]

Saab JAS 39 Gripen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia