Dassault Rafale, tender | News & Discussions

[jha]

 

[kingdurgaking]

And your point is?

The earlier with internal fuel only, the latter with the external fuel, so as I said, with total fuel it has longer range than the MKI.

And it still carries the same missile load and you simply can't deny that!

When you keep ignoring that MKI will still have the clearly bigger RCS and will be detected by EFs radar way above the 160Km detection range it has for normal fighters.
Not to forget that you are talking about these maximum load configs, a normal A2A config contains just a single external fuel tank and 6 AAMs.

My point is multirack missiling expanding to 14 hardpoints was possible with MKI exceeding EFT... while EFT with external fuel of 3 tanks (see BBC it carries minimum 2 tanks from italy to LIBYA for just 1 hour of mission with mid air refuelling) .. which proves that fuel fraction will be poor for EFT compared to MKI...

while typhoon with wet points will carry only 10 missiles but MKI can carry 14 missiles with 10 Archers atleast... which you cant deny..

And i dont deny MKI has bigger RCS ... while EFT with external fuel tanks and missile will have a huge RCS enough for MKI to detect it at 160 KM and can launch Archer way before EFT can lauch...

same applies in case of Rafale... with Brahmos it is already outpacing Rafale... which Rafale can never carry...


At any angle MKI outclass both EFT and Rafale.... the only Fighter that can come close is F-15E...

 

[dbc]

That was the CAS for the rebels in Benghazi, but French fighters did CAP, recon and strike missions before that and without the support of the Growlers:



Developing: UN implements no-fly zone over Libya, French aircraft confirmed | The Raw Story




Rafale News: Details on the Rafale mission over Libya


So the joined CAS mission with US fighters were later that day!
The first US aircraft over Libyan airspace were B2 bombers, that followed the Tomahawk strikes. The first strikes of British Tornados were made with Storm Shadow cruise missiles, from distance and some sources say French fighters did the same with the similar Scalp missiles as well, but I didn't see such a config yet.

However, any news what caused the F15 crash? The pilots are safe right?

It is of no interest to me when the Rafale left France, your claim that the Rafale flew into hostile airspace unsupported by other assets remains to be substantiated.

Good job using a spell checker, next assignment learn what CAS means.

 

[angeldemon_007]

Libya Conflict May Spur Sales of Battle-Proven Eurofighter Jet - Businessweek

 

[the rafter]

Libya Conflict May Spur Sales of Battle-Proven Eurofighter Jet - Businessweek

I don't get how can Eurofighter get a spur in sale just by flying over Libya?
The surface to air missiles (SAM) from Libya have been taken out by Tomahawk missiles and French, UK and US fighter jets. Eurofighter was not a part of A to G operations because Tranche 1 and 2 does not have one, yet. Libya's air force is all but destroyed, so essentially all Eurofighter (with A to A) is doing is fly over Libyan air space.

 

[luckyyy]

F-18 and Eurofighter was never considered earlier for MMRCA Tender : Offical


Request for Proposal (RFP) actually favoured single engine fighters due to its emphasis on life cycle costs,since life cycle costs of a single engine fighter are substantially lower than that of twin engine fighter.

on life cycle costs extimates , Gripen going to win , lets see what last time surprises F-16 can bring.....

 

[sudhir007]

The Telegraph - Calcutta (Kolkata) | Frontpage | Tracking Libya, with eye on fighters

India’s armed forces are closely monitoring the war in Libya despite New Delhi’s reservations against the “Allied” intervention because they are in the market to buy the weapons being used to bomb the North African country.

“We learnt from Iraq and Afghanistan also and we are watching what’s going on — it’s part of our job. This is what globalisation means,” a senior air force officer said, during a discussion here.

“Many of the (weapons) platforms that are in the operations (in Libya) are the ones we are evaluating,” he added.

Most of all, the Indian Air Force is following the bombing campaign by the US, UK, France and eight other countries because variants of four of the six aircraft that are competing for an estimated $12 billion Indian contract have been deployed by the coalition.

Air Chief Marshal P.V. Naik has said India expects to contract 126 medium multirole combat aircraft by July.

“We are watching. We analyse every conflict. We learnt from Iraq and Afghanistan also,” a senior air force officer said.

In effect, Libya has become a kind of “field firing range” for these aircraft to demonstrate their ground-attack capabilities in operational conditions. Even if Libya’s air defence is poor, the US has already lost one aircraft — an F-15E Strike Eagle deep strike combat plane.

The Boeing (McDonnell Douglas)-made plane crashed near Benghazi on Monday night, an incident the US officially said was caused by a “mechanical fault”.

The Strike Eagle is not in the competition for the Indian order. But Boeing’s F/A-18 Super Hornet is. The Canadian Air Force has deployed an older version of the aircraft, the CA-18 Hornet for “Operation Mobile”, its name for the offensive in Libya that the US calls “Operation Odyssey Dawn”.

The bombing run over Libya is believed to have been begun by France’s Rafale aircraft (“Operation Harmattan”).

The Dassault Aviation-made plane was demonstrated at an airshow in Bangalore last month, as was the Super Hornet, the US (Lockheed Martin) F-16 Super Viper and European consortium EADS’ Eurofighter Typhoon.
The S-125 Pechora surface-to-air missiles

The Rafales are understood to have bombed a convoy of Muammar Gadaffi’s troops that was suspected to be headed towards Benghazi with the “Storm Shadow” stand-off missile, a weapon that can be fired at precise targets from more than 200km away. A mock-up of the “Storm Shadow” was also exhibited in Bangalore.

The Indian Air Force contract for 126 combat planes is specifically for a category described as “medium multi role” — meaning the aircraft have to demonstrate a capability for not only dogfights in the air but also for precise ground-attack — bombing specified targets.

The UK’s Royal Air Force and Spain have deployed the Eurofighter Typhoon for the operations in Libya. (The British call the offensive “Operation Ellamy”).

The US-made F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft of the UAE armed forces — the closest version to Lockheed Martin’s India offering — has been deployed by the Arab conglomerate, which has also deployed a version of the Mirage 2000. The Indian Air Force has two squadrons of the Mirage 2000 in its inventory.

Ironically, Libya’s air defence weaponry is mostly of the same origin and vintage as India’s own, comprising mostly S-125 Pechora surface-to-air missiles (also identified as the SA3) that were supplied by the erstwhile Soviet Russia.

 

[sudhir007]

Libya Conflict May Spur Sales of Battle-Proven Eurofighter Jet - Businessweek

Dogfights over Libya may spur sales of Eurofighter GmbH’s 65 million-pound ($106 million) Typhoon warplane as the enforcement of a no-fly zone against Muammar Qaddafi gives the jet a chance to prove its battle credentials.

The 1,500-mile-an-hour Typhoon, built by BAE Systems Plc, Finmeccanica SpA and European Aeronautic, Defence & Space Co., flew its first mission with Britain’s Royal Air Force on March 21, and 10 of the planes are now stationed in Italy, Eurofighter spokesman Marco Valerio Bonelli said.

“It never hurts to have the ‘as used in combat’ stamp,” said Francis Tusa, London-based editor of the Defence Analysis newsletter. “It can only do you good.”

Eurofighter competes with jets including Dassault Aviation SA’s Rafale, also patrolling over Libya after flying missions in Afghanistan since 2002, and the yet-to-be-battle-tested Saab AB Gripen. That jet is made in Sweden, where the government said yesterday it might join the conflict.

The three planes are among models competing for a 126-plane order from India, the biggest military deal in play, in competition with the Boeing Co. F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, Lockheed Martin Corp. F-16 Fighting Falcon and the MiG-35. Other contests for which European manufacturers are bidding include Brazil, Japan, Oman, Qatar and Switzerland.

‘Small Footprint’

More than 260 Typhoons have so far entered service with the RAF and air forces in partner countries Germany, Italy and Spain, as well as with Austria and Saudi Arabia, the only export customers to date. Working with coalition forces in a battle environment is a key test for the plane, Bonelli said.

“Interoperability is very important for combat aircraft because they transfer data between them, especially in an operation like this,” he said, adding that Typhoons employed in Libya are also accessing data from airborne warning and control planes and unmanned drones often hundreds of miles away.

The Libyan deployment has also demonstrated the model’s “very quick response and very small footprint,” with only 100 technicians accompanying the aircraft, the spokesman said.

Still, the jets are limited to an air-superiority role, Britain’s Ministry of Defence says, meaning they’ll target enemy planes in the air, rather than attack targets on the ground, a capability the RAF planes won’t have until 2018. Bombing has been allocated to Panavia Tornados, designed in the 1970s.

Budget Concerns

It may take more than one conflict, particularly one where the Typhoon’s capacities are limited, to excite potential buyers, says Richard Aboulafia, vice president at the Teal Group, a Fairfax, Virginia-based consulting company.

“I can’t think of one weapon system in history that was given any kind of boost on the market by one particular conflict,” he said.

Britain’s failure to commit so far to a third tranche of orders for the Eurofighter and to upgraded radar will damp interest by other countries in the plane, he said. “They need to provide the budget roadmap that guarantees the plane’s longterm appeal as a weapons system,” Aboualfia said.

There have been no reports yet of the Typhoon encountering Libyan jets, said Douglas Barrie, military aerospace analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

Eurofighter said March 8 that London-based BAE, Europe’s biggest defense company, had released a Raytheon Co. Paveway IV laser-guided bomb from a Typhoon test plane, a weapon Tusa said could in theory be deployed in Libya.

‘Multi-Functional’

“In terms of boosting exports you want Typhoon doing this,” he said. “Having spent the money there’s no reason it can’t.”

The Eurofighter’s operational scope in Libya is narrower than that of Dassault’s Rafale, which flew combat patrols over Afghanistan as early as 2002 and took on a ground-attack role there five years later. The “omnirole” plane has undertaken a variety of Libyan missions from Saint-Dizier airbase in France and the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean.

“It has been used for air-to-air missions, air-to-ground to hit targets, for reconnaissance and even as a tanker,” said Colonel Thierry Burkhard, a spokesman for the French joint armed forces. “It’s completely multi-functional. You can prepare the plane and choose the mission while you’re flying.”

France has been offering the Rafale for export since 2000 but hasn’t won a single contract after competing unsuccessfully in South Korea, Singapore and Morocco. Libya had even emerged as potential customer after Qaddafi visited France in 2007.

Rafale, Gripen

“I have been little short of amazed about how low-beat the French have been on Rafale’s profile in Libya,” said Tusa, a defence analyst for 15 years. “They are desperate to sell it.”

While Libya’s air force includes more than 100 Russian MiG jets, “much of it is obsolete or inoperable,” the Pentagon said this month before the no-fly zone was imposed. It also has two Dassault Mirage fighters out of an original fleet of 12.

The Gripen, which first flew in 1988, two years after the Rafale and six years before the Typhoon, has racked up 150,000 flying hours and is already a proven fighter, despite never having operated a combat mission, spokesman Lasse Jansson said.

“It’s not something we are asked when we’re out marketing the aircraft,” Jansson said by telephone. “Most potential customers know that Gripen has demonstrated these things.”

While the plane has been exported to South Africa and Thailand, work may run out in 2012 and an upgrade isn’t due to join Sweden’s air force until at least 2017. Sweden would make entry into the Libyan conflict contingent on a clearer chain of command, Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said yesterday.

U.S. fighter aircraft operating in Libya include the F-16 and Boeing’s F-15E Strike Eagle, one of which crashed on March 21 after what the Pentagon said was “an equipment malfunction.”

 

[sancho]

...(see BBC it carries minimum 2 tanks from italy to LIBYA for just 1 hour of mission with mid air refuelling)...

The Typhoon fighter aircraft have been exclusively used for patrol operations, supporting the Tornados during their ground attack missions. According to the British Ministry of Defence, a mission of a Typhoon fighter, patrolling the skies over Libya, amounts to an average of five flight hours.

defence.professionals | defpro.com


Repeating the same wrong points (that I already countered) and making things up like the flight hours, makes you look desperate don't you think? You clearly don't see the MKI with a rational point of view, which makes further discussions pointless.

It is of no interest to me when the Rafale left France, your claim that the Rafale flew into hostile airspace unsupported by other assets remains to be substantiated.

Of course it's important, because that confirms that Rafales and most likely Mirage entered Libyan airspace when the US just started the Cruise Missile attacks. The CAS missions that you meant and included Growlers came only later that day as it is reported even from your US source.
But your denial is not surprising, so I don't bother to much about it.

I don't get how can Eurofighter get a spur in sale just by flying over Libya?
The surface to air missiles (SAM) from Libya have been taken out by Tomahawk missiles and French, UK and US fighter jets. Eurofighter was not a part of A to G operations because Tranche 1 and 2 does not have one, yet. Libya's air force is all but destroyed, so essentially all Eurofighter (with A to A) is doing is fly over Libyan air space.

You have to see it from the point of view of EF partner countries, or consortium, because this is the first real war scenario where the EFs was fielded to! They did air policing over Kosovo and the Falkland Islands, but both during peace times. So indeed, this is the first more or less serious deployment of EFs in a war. The strange thing is only, that they started the missions shortly before the British defense ministry announced that the Libyan air force and air defense are defeated (mainly by their Tornados and other fighters), which makes it rather pointless to fly around with up to 8 missiles.

 

[sancho]

Most of all, the Indian Air Force is following the bombing campaign by the US, UK, France and eight other countries because variants of four of the six aircraft that are competing for an estimated $12 billion Indian contract have been deployed by the coalition.

Which confirms what was reported before, that MMRCA has a focus on strikes and the latest RFI for standoff weapons is just another proof:

Livefist: IAF Wants Long-Range Standoff Strike Missile

 

[dbc]

Repeating the same wrong points and making things up , makes you look desperate don't you think? You clearly don't see the Rafale with a rational point of view, which makes further discussions pointless.

Of course it's important, because that confirms that Rafales and most likely Mirage entered Libyan airspace when the US just started the Cruise Missile attacks. The CAS missions that you meant and included Growlers came only later that day as it is reported even from your US source.
But your denial is not surprising, so I don't bother to much about it.

The question once again, how do you know the Rafale's entered hostile Libyan airspace unsupported by other air or surface assets?
You really ought to look up the meaning of CAS.

 

[SpArK]

HOW MUCH DOES IT COST? - The price of the intervention in Libya

One hour flight for a Rafale: 13 000 euros for the Mirage, between 10 000 and 11 000 euros. At a time when governments are to the economy, the cost of the intervention in Libya is discussed in the coalition countries.

With 55 outputs, the French Rafale and Mirage 2000 Monday night totaled more than 400 flight hours, says Agence France-Presse, which notes that these cost estimates do not include the price of fuel.

"Warning" , however, warning France Info : These devices generate an expenditure, whether incurred or not. Cost under the operating budget of the Ministry of Defence, which amounts to 31 billion euros for 2011 notes the radio. In Liberation ( item fee), an "expert" adds: "But they fly in the French sky during training or during missions, these flights have cost anyway." The arrival Tuesday on the area the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle should also limit the roundtrips of aircraft based in France.

COMBIEN ÇA COÛTE ? - Le prix de l’intervention en Libye - Big Browser - Blog LeMonde.fr

 

[SpArK]

Video: Rafale, SuE and Hawkeye operations on Charles de Gaulle

The Base Leg Blog: VIDEO: Rafale, SuE and Hawkeye operations on board Charles de Gaulle

 

[SpArK]

France 'shoots down Libyan plane​

French warplanes have shot down a Libyan plane in the first incident of its kind since enforcement of the UN no-fly zone began, a US official said.

The incident happened near the besieged western city of Misrata, reports said.

Dozens of coalition missiles have already hit military bases, with the aim of ending Col Muammar Gaddafi's ability to launch air attacks.

UK officials said on Wednesday that Libya's air force no longer existed as a fighting force.

Coalition forces have pounded Libyan targets for a fifth consecutive night.

The French military said their planes had hit an air base about 250km (155 miles) south of the Libyan coastline, in an incident apparently unrelated to the shooting down of the Libyan plane.

French officials did not give any further information on the location of the target or the damage.

One US official quoted by Associated Press news agency said the Libyan plane shot down by France was a G-2/Galeb, a training aircraft with a single engine. The French plane involved was a Rafale fighter, the same US official said.

Fresh fighting has meanwhile been reported in Misrata, scene of a bitter battle for control which has lasted for many days.

Misrata resident Muhammad told the BBC many large explosions were heard overnight in the city.

"Even now we continue to hear the aeroplanes circling the air above Misrata," he said.

"Gaddafi's forces have occupied the main street - there are snipers all along the rooftops of that street. They are firing indiscriminately into the main street and the back streets.

"But the heavy artillery and shelling has stopped since yesterday [Wednesday]. In that sense, we are in a much better position."

Further east in the strategically important city of Ajdabiya, residents described shelling, gunfire and houses on fire.

Nato members have been holding talks about assuming responsibility for the no-fly zone over Libya, so far without agreement.

Turkey is an integral part of the naval blockade, but has expressed concern about the alliance taking over command of the no-fly zone from the US.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has urged all sides in Libya to cease hostilities. "All those who violate international humanitarian and human rights law will be held fully accountable," his spokesman Martin Nesirky said.

BBC News - Libya: France 'shoots down pro-Gaddafi plane'

 

[SpArK]

EN DIRECT. Libye : un Rafale français abat un avion libyen