Rafale 2018 Thread: Europe's best Eurocanard

Read the forum code of contact

Member for

12 years 3 months

Posts: 5,905

From India:

"The demand that the Government disclose the details and value of the contract for the Rafale aircraft contracted in 2016 is unrealistic. The approximate acquisition cost of the Rafale aircraft has already been provided to the Parliament. The provision of exact item-wise cost and other information will reveal, inter alia, details regarding the various customisations and weapon systems, specially designed to augment the effectiveness and lethality of the assets, impact our military preparedness and compromise our national security."

[...]

Furthermore, the ministry said that no Indian offset partner for the 2016 deal has been selected by the development agency- Dassault Aviation. Even Sitharaman while answering a question on the Rafale deal on Monday had explained, "Details of Indian Offset Partners have not yet been provided by the French Industrial suppliers and as per the provisions of Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP) - 2013 they need to do so at the time of seeking offset credits or one year prior to discharge of offset obligations through their Indian Offset Partners."

Source:
Eco Times.com

Member for

13 years 1 month

Posts: 1,120

Can you post these reports? Iam interested

These are two instances available/translated on the net, but you have many more exemples in the specialized press like Air & Cosmos, Air fan, Raid aviation etc...

ATLC in DSI:

The Rafale makes the buzz.

Concurrently, the Rafale shown one's claws. At the end of the last autumn was held on the Al-Dhafra air base, the annual edition of ATLC (Advanced Tactical Leadership Course). Organized since 2000 by the UAE Air Warfare Center, ATLC aims to help air forces pilots of the Arabian Peninsula to improve their tactics and techniques by confronting them to the pilots of major Western air forces. For this particular case, the Rafale from the Air Force take the opportunity to confront their main competitors on the international scene. Especially since , in parallel , stood the Dubai airshow, which could be used as a sounding board for results obtained during the exercise.
The AdA has shipped on site for five weeks, from November 8 year December 12, not less than 6 Rafale and 3 Mirage 2000-5E. A detachment served by only 125 people and which required only 60 tons of material. The availability rate of the Rafale, which have accumulated 220 flight-hours in 148 missions, while shotting down - virtually meant - not less than 61 hostile fighters, was 97% for the entire period. And no missions has been canceled . According to Lt. Colonel Fabrice Grandclaudon, squadron leader of the EC 1/7 in Saint-Dizier and commander of the detachment," the weapon system Rafale, taking its place in COMAO (raids) of thirty different combat aircrafts, made at the ATLC the demonstration of his extraordinary flexibility. And to cite the case of this mission on November 29 during which a Rafale pilot, has launched, in barely 66 seconds, 3 Mica on 3 enemy planes (two virtually destroyed) and six AASM bombs on as many targets, some 48 km far . All destroyed!

Versatility is not an empty word.

Better yet, december 7, a pair of Rafale which protected a SAR combat device shot down 10 incoming hostile fighters while dropping six AASM on 6 different land targets forty km far , everything without leaving their CAP racetrack.In addition, the Rafale OSF allowed the positive identification of hostile fighters forty kilometers far. And, December 6, a MICA has been assigned its target - indeed virtually destroyed - only with the SPECTRA system. SPECTRA which was also capable, twice, to detect and classify - and to propose flight path changes to the pilot to avoid detection-specific envelope - some air defense systems (SA-6) that even the American F-16 CJ specialized in the SEAD mission (suppression of air defense opponents), yet also in flight, were not able to collect.. Certainly, the F-16 CJ in question had not been equipped during the flights with their common SEAD equipment, namely the HTS pod (HARM Targeting System), while their threats library had not been refreshed to integrate some of the air defense radars in the area. SEAD was not their daily mission. But it was not either the case for the Rafale. And yet, the Spectra, with no other equipment than those onboard daily, has done better than the F-16 CJ which, however, are specialized in the SEAD mission. That's the difference between multirole who need to return to land on its base to switch from one type to another mission and versatility that allows flight operations at the same time in different roles. It also demonstrates, incidentally, the ability of the AdA to quickly take advantage of "hostile" ground-radar records tunes operated the day before and to integrate them into the rafale SPECTRA library. This allowed the Rafale to classify them without any difficulty. In short, the performance was moderately appreciated by our American allies! Especially since the six F-22 Raptor deployed there by the 27th FW Langley FS/1st proved incapable of giving the beating promised to the Rafale. Of the six dofights - gun limited - which pitted the two types of aircraft in the Emirians skies in late 2009, only two saw the virtual destruction of a Rafale. Other meetings were concluded without a winner. A "performance" for the Rafale against the most modern [and most expensive] fighter in the world, presented as particularly agile thanks to its steering nozzles and moreover stealthy. Because the Rafale was, according to the lieutenant-colonel Grandclaudon, "a serious challenger in matter of maneuverability " And the french pilot to regret that his USAF colleagues had not allowed the simulated employment of MICA missiles during these confrontations.

The Typhoon were inferiors.

Concurrently, November 16, the Rafale gave, according to the french pilot, a memorable beating to the RAF Typhoon - the most recent version - which were also deployed in the UAE for the ATLC. To put it bluntly, Lieutenant-Colonel Grandclaudon said the two air battles - battles with IR-guided missile and cannon - which opposed Rafale and Typhoon gave a score of 7 wins for the first and 0 for the second, the only Rafale considered as having been destroyed flew below the allowed flight floor ! Obviously this statement has immediately raised an outcry among British pilots, relayed by the media and the Anglo-Saxon specialized blogosphere, including claims that the Typhoon did not fly as such during the fighting, but simulated "red" attackers, MiG-29 and Su-27 in that case. So, the 1/7 Provence squadron leader made a point to recall that 2 of his Rafale were also"red chest" (MiG-29 index "Charlie") when they shot down 4 "blue" Typhoon - flying as Typhoon - while being reduced to use virtual russians AA-10C missiles to be guided by the Rafale until the impact on their target, which forbade to shoot multiple targets at once . For Fabrice Grandclaudon, the limitations of the "red" plastron role don't prevent a weapons system to show its real capabilities, because the pilots are taking advantage of the real human-machine interfaces and sensors on board, one of the Rafale has benefited from a refresh of its tactical situation by his teammate via Link-16. In other words, even if some of them simluated Su-27, the British pilots virtually shoot down were using the sensors and the avionics of their Typhoon and not those of a Su-27! And the french pilot to recognize, with great sportsmanship, that the Typhoon pilots who had been opposed to the Rafale the week preceding the ATLC were young and relatively inexperienced, as the French already benefits from lessons learned from 3 operational detachments in Afghanistan (one year of presence in all) and 4 of its pilots had participated in Red Flag 2008.

Some advantages that make the difference.

However, he heavily emphasized the performance of the french system in the field of arms data fusion, from his point of view the main reason of the superiority obtained. Instead of each sensor to display its studs (aircraft detected) on a specific screen, forcing the Typhoon pilot to operate an intellectual gymnastics , annoying in combat stress, to check if the plot of its corresponding screen of electronic warfare was or was not the one visible on the radar screen or IRST, the Rafale's systems present to the pilot a single plot on a screen, the system automatically compares the plots provided by the various sensors on board and decides if it is or not the same plane. The french pilots have also appreciated the agility of the antenna of the electronic RBE2 radar - The Typhoon has for now only a mechanical antenna - allowing to refresh the situation in the whole volume monitored. But they insist, for close combat, on the perfect controllability of their Rafale, thanks to the excellence of FBW, to the extreme limits of the flight envelope.. To point the nose toward the target and to design it to the weapons system in the absence of a viewfinder-HMD while operating at very low speed. What are not necessarily capable of the main opponents of the Rafale ...
Well obviously, one should not rejoice in excess. The extremely positive results of these meetings have been obtained in special circumstances. The pilots had been set specific roles by the commander of the COMAO device and were therefore not free to exploit in depth all the potentials of their weapons system. The results have been different perhaps in other circumstances (nevertheless, some time ago, another meeting between Typhoon and Rafale, in Corsica, was also turned into "massacre" at the expense of the first 8 losses to 0 ). But, simply put, the EC 1 / 7 pilots are particularly satisfied with their stay in UAE. Their demonstration has , aptly, made a strong buzz [noise] among the aviators of the region and troubled the Anglo-Saxons until now convinced of the utter superiority of their planes. A disturbance also compounded by the loss - virtual of course - of an F-22 gun shot by an UAE Mirage 2000-9 flown, this time, by a French experimented pilot. Really, when everything goes wrong ... P

another one from captain Romain who wrote a book on rafale in Afganistan:

Cne Romain:

One must first know that France has a very high credibility worldwide in terms of jamming. So one should be particularly ill informed to think there could be a beginning of a gap in Spectra.
Spectra is a accomplished self-protection system that we are developping every day with programming, testing and with software and hardware updates: month after month ,Spectra is evolving.
In my opinion, i think we are currently using only 2/3 of Spectra capacities: We still have much work to do to optimize our jamming libraries and methods of use.
Finally, just to give you an idea of what stealth is or isn't : to be 100% stealth, one should neither be seen nor to let others know they are seen ... For example, a stealth aircraft that would use its radar to fire a missile, would be suddenly no longer stealth
One of the great strength of the Rafale is here: we do not need to activate our radar to fire our missiles far beyond visual range ..

Corentin

Hello Captain,
Thank you for these clarifications! I am perhaps too curious but can you explain how the Rafale is capable of firing beyond visual range "passively", and how far?
Do other airplanes of the same generation (EF, Gripen, F-18) use, to your knowledge, equivalent techniques ?

Cne Romain:

The Rafale merges the informations coming from its sensors to give a very reliable and clear picture to the pilot. It's already a considerable advantage over previous-generation aircraft, including EF and Gripen. When the pilot decides to fire a air to air missile, the missile leaves the aircraft taking automatically into account all available informations.
When the radar is not used, the missile can use the OSF (a TV camera coupled with a laser rangefinder), the informations provided by another aircraft via the MIDS, a heat source detected by the OSF or a MICA IR, or finally a localization by SPECTRA. Faced with these sensors, stealth is useless and we know, thanks to our tests ,that our missiles are very effective in such context.

Member for

8 years 6 months

Posts: 906


All things being equal ( same T/R modules [ characterized by their transmit /receive thresholds ), same T/R spacing/distributions, same total power output avaialble , no cooling issues assumed , Same frequency ...etc ) only assuming no limitation on surface . Increasing the number of module by X% how does that convert into percent increase in detection range ? . Is there any equation out there to compute that ?

Skolnik's 3rd Edition of Introduction to Radar System have this radar equation for Active array.

https://orig00.deviantart.net/c457/f/2017/186/d/7/equations_by_stealthflanker-dbf5rkg.png

Notice the N^3 factor which is the number of TRM, the

From there assuming same parameters one can simply determine increase of range by fourth root rules as follow.

(((NtrmS^3)/(NtrmR^3))^0,25)*Reference range.

Where
NtrmS = Scaled number of the TRM
NtrmR = Reference number of TRM (the known value)

Suppose we have a radar with 1000 TRM that can detect target at 234 Km. If we increase the number of TRM to 1500. How far it could detect target now ?

So we plugged in the numbers :

Scaled range=(((1500^3)/(1000^3))^0,25)*234
Scaled range=317 km.

So by increasing number of TRM. The radar range is now about 317 km or about 26% increase.

Member for

13 years 1 month

Posts: 1,120

Those are for F4 standard still in development and introducing in 2023-2025 time frame from what i can remember.

Spectra RWR upgrade with band extension and improved geolocation is being qualified with current new F3R standard (2018) and is now ready and is being or is very close to be fielded to the force. "In the coming months" says AFM from july 2017.

Point is this capability already exists (read AFM again) but will be significantly improved.

What has been postponed to F4 standard in the active part of Spectra, the GaN emittors, which were initially due to be part of F3R standard (2018) by the way...So one must bet that it will be ready even before the 2023-2025 time frame as this program is already quite advanced. First SPECTRA with GaN emittors demonstrator flew with the rafale in 2014.

You "must" read on the first page of this rafale thread post n°8 as well regarding spectra upgrades. At the time of the Aviation Week article, GaN was due to be part of F3R (this year) for spectra.

Member for

12 years 3 months

Posts: 5,905

to steer a beam, you need electromagnetic power and accuracy. Those are more demanding with the increases in size of the nodule. Smaller nodules are less energy demanding than larger ones, hence even more less energy is lost for the cooling.
Less cooling, more compactness -> less noise for a given signal. More accuracy hence more range.

@eagle1: so, it's a software only upgrade first?

Member for

13 years 1 month

Posts: 1,120

The cannon and bell feed are behind the radar, there is a hole leading to front but it has very small diameter because M61 is a 20 mm cannon. Anyway, APG-79 is big because it is canted at around 60°, physical T/R modules count give around 1363 modules.

I haven't seen the interview but how can he know how well APG-79 performed? If 2 radar made by the same company then i get his point but APG-79 is made by Raytheon rather than Thales

I haven't count modules for rafale or SH as, at least for the rafale, there is no official information except "more than 1000" from Dassault PR review. However performance was deemed similar by this Thales project manager. I don't find that absurd, even on this forum/thread many are trying to compare radar performances without knowing each system intimately. If you are actualy working on such project, I bet you know where does the current technology stands and where do you stand compared to your competitors with a reasonnable margin of error. Rafale M often encountered SH with APG-79 after all...

Member for

13 years 1 month

Posts: 1,120

@eagle1: so, it's a software only upgrade first?

F3R is mostly software driven but as far as the new RWR is concerned, a new piece of hardware is more than likely as you would not get bandwith extensions and improved 3D location just with a software upgrade.

Member for

12 years 1 month

Posts: 255

Thanks for the formula

What bothers me still is that by that equation, I could have a radar with a detection range of around 780 km with 5 time the number of modules and still requiring the same power. With today's electronic that would make deriving from fighter AESA , attractive bizjet AWACS and very mobile SAM long range radar solutions, very attractive. Not cheap ,but reliable and with minimum specific R&D . And yet this does not seem to happen.

So where is the trick ?.

With 10 times modules more we get 5.6 time the range. Would be around 1300 km based on your example with the same power still , just a surface 10 time greater . Would allow for a single static sentinel civil or military radar to cover far beyond most countries borders.

So all in all , I remain puzzled with the formula wondering how it adhere to reality, or which other factors it failed to encompass.

Member for

12 years 1 month

Posts: 4,168

I haven't seen the interview but how can he know how well APG-79 performed? If 2 radar made by the same company then i get his point but APG-79 is made by Raytheon rather than Thales

Because there are many exchange pilots on FA18 C/D. APG79 is the best known US AESA radar.

Those are for F4 standard still in development and introducing in 2023-2025 time frame from what i can remember

No. there are new GaAs smaller modules allowing easier cooling and faster signal treatment for RWR.

physical T/R modules count give around 1363 modules.

Another physical count on an internet photo?

Member for

8 years 6 months

Posts: 906

What bothers me still is that by that equation, I could have a radar with a detection range of around 780 km with 5 time the number of modules and still requiring the same power. With today's electronic that would make deriving from fighter AESA , attractive bizjet AWACS and very mobile SAM long range radar solutions, very attractive. Not cheap ,but reliable and with minimum specific R&D . And yet this does not seem to happen.

You don't. The more module you have, you will need more input power. I don't understand how you can come to the conclusion that more TRM can use same amount of input power.

The equations assume same module properties.. like say 10 watt of emitted power. While the power required by the module would roughly depend on PAE (Power Added Efficiency) say 25%. So the 10 watt module require about 40 watt. 1000 would need 4000 watt and 10000 would need 40000 Watt of power to get the radar working.

Member for

12 years 1 month

Posts: 4,168

The equation is ok as far as every modules are emitting/receiving. Which is about never the case. Every modules are usually up to receive, but not emitting.

Member for

12 years 1 month

Posts: 255

That is what I suspected , all things were not equal (or rather the power per module was ,but I am interested by constant total power ).
What I try to figure out is for a given power which can be produced and made available to the radar, what would be the performance improvement of the radar with x% more modules.
Aperture would be bigger and gain better so we can expect some better performance . But there I doubt classic mechanical radar equation applies for T/R modules. (Each individual modules receive same power flux density no matter how many there are and they remain constrained by their own aperture and gain threshold). Here I would think having more modules only marginally affect the gain and aperture . Or ?

With a limited power input , one would of course have to distribute that power over the number of module in emit. Hence less power per individuals the more modules there are. But one can also focus and concentrate that power on a narrower beam the more modules there are. But what is best there for the range ?. (assuming no loss ).

Member for

12 years 1 month

Posts: 4,168

In theory, the gain will be as described above in the equation. But many other factors will enter into play.

Member for

13 years 1 month

Posts: 10

The gain of an antenna element is typically proportional to the area of that element.
The area of the array, and thus gain, will increase proportionally with element count.
SNR is proportional to Output power x Gain on transmit x Gain on receive, which is proportional to Output power x N on transmit x N on receive.
For infinite input power and cooling the Output power is proportional to the number of elements. Hence, SNR is proportional to N^3 (for equal element count on transmit and receive).
For real life systems there is at least an input power limit so for many systems an increase in the number of elements may actually reduce your output power (you will 'waste' additional power on control logics, etc).

It is normally the highest frequency and the maximum scan angle that determines the maximum element distance in the array (the grating lobe criterion).
For quadratic grids and 90 degree scan angle the maximum distance is approx. 0,5 lambda (typically 15 mm on a fighter).
For equilateral triangular grids the distance can be increased and hence the antenna gain can be kept constant while reducing the element count. This is one of the reasons that Thales positions their elements in a triangular grid.

Member for

10 years 5 months

Posts: 2,014


ATLC in DSI:

Saying Spectra is better than F-16CJ without HTS is kinda an empty victory, that like claiming you can shot further than an airplane without missiles.
another one from captain Romain who wrote a book on rafale in Afganistan:

Can you post the links or screenshot of this? Because it doesn't look like an official interview on magazine to me.

However performance was deemed similar by this Thales project manager. I

But honestly who would say their product is inferior.
Because there are many exchange pilots on FA18 C/D. APG79 is the best known US AESA radar.

F-18C/D isn't equipped with APG-79.

Another physical count on an internet photo?

No need for that derogatory tone toward photos elements counts, it is at the very least still the count of the physical devices that seen fitted into aircraft nose. I can bet if photos elements count of Rafale shown 1100 or 1200 T/R modules instead then you would be the first to say that it is more accurate than generic value.

Member for

8 years 6 months

Posts: 906


The equation is ok as far as every modules are emitting/receiving. Which is about never the case. Every modules are usually up to receive, but not emitting.

And why not always transmitting ? Naturally for transmit and in fighter radar we have all modules transmitting to make full use of aperture.

The only exception is if your radar is FMCW with 100% duty cycle, then we have some modules permanently on receive. For fighter radar which never FMCW we don't have 100% duty cycle so there always time where all can transmit and later can receive.

With a limited power input , one would of course have to distribute that power over the number of module in emit. Hence less power per individuals the more modules there are. But one can also focus and concentrate that power on a narrower beam the more modules there are. But what is best there for the range ?. (assuming no loss ).

How that could be ? You won't make a radar without defining what level of power it needs.

Range for AESA is of course add more modules. But then if you still revolving around with your confusion without any clear merit on what you actually want to achieve. Then im afraid no equations or person can help you.

Member for

12 years 1 month

Posts: 255

Thanks drsteel

This tends to confirm what I thought. while more modules would be better in absolute , there are other parameters coming into play . I can imagine that on designing the radar , considering the power available there is an optimum beyond which adding more modules would only provide limited performance increase, while introducing additional challenge. Hence it is a matter of balancing the number of modules to achieve best possible performance with the T/R characteristic at hands for the possible max power available to the radar for the desired performance. Of course this is constrained by the physical limitations of the aperture.
The point being , taking the rafale as an example, if there were no limitation of the aperture , would plugging just 500 more modules convert into sensible performance enhancement ? (assuming the backend can cope with those and abstracting other benefits of having more modules such as better agility and easier cooling..etc ).

Member for

12 years 1 month

Posts: 255

Quote : How that could be ? You won't make a radar without defining what level of power it needs

Agreed, but the question then become how many modules on the array would provide an optimum performance.
In transmit , is it more efficient to distribute power over more or less modules to achieve better range ?
In receive the number of modules in the array (distributed over surface at optimal density for the radar wavelength ) will affect overall radar gain, but by how much ?.
There are radar equations there, but I was doubtful they applied to array, I had hard time figuring out how come the individual T/R modules which are essentially radio with their own aperture, gain and receiving power thresholds , and their density in the array would not influence the equation for the overall gain of the array. Dr steel explanation above tend to make more sense to me.

But lets not derail the thread,
I was essentially reacting to the tendency of more being better in absolute being systematically translated in better raw performance, without all parameters ( power available notably and T/R modules characteristics ) being considered . As I see it there are other benefits and reasons for considering more modules , which are not necessarily about better range and detection performance. As mentioned simpler cooling , better beam forming, shorter latency lower interference in transitioning from transmit to receive......etc. All sensible in their own rights, but not necessarily converting in raw detection range.

Member for

13 years 1 month

Posts: 1,120

Saying Spectra is better than F-16CJ without HTS is kinda an empty victory, that like claiming you can shot further than an airplane without missiles.

You miss the point, the idea was to tell that spectra is integrated into rafale airframe (it is always there whatever the mission) so you always have this capability.

Can you post the links or screenshot of this? Because it doesn't look like an official interview on magazine to me.

Indeed, it was a "questions and answers" chat on France Television site with random people. Unfortunately the link is dead now but as it was copy pasted on various forums, the content has been salvaged. However Capitaine Romain is not an unknown pilot as he has published a book on the rafale :

[ATTACH=CONFIG]258818[/ATTACH]

Attachments

Member for

15 years 1 month

Posts: 394

Skolnik's 3rd Edition of Introduction to Radar System have this radar equation for Active array.

Notice the N^3 factor which is the number of TRM

The problem with equations is that one often forgets the reality behind each term.

Here we have N^3 which should be read as: N² x N where the first term is comes from the higher antenna gain and the second comes from the increased power from the extra modules.

So in theory you can scale to any range but that requires:
1) infinite power
2) infinite time for your scanning because you end up with a radar beam that is extremely narrow

In the real world, a radar is often limited by power generation and especially by cooling. Adding extra modules isn't going to give you jack if you're limited by your cooling circuit. For example, the F-22 radar used to be limited to max one minute at full power before it would overheat.

In the real world, a radar in scanning mode isn't going to use a very narrow beam because it would take forever for its beam to go over potential targets. A radar that scans a place once every 5 minutes isn't very useful.

So in terms of detection, extra modules present diminishing returns. Unless you move to a larger platform with more power and multiple arrays for detection and tracking, extra modules aren't that useful.

Now that doesn't mean that there is no gain, if another platform sends you a track a very sharp beam is an asset. Same thing to help keep the lock on a target that is moving away from you and/or using jamming. For SAR (ground imaging) mode, it's also very useful (better resolution). But the gains are way less than what some basic equation might suggest.

Anyway, this is supposed to be a Rafale news thread. Discussing for the Nth time its nose size (which is due to the requirement for visibility during carrier landings) is kinda boring. I guess the next topic will be about M-88 engines power...