Dassault Rafale - Updates and Discussion
- Thread starter Domobran7
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Seems the anti-radiation weapon AASF is indeed just a variant of the MBDA SmartGlider like Picdel said:
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...and certainly not any hypersonic weapon as our buddy @randomradio was imagining it to be:
Trump Offers F-35 Jet to India in Push for More Defense Deals
No, no, no. You ridiculously claimed the F-35 has jammers by linking an image of an F-35 showing off its RWR in post 163. This one: When it clearly says RWR, ie, radar warning "receiver." Then you made an equally ridiculous assertion: It's also interesting that they show the embedded...www.strategicfront.org
The SmartGlider will only have a range of around ~100 km in best case scenario (launch from high-altitude & high-speed), and considerably less (maybe 30-40 km tops) if released at low altitude. And needless to say, being a glider, the kinematics will leave much to be desired - it's survivability against AA will be significantly less compared to powered missiles like the Rudram-I/II (which can provide a strike envelope of 100-300 km while flying at high speeds of up to Mach 5.5 in transit & Mach 1+ in terminal).
Basically, integration of the Rudram-I/II on our Rafales has to be non-negotiable. Without it, Rafale is effectively useless at SEAD/DEAD against a peer threat.
And like I said before, it would be very smart if the French incorporate these missiles not just for our Rafales, but for all Rafales. The AASF can be a nice inexpensive option against poorly-defended targets or for mopping up stragglers like SPAAG radars etc. But a more capable standoff ARM has to be available before the FMAN/FMC comes (planned for ~2035 if I'm right).
AASF is not a missile, but the name of a program. SmartGlider is part of the AASF program, like what SAAW will be for India, both can be used against SAM for DEAD.
The main ARM version for SEAD will be a long range system.
RJ10 will come as the ARM variant.
Europe’s very own missile for piercing air defenses is years away
Nations may have to wait for a new capability to suppress long-range enemy air defenses until at least 2033.
www.defensenews.com
So no, nothing's changed.
Yep - and that's the gap I'm talking about.
Typhoon is getting an HBJ, MBJ (& maybe LBJ) upgrade by way of externally-powered Arexis pods, as internally-powered Praetorian isn't good enough. Rafale is getting an LBJ as well by way of a pod. But so far, there's no externally-powered HBJ/MBJ on the horizon. This is the problem.
Of these, the HBJ is the most critical for survivability as this is what ultimately saves you from the last part of the enemy's kill chain i.e. AAM or SAM seekers.
Ah, so you are assuming it's enemy fire instead of other reasons.
Anyway:
Truth will shock many: Dassault CEO tears down Pakistan’s fantasy of shooting down Indian Rafales
Dassault Aviation CEO Eric Trappier refuted Pakistan's assertion of shooting down three Indian Air Force Rafale jets, labeling it as factually incorrect. He emphasized that India has not confirmed any losses and the reality might surprise many when complete details emerge. Following a terror...economictimes.indiatimes.com
If you want to believe in unsubstantiated conjecture that's outside all conventional wisdom regarding the matter, that's up to you.
If the losses were not combat related, revealing them to be anything else after the news cycle has already moved on is kinda stupid, it would just hand the enemy an infowar victory on a platter. Tough to believe our messaging is THAT misguided.
Just be aware that we have certain infowar programs running as well.
What I said was that Rafale was not an exception to the pros & cons that come with being a 4th/4.5 gen fighter.
Erm...that was MY point. You're the one who used to say that Rafale relies on active stealth to defeat the threat of IADS, or that it would bypass threats it couldn't meet by flying low.
THAT is the misguided notion.
The truth is, if it wants to deal with IADS, Rafale has to do the same things that everyone else does. Unfortunately for the Rafale, everyone else is getting a VLO mothership teamed with VLO wingmen to do the penetration while Rafale's VLO wingmen are stuck with a non-stealthy mothership at least till 2045.
What a bunch of drivel.
By this logic, AMCA is a waste of money?
This crap isn't even worth debating anymore.
Navy is only getting F4.
F5 deliveries would only happen in the 2030s. Around the same time as our indigenous GaN radar for MKI upgrade.
Expensive, yes. Hella expensive. But if we decide to double down on the Rafale platform, 'expensive' is gonna be a given. We can either spend big on indigenizing everything from the get-go, or keep spending loads of forex every time we need to integrate a new weapon or update the EW threat library, on someone else's schedule.
If the way we've chosen for MKI UPG is any indication, it's clear that IAF prefers the approach which gives us maximum access. If that's deemed unaffordable, obviously that would have to factor into whether we double down on said platform in the first place or not.
Yeah, so a real standoff ARM for Rafale is about a decade away.
That won't do for us. We need to integrate Rudram-I/II.
Penetration only means if something can operate in contested and heavily contested airspaces. So yes, Rafale does that.
If you have a 300 km SAM, but the Rafale is able to fire a missile at it from 10 km away, then it has more than met its penetration goal. Rafale uses the Hammer for this.
If you have a 100-150 km missile and are able to fire your missile from 100-150 km away before being engaged, that's also penetration, but a different degree of penetration since it's only effective from med altitude. Rafale will be able to do this with the new SmartGlider.
All other jets we have, they cannot go 250 km or closer to the SAM without being engaged, so those jets cannot penetrate, they can only use standoff attacks. Rafale uses the SCALP for this. And in a decade, it will get a new hypersonic missile.
MKI and LCA can use the second and third tactics, but are not equipped enough for the first one. LCA Mk1A can use the Hammer, but doesn't have ACT in order to operate that close to a SAM ring.
F-35 also uses the second and third tactics. Basically, only Rafale can use the first tactic reliably until the USAF introduces the PJDAM. Although I suppose PJDAM's primary purpose will be standoff attacks.
Why don't you try and explain what LBJ, MBJ, and HBJ mean first? What frequency bands do they cover?
So you know more than the CEO of Dassault and Hellfire?
F-35 is also has a lot of the same pros and cons.
The reason why it cannot perform deep penetration anymore is because it's no more stealthy than a 4.5th gen jet to modern radars.
Real penetration capabilities will come via stealth drones, for both the US and France, not just India.
Incorrect. You obviously haven't been reading my posts.
Rafale doesn't need the ESJ for penetration from low altitude. It needs the ESJ to keep itself alive at med/high altitude, even inside a SAM ring if necessary.
The penetration Rafale will use SPECTRA to stay alive because it's not exposed to ground radars at low altitude. The standoff Rafale will use the support jammer to keep the SCALP and RJ10 alive.
For example, if the Rafale needs to deliver a Hammer from 10 km away, the ESJ won't be necessary. If the Rafale wants to fire a SCALP at the SAM from 500 km away or SmartGlider from 150 km away, then these weapons need protection too. So the ESJ will protect in the low/mid band and a stand-in drone like Abhimanyu can provide jamming in the high band without risking fighters.
Simply put, it's for the survival of the mission, not the Rafale.
For you, maybe. For the IAF, no.
So now you know more than the Dassault CEO, Hellfire, and now the IAF.
Nope. AMCA's real selling point is networking and information, things Rafale F5 cannot provide.
But that is the logic behind why the French are skipping 5th gen and going for SCAF.
Our GaN is not the same as France's GaN.
As I said earlier, the stuff we have today is like 64 nm, the stuff we will get will be like 16 nm, and what France is developing for Rafale F5 is like 2 nm. The MKI does not have the onboard power to carry this new tech yet.
Decade away is also the timeframe for when such SAMs will come up. Rudram-II/III won't help either. For that, we are developing Brahmos II (1500 km), LRLACM, and a new ET-LDHCM. Naturally, I'd prefer SAAW and our own HCMs for integration rather than SmartGlider and RJ-10.
We will need a 1000 km version of Rudram too within the decade.
Going back to the first statement, I'd really like to know what you think are the frequency ranges for LBJ, MBJ, and HBJ.
So Basically you are saying that , Even 10 Years from NOW , India's Indigenous Technologies will NOT be EQUAL to Rafale F 5
In that case where will AMCA MK 1 fit in
My questions about MRFA are the long list of TERMS and CONDITIONS that we seem to be heading for
I mean source codes ,.indigenous weapons
Cost of Upgrades etc
What frequencies do you think the internal SPJs (Preatorian and/or Spectra) cover?
The answer to that, combined with the fact that Typhoon needs a podded HBJ, shows you where the capability gap is.
Unless they tell us what it is that they know, nobody can say.
Again, it's all relative. I've told you this before. A Rafale can get much closer to a threat than an MKI, an F-35 in turn can get much closer than Rafale. A CCA can get even closer than F-35. But the differences are not uniform.
The thing is, there is still a huge threshold of difference between VLO & non-VLO. A game-changing level of difference which cannot be surmounted through EW. This is why we are pursuing AMCA in the form we see it (shaped airframe, internal weapons).
That's physically not possible. VLO will get less effective over time if sensors improve, but it can never become equivalent to non-VLO in terms of survivability. That's hogwash.
Still, not having a VLO jet in the mix makes you disadvantaged. Plain & simple. In turn that also reduces the effectiveness of your unmanned wingmen because they become restricted to flying in ways that does not leave the mothership exposed. The US wants to do MUMT in such a way where the manned craft is less observable than the unmanned ones. If you want to do it in the opposite way, that's not gonna come without a cost.
Heh, so you had to resort to a non-existent wingman-based HBJ in order to fill the gap that I was talking about.
Thing is, you can fill that gap much sooner & for much cheaper if you just go for a podded solution like I said.
If you want to leave the IAF without a real VLO fighter till 2040, there's nothing left to talk about. I simply don't think that's a good idea, that's all I have to say.
If so, we'd have gone for something like ORCA instead of complicating matters by incorporating airframe stealth.
Nope, totally different logic. They are geopolitically & geographically in a much more permissive environment than us. Their primary foe (Russia) is unable to field VLOs in the required numbers within required timeframes, and even if they do, there's no concievable way they'd be fighting Russia without several hundred European F-35s also by their side...and that's if the US doesn't even honour its NATO commitment.
In short, they can afford to skip 5th gen, we can't.
The benefits of affordability will outweigh any marginal technological edge an imported solution might have. We don't need the best of the best, we just need what meets the requirements.
We can worry about the future later, let's address the present first. The Chinese already have SAMs against which Rafale cannot do standoff DEAD.
Against likes of HQ-9B, only Rudram-II can achieve standoff effects. Against S-400, only the Rudram-III carried by MKI can achieve standoff effects.
Asking a Rafale to do this job would require us to commit a lot more assets & take on a lot more risk by way of penetration to achieve the same results that an MKI potentially can without ever leaving Indian airspace.
Not to mention Tejas Mk2 and HOPEFULLY even AMCA in series production by then.
I don't believe it, it seems very suspicious to me.
Sounds like French soft porn tbh. Couldn't the publicity department at Dassault come up with something better?
It's done on purpose because "torride" in French has two meanings and the ambiguity makes people laugh.
Even the adversary can play better hide and seek. It's a double edge sword.
Not with current specifications. It requires more China centric modification in data fusion and reaction system with additional EW for AESA Radars on stealth aircrafts. Airborne radars will be a part of air defence along with ground based enemy radars and air defence systems.
If India has a stealth frame and engine, rest of the capabilities be it mission computer, software and weapons, India can integrate itself, in that India is very potent.
There is know how, but infrastructure to develop a 2nm chip is not there. If it is there India can produce F5 level. It is not that India can't but requires immense amount of funding. 10-20 billion dollars.
Doubt they can match Rafale in that aspect. Rafale's smaller size along with twin-engined set-up gives a kinematic advantage in low flying conditions over the plains or in the mountains.
That's why F5 program is important for both France and India. Thanks to American shenanigans now F-35 is permanently out so Rafale F5 is the sole surviving MRFA contender. French are going to equip it with anti-stealth active & passive sensors. With MUM-T, it will be able to penetrate deep inside China.
Our own stealth fighter is minimum 15 years away from being FOC/combat ready. What you've wrote is coming true with India replacing all the avionics of Su-57 with indigenous ones and voila we've a stealth fighter of our own until AMCA is ready for war. Just hope we order Okhotnik-Bs along with Su-57s that we're about to procure. Su-57 with S-70B will be able to penetrate deep inside China and Su-57's airframe is an order of magnitude more stealthy than Rafale(with external tanks and weapons). MUM-T will work better with a stealth jet as the mother/controller ship.
India should double down on long range precision standoff weapons and mass production of precise ballistic and cruise missiles, already we can mass produced Brahmos. For me Su57 and F35 are both looking unlikely.
Su-57 is now confirmed. Just wait for sometime and full details will come out in public very soon. Stand-off weapons can't replace stealth jets. We can't allow both China and Pak to have Stealth jet advantage over us for the next 15-20 years. We need a stop-gap and frankly much more than that. FGFA failed because of Russian arrogance but now they're willing to fulfill all our demands. So it's a complete go now.
Ideally, I would have liked IAF to procure F-35s too(along with Su-57s) but thanks to American stupidity, it's now a complete no go. Period.
Yep. But the question is if a Rafale was lost at all, never mind to enemy fire.
