What is wrong with the Rafale?

[Donatello]

Hi,

The french have always been good to pakistan. Being the second largest user of mirage 3 / 5 aircraft---it was a natural progression for paf to go with the F1 and then onto M2k---. Paf dropped F1 and M2K in favour of F16----.

The french gave pakistan the Agosta sub with mesma propulsion system---which took the pak navy to a different pleateau---but then pak wants to go with the german subs---.

The MERCURIAL nature of pakistanis has created most of their problems---the paf is no different. With its bad choices and bad decisions---it is about 10--15 years behind where it was supposed to be.

After 9/11---from the jaws of victory---the PAF chose defeat---like so many other times.

I agree with your post, but F-16s were equally good platform. I would say, better than Mirage 2K, considering the widespread use of F-16 around the world.

 

[MastanKhan]

I agree with your post, but F-16s were equally good platform. I would say, better than Mirage 2K, considering the widespread use of F-16 around the world.

Hi,

You are right---but if paf had opted for the mirage2k---the second best aircraft after the F16---india would not have been able to get the F16 and paf would still have the upper hand.

Sometimes the best is not the answer---you have to look at what the second best can do for you.

The F16 was still a great choice after 9/11 if the paf had ordered 100 aircraft right away

 

[acid rain]

Hi,

The french have always been good to pakistan. Being the second largest user of mirage 3 / 5 aircraft---it was a natural progression for paf to go with the F1 and then onto M2k---. Paf dropped F1 and M2K in favour of F16----.

The french gave pakistan the Agosta sub with mesma propulsion system---which took the pak navy to a different pleateau---but then pak wants to go with the german subs---.

The MERCURIAL nature of pakistanis has created most of their problems---the paf is no different. With its bad choices and bad decisions---it is about 10--15 years behind where it was supposed to be.

After 9/11---from the jaws of victory---the PAF chose defeat---like so many other times.

Are there any purchases from France in the pipeline for Pakistan? plus the article in the OP seems so wrong in its analysis of placing the rafale way below the eurofighter and even the F16. I am not saying it just because India selected the rafale but all studies, exercises and real operations show that the rafale if not better than is at par with Eurofighter while the F16 and the rafale dont fall in the same class.

 

[Super Falcon]

Rafale is very potent fighter jet i think but air to air combat still should be upgraded for me excelent in air to ground war for me rafale

 

[Anas Ali]

(The Rafale exhibits numerous features that would simply never be incorporated into any design intended to have a reduced RCS, including its prominent intakes, a huge vertical stabilizer, canards, a non-retractable refueling probe, and numerous other probes, protrusions, and other serious RCS offenders.)

what is the rafale's RCS ?

 

[Black Eagle 90]

I dint expect this. I always found people praising it as if it is a raptor sort of thing. Anyway good article, nice read and revealed facts.

Im glad that on 1st April it was just a joke of 150 rafales. Also if it is so then France might be dropped out of Indian MMRCA program. Resulting in electronics for our Thunder birds =)

But I don't think so that PAC is looking for imports of Electronics from EU rather they might be looking now for a JV that will include NESCOM, KRL, GIDS and Pak Army and Pak Nay Electronics divisions too...

Few months old article but a good read. Some of you are big proponent of Rafale and wondering what your take is after reading it.

What is wrong with the Rafale?

I have noticed a lot of discussion on here lately about the Rafale and its inability to compete with the various other late 4th generation designs on the market today. In an effort to shed some light on this issue I have taken a moment to list some of the Rafale's major crippling flaws and their origins.

The single biggest issue with the Rafale, and the common thread throughout most of its major design flaws, is that its design team simply lacked sufficient vision of where the future of fighter aviation was heading. Throughout the Rafale's design process its designers chose to go with incremental improvements rather than generational leaps in technology. The Rafale was intended to catch up to, rather than leap ahead of, aircraft that were designed years earlier such as the F-16 and Mig-29. The end result is a somewhat refined, but badly overpriced aircraft that has struggled to even compete with the aircraft it was designed to match, and utterly lacks the potential to compete with newer designs.

The most obvious area where this lack of vision is displayed is in the Rafale's overall layout and its notable lack of signature reduction design features. The Rafale exhibits numerous features that would simply never be incorporated into any design intended to have a reduced RCS, including its prominent intakes, a huge vertical stabilizer, canards, a non-retractable refueling probe, and numerous other probes, protrusions, and other serious RCS offenders. What does this mean? Late in the Rafale's design process its engineers realized that they had failed to anticipate the key role RCS reduction would play in future designs and scambled to find ways to reduce the Rafale's RCS. With minimal experience with RCS reduction and an airframe that was already too far along in its design to be fixed, the end result was of course disappointing. Shaping is the single most important consideration in RCS reduction and the Rafale has too many major flaws to ever be considered stealthy. RAM coatings and last minute saw-tooth edge features are at best minimally effective on an aircraft that is otherwise designed all wrong from the start.

Not only that, but the Rafale's maneuverability proved to be disappointing, comparable to, but only marginally better than that already offered by earlier 4th generation designs and noticably lacking in comparison to its bigger brother, the Eurofighter. As the US/Israel found with the Lavi design, the improvement in aerodynamic performance available with such a design was insufficient to justfy the cost of creating an entire new airframe and a generational leap in performance would require a new approach.

Like its airframe, the Rafale's pit and interfaces sought to close the gap with earlier 4th generation designs. Drawing its inspiration from the US, the Rafale design team sought to replicate the hands on throttle and stick interface the US had adopted by the time the Rafale entered its design phase. While the Rafale was largely successful in matching the interfaces seen in US fighters in the early 90s, its designers failed to see the direction future designs were heading. Today the Rafale's pit and human interface are at best mediocre in comparison to those found in other aircraft in production. It lacks a helmet mounted site, a serious flaw in a WVR fight, and numerous other advanced features such as the Super Hornet's fully decoupled interfaces. Most critically, the Rafale's man machine interface lacks the defining features of a 5th generation design, such as advanced sensor fusion and sophisticated multi-purpose helmet mounted displays.

Probably the most famous and inexcusable design flaw in the Rafale is its unusually small and short ranged radar. While the US launched fully funded AESA programs and prepared for a generational leap in radar performance, for some reason the Rafale was designed with a PESA radar, a technological dead-end. Worse, the Rafale was simply not designed to accomodate a radar of sufficient size to operate effectively autonomously. Now, although France is working to retrofit an AESA antenna onto its PESA back-end in the Rafale, the nose of the Rafale will simply not accomodate a competitive radar. The best the Rafale can hope to do is close some of its radar performance gap with aircraft like the F-16, but will never be capable of competing with designs like the Eurofighter or Super Hornet.

Finally, one of the most critcal flaws in the Rafale's design is its widely misunderstood "Spectra" self protection jammer and RWR suite. As was done with the F-16 and Super Hornet, the Rafale design team sought to incorporate an internal self protection jammer into the Rafale to improve its survivability against radar guided threats. The major failure of Spectra was that its development cycle was far far too long and France's semiconductor and computer industry was simply incapable of providing the necessary components to create a truely cutting edge system. By the time it went from the drawing board to production, a period of over 10 years, it was barely able to match systems being offered by Israel and the United States on other 4th generation fighters. The Spectra self protection jammer simply lacks the processing power, flexibility, and diverse threat response range available on aircraft like the Super Hornet, F-16 block 60, or modern Israeli systems. Not only that, but because of nearly continual funding shortages in development, Spectra lacks now-standard features such as sophisticated towed decoys and next generation jamming waveforms that it simply lacks the processing power or antennas to produce.

Instead, what Spectra offers are relatively simplistic signals generated by its prominent but inflexible and simplistic transmitters.(Based on narrow-band, inefficient MMICs, a constraint imposed by the lack of a domestic supplier for more modern MMICs, the same issue that has plauged France's AESA program.) Spectra is perhaps the least crippling of the Rafale's flaws, because it could potentially be removed and replaced with a more modern system. Spectra tacks up a relatively large amount of space and power for what it offers, so a modern design could certainly do more with the same space and power supply, but France does not currently have the resources or certain key technologies to contemplate designing or building a system that would approach the power and flexibility of something like the F-35s EW system with its unparalled stealthy low power jamming modes.(and the ability to create incredibly powerful long range jamming modes if its AESA is used as a transmitter.)

So in summary, what went wrong? The Rafale was designed to match and compete with designs in operation in the early to mid 90s, but other design teams around the world were already moving ahead with generational leaps in stealth, electronic warfare, sensor fusion, and network centric concepts. By the time the Rafale design team recognized they had misjudged the direction of future designs, they lacked the resources and time to correct their mistakes. Now they are trying to find some way to obtain more money through exports so they can replace the Rafale's mid-90s radar, computers, jammers, etc so that they can at least keep pace with other 4th generation designs for a few years before being completely surpassed by 5th generation designs.

What is wrong with the Rafale?

But I am sure that the current fight in the Indian region is about Rafael and there might be some possibility that IAF might just place a direct order for about 150 Rafaels(rather than 200 MMRCA) directly to the Dassault as they are not happy with HAL.

 

[Black Eagle 90]

Few months old article but a good read. Some of you are big proponent of Rafale and wondering what your take is after reading it.

What is wrong with the Rafale?

I have noticed a lot of discussion on here lately about the Rafale and its inability to compete with the various other late 4th generation designs on the market today. In an effort to shed some light on this issue I have taken a moment to list some of the Rafale's major crippling flaws and their origins.

The single biggest issue with the Rafale, and the common thread throughout most of its major design flaws, is that its design team simply lacked sufficient vision of where the future of fighter aviation was heading. Throughout the Rafale's design process its designers chose to go with incremental improvements rather than generational leaps in technology. The Rafale was intended to catch up to, rather than leap ahead of, aircraft that were designed years earlier such as the F-16 and Mig-29. The end result is a somewhat refined, but badly overpriced aircraft that has struggled to even compete with the aircraft it was designed to match, and utterly lacks the potential to compete with newer designs.

The most obvious area where this lack of vision is displayed is in the Rafale's overall layout and its notable lack of signature reduction design features. The Rafale exhibits numerous features that would simply never be incorporated into any design intended to have a reduced RCS, including its prominent intakes, a huge vertical stabilizer, canards, a non-retractable refueling probe, and numerous other probes, protrusions, and other serious RCS offenders. What does this mean? Late in the Rafale's design process its engineers realized that they had failed to anticipate the key role RCS reduction would play in future designs and scambled to find ways to reduce the Rafale's RCS. With minimal experience with RCS reduction and an airframe that was already too far along in its design to be fixed, the end result was of course disappointing. Shaping is the single most important consideration in RCS reduction and the Rafale has too many major flaws to ever be considered stealthy. RAM coatings and last minute saw-tooth edge features are at best minimally effective on an aircraft that is otherwise designed all wrong from the start.

Not only that, but the Rafale's maneuverability proved to be disappointing, comparable to, but only marginally better than that already offered by earlier 4th generation designs and noticably lacking in comparison to its bigger brother, the Eurofighter. As the US/Israel found with the Lavi design, the improvement in aerodynamic performance available with such a design was insufficient to justfy the cost of creating an entire new airframe and a generational leap in performance would require a new approach.

Like its airframe, the Rafale's pit and interfaces sought to close the gap with earlier 4th generation designs. Drawing its inspiration from the US, the Rafale design team sought to replicate the hands on throttle and stick interface the US had adopted by the time the Rafale entered its design phase. While the Rafale was largely successful in matching the interfaces seen in US fighters in the early 90s, its designers failed to see the direction future designs were heading. Today the Rafale's pit and human interface are at best mediocre in comparison to those found in other aircraft in production. It lacks a helmet mounted site, a serious flaw in a WVR fight, and numerous other advanced features such as the Super Hornet's fully decoupled interfaces. Most critically, the Rafale's man machine interface lacks the defining features of a 5th generation design, such as advanced sensor fusion and sophisticated multi-purpose helmet mounted displays.

Probably the most famous and inexcusable design flaw in the Rafale is its unusually small and short ranged radar. While the US launched fully funded AESA programs and prepared for a generational leap in radar performance, for some reason the Rafale was designed with a PESA radar, a technological dead-end. Worse, the Rafale was simply not designed to accomodate a radar of sufficient size to operate effectively autonomously. Now, although France is working to retrofit an AESA antenna onto its PESA back-end in the Rafale, the nose of the Rafale will simply not accomodate a competitive radar. The best the Rafale can hope to do is close some of its radar performance gap with aircraft like the F-16, but will never be capable of competing with designs like the Eurofighter or Super Hornet.

Finally, one of the most critcal flaws in the Rafale's design is its widely misunderstood "Spectra" self protection jammer and RWR suite. As was done with the F-16 and Super Hornet, the Rafale design team sought to incorporate an internal self protection jammer into the Rafale to improve its survivability against radar guided threats. The major failure of Spectra was that its development cycle was far far too long and France's semiconductor and computer industry was simply incapable of providing the necessary components to create a truely cutting edge system. By the time it went from the drawing board to production, a period of over 10 years, it was barely able to match systems being offered by Israel and the United States on other 4th generation fighters. The Spectra self protection jammer simply lacks the processing power, flexibility, and diverse threat response range available on aircraft like the Super Hornet, F-16 block 60, or modern Israeli systems. Not only that, but because of nearly continual funding shortages in development, Spectra lacks now-standard features such as sophisticated towed decoys and next generation jamming waveforms that it simply lacks the processing power or antennas to produce.

Instead, what Spectra offers are relatively simplistic signals generated by its prominent but inflexible and simplistic transmitters.(Based on narrow-band, inefficient MMICs, a constraint imposed by the lack of a domestic supplier for more modern MMICs, the same issue that has plauged France's AESA program.) Spectra is perhaps the least crippling of the Rafale's flaws, because it could potentially be removed and replaced with a more modern system. Spectra tacks up a relatively large amount of space and power for what it offers, so a modern design could certainly do more with the same space and power supply, but France does not currently have the resources or certain key technologies to contemplate designing or building a system that would approach the power and flexibility of something like the F-35s EW system with its unparalled stealthy low power jamming modes.(and the ability to create incredibly powerful long range jamming modes if its AESA is used as a transmitter.)

So in summary, what went wrong? The Rafale was designed to match and compete with designs in operation in the early to mid 90s, but other design teams around the world were already moving ahead with generational leaps in stealth, electronic warfare, sensor fusion, and network centric concepts. By the time the Rafale design team recognized they had misjudged the direction of future designs, they lacked the resources and time to correct their mistakes. Now they are trying to find some way to obtain more money through exports so they can replace the Rafale's mid-90s radar, computers, jammers, etc so that they can at least keep pace with other 4th generation designs for a few years before being completely surpassed by 5th generation designs.

What is wrong with the Rafale?

But there are countries like Taiwan that are looking to buy Rafaels in great numbers as USA had refused to sell them new F-16s and they had to replace Mirage-2000s and add more capability. I think 150+ for IAF and 100+ for Taiwan this can be a big deal for French even from such deal they can take out the total program cost of Rafael as well as can start a 5th Generation program on their won.

Rafale no doubt has lot of issues which are hampering its true Potential.
Some of them are attributed to funding issue and requirements of France itself.

Radar - I covered this issue in Great detail in MMRCA thread , this is the link
http://www.defence.pk/forums/india-defence/4347-mrca-news-discussions-53.html#post773496

SPECTRA- i think article mentions it , in addition
The SPECTRA F3 software needs better AESA antennas but nothing is planned yet and who is Going to fund the further devlopment is the biggest Question mark. France has failed to win foreign orders,UAE deal is on hold and whether they will fund further devlopment is not known. India and Brazil dont seem to have time and fund to push further modifications if Rafale wins tender.
The bulk of its computer system is simply not up to the task on current version. It is able to do a beautiful job of producing pre-programmed responses to radars with signatures it recognizes, but it doesn't have the power to adapt on the fly, or keep pace with the continuously variable LPI signals generated by next generation radars and seekers.
Current trend shows France is more relying on known signals to improve SPECTRA-they did same sniffing in RED FLAG on IAF's SU30MKI and F15E of south korea.
Just read few days back,France is working on upgrading Spectra's computers, but logically they should probably just go ahead and start over with a new system. The AESAs on the Rafale are old, and though highly precise have too narrow a frequency operating range and are too slow to effectively timeshare against multiple radars under many circumstances,when you compare to US fighters .

IRST blk2- French are confused themselves , i think its more to do with lack of funding. If russians are putting these in their cheap fighters it should have been there.

HMS- This is not a big deal can be done easily , but truly shows lack of req by French air-force. But it does limit the Fighting skill of Jet.

Weapons- When you consider Primary weapon of Rafale as MICA ,it shows a sorry figure . Even though its a decent missile in itself but when you compare it to AIM120c5 which PAF is getting / R77 in IAF arsenal ,it lacks range and high off bore sight capability, the designers bungled the RH seeker and made the rocket too fat and massive for a decent IR missile. Above all its a costly missile, cheaper IR version of MICA is the most common type built and exported ,that to me is sheer waste of design. Regarding METEOR its not yet operational and will be costly when it enters service.

Naval Issue esp for Export- The wings do NOT fold on the Navy version (Rafale M), it is a problem which is a puzzle . Why France went with that theory ,i fail to understand. It does seriously limits deployment nos on Carriers, given Indian navy has sort req of these fighters for its newer carriers

Damocles and ATLIS pod- France hasn't devloped the pods for making it cutting EDGE when compared to LANTRIN/SNIPER/ELTA which keep on evolving with time and better.

finally , Rafale no doubt is an epitome of Delta wing design, but dosent provide enough bang for bucks French are asking.
And all newer technology which they are implementing in phased manner like
New AESA ,
New processors for SPECTRA require lot of funds , French are not yet fully ready
I can bet India is not ready to provide that .
If they it themselves and French gov help ,it will reflect in Pricing of aircraft itself which is already overpriced.

But now I am 100% sure that with growing tensions along India border and IAF getting un-friendly with HAL. Which signals that IAF might be going to give a direct order of 150 Rafael to Dassault which might going to deliver it in 5-6 years on War Footings...

 

[Manindra]

Rafales IMO are also underpowered slightly unlike the previous Mirage Snecma M88 engines which were more powerful. Despite great aesthetics, if this article speaks the truth then I do hope that my government considers such drawbacks.

It won't have much of an issue considering the size and war doctrine (which we don't have on active basis), but the price tag is worrisome as compared to our present F/A-18s and we are better off replacing them with something similar in capabilities and reasonably priced.

Who says Rafale is underpowered. Its each engine give thrust of only 75 kn with afterburner but its advance refined aerodynamics fill the gap.
Rafale carries 9 ton of payload with any agility sacrifice & other hand our Su-30 MKI carry only 8 ton payload despite its each engine give 125 kn thrust with afterburner. Due to low powered high efficient engine Rafale consume less fuel & engine maintainence charges.
People complain Rafale's radar but they spare its highly advance sensitive sensors which also back up radar.

People in these days thinks strategy page article a authentic & analytic source

 

[Black Eagle 90]

Who says Rafale us underpowered. Its each engine give thrust of only 75 kn with afterburner but its advance refined aerodynamics fill the gap.
Rafale carries 9 ton of payload with any agility sacrifice & other hand our Su-30 MKI carry only 8 ton payload despite its each engine give 125 kn thrust with afterburner. Due to low powered high efficient engine Rafale consume less fuel & engine maintainence charges.
People complain Rafale's radar but they spare its highly advance sensitive sensors which also back up radar.

People in these days thinks strategy page article a authentic & analytic source

I think you are more right that others like IAF is buying 200 MMRCA ( may be directly because of its problems with HAL) and INAF might be interested in its IAC-2/3

Taiwan is also looking keen towards it to replace Mirage-2000s and other aircraft as US refused to sell them new F-16s and Brazil is looking in to it.

 

[Black Eagle 90]

If you look at this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_China_Air_Force#Aircraft_inventory

So they have:
55 Mirage-2000s
126+ AIDC *****-1 Ching-kuo
100+ F-5

Which they are keen to replace and even heard that they have and are trying to look for customers for their Mirage-2000s as F-5 can easily be sold in spares to many operators of this aircraft.

 

[Anas Ali]

what is the rafale's RCS ?

 

[Cat12345]

@Anas Ali

the Rafale's RCS is: 0.1~0.3 m2

 

[500]

Rafale bashing article.

1) Rafale has RCS reduction measures. It lacks straight angles, has S-duct and RAM coating.

2) PESA of Rafale is more advanced than EFTs slot array radar. And AESA radar is ready before the EFT.

3) In terms of maneuverability its better than most 4 gen fighters and F-35. Only F-15, EFT and F-22 have more thrust/weight ratio than Rafale.

4) When compare to EFT Rafale has more fuel, better visibility (canards of EFT seriously limit it), more mature AESA and CFT technologies.

 

[Anas Ali]

@Anas Ali

the Rafale's RCS is: 0.1~0.3 m2

if this is true its very good i don't see why this rcs is upsetting like the article suggest

 

[Cat12345]

if this is true its very good i don't see why this rcs is upsetting like the article suggest

It's true and your welcome.