Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning and F-22 'Raptor' : News & Discussion

It's not possible for the Rafale to be better than the F-35.

The Rafale is the clear best aircraft otherwise no doubt. But realistically the F-35 cost 50 billion dollars to develop. It was the 3rd stealth aircraft for the USA. This is the country with experience building the F-16.

How could it really turn out bad?

Also, any active cancellation that makes the Rafale so good, would be more effective on a LO aircraft.
 
Chief of Finnish Air Force, Jokinen Pasi says in capability scoring F-35 achieved 4.47 (where 4.0 was requirement), next best got 3.81(super hornet or gripen). 64 jets with tooling, spares, comprehensive weapons package.
 
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GASOLINE_ON_FIRE said:
This line makes no sense. You are projecting, since, majority of the indians on this forum are passive viewers and rarely post. Just like, this is the first time I have posted on this thread, since:
1. F-22, F-35 have nothing to do with India
2. This thread easily becomes a cesspit of rafale fanboys vs f-35 fanboys.
So, naturally people stay away from the mudslinging going on.

Also, majority of the people(indians & non-indians) understand 2 basic facts:
1. A 4+ gen fighter, no matter, even if gold plated will never be able to compete with a proper 5th gen aircraft.
2. Defence deals like this will always include politics, and US has more clout than France and outspends them by a large margin due to larger economy. Simple.

People who usually indulge in these fanboys vs fanboys fights have too much free time. And The Indians who were on the side of Rafale were doing so just because India bought rafale and they wanted to feel validated(basically coping). Had India bought F-35, they would be cheering for that plane.

Regardless, this thread does have a lot of useful information but it was pretty clear that f-35 was gonna win. Most of the countries that bought rafale did so because they couldn't buy f-35 or wanted to be free of US pressure and nonsense that comes with it. Rafale users bought that plane because of reasons other than merit of plane itself, which is fine.

Congrats to finns for their shiny new f-35s.
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What I meant was active members only. Regret for not making that clear in first place. Though I am pretty old forumer now but still it's pretty hard to remember those not active since new forum started, excluding a decade spent in other domestic and foreign forums spent, mostly reading the stuff.
 
sunstersun said:
It's not possible for the Rafale to be better than the F-35.

The Rafale is the clear best aircraft otherwise no doubt. But realistically the F-35 cost 50 billion dollars to develop. It was the 3rd stealth aircraft for the USA. This is the country with experience building the F-16.

How could it really turn out bad?
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I seem to be completely overwhelmed by the new conditions for the production of weapon systems:

Normally, for me, producing under the conditions of the F-35 programme is a total aberration. But it is the greatest industrial success of military aeronautics, and moreover everyone seems to be satisfied except sometimes the US.

I'm from a different era.
Also, any active cancellation that makes the Rafale so good, would be more effective on a LO aircraft.
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But Rafale is a LO aircraft, F-35 is a VLO aircraft and the approach of the Rafale is that LO + SPECTRA = VLO
 
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Everything Tesla did seemed like a jackass until it worked.
Picdelamirand-oil said:
I seem to be completely overwhelmed by the new conditions for the production of weapon systems:

Normally, for me, producing under the conditions of the F-35 programme is a total aberration. But it is the greatest industrial success of military aeronautics, and moreover everyone seems to be satisfied except sometimes the US.

I'm from a different era.

But Rafale is a LO aircraft, F-35 is a VLO aircraft and the approach of the Rafale is that LO + SPECTRA = VLO
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This is nothing new, it's just social media has made it 1000 x more viral and aware/unaware(focused/confused about what matters)

F-16 was known as coffin-maker, the Pentagon Wars is about the Bradley, and the first version of the Patriot hit something like 28% of targets.

When people say the F-35 is too big to fail they mean it literally. There is literally too much money, industrial resources, and intellectual capital to fail.

Ok but what about the VLO aircraft + Spectra(hypothetical) = Super VLO?
 
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sunstersun said:
When people say the F-35 is too big to fail they mean it literally. There is literally too much money, industrial resources, and intellectual capital to fail.
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But for me it's a failure, only we don't realise it's a failure because we don't really need it, but the day we do need it, the failure that will be revealed will be in proportion to everything we've put into this project that will be useless. It will be a revelation of catastrophic proportions.
 
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Picdelamirand-oil said:
But for me it's a failure, only we don't realise it's a failure because we don't really need it, but the day we do need it, the failure that will be revealed will be in proportion to everything we've put into this project that will be useless. It will be a revelation of catastrophic proportions.
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Well we're all doomed if that's true, India, France and USA.

so it's probably not true.
 
sunstersun said:
It's not possible for the Rafale to be better than the F-35.

The Rafale is the clear best aircraft otherwise no doubt. But realistically the F-35 cost 50 billion dollars to develop. It was the 3rd stealth aircraft for the USA. This is the country with experience building the F-16.

How could it really turn out bad?

Also, any active cancellation that makes the Rafale so good, would be more effective on a LO aircraft.
Click to expand...
$72 billion, in year 2012 dollars.
 
The package LM offered to Finland was rivaled only by Saab. JASSM-ER, AIM-9XII, AIM-120D, SBD I and SBD II, major industrial support and investment, it was an all around offer that, when coupled with an aircraft that is still in it's infancy versus competitors nearing the later stages of their upgrade cycles, made the choice for the F-35 a clear winner. The whole package won. But the F-35 was also judged to be the superior aircraft in performance and cost, which for performance isn't overly surprising, but the cost is getting cheaper and cheaper every year as a global industrial base is being built and brought online.

An overlooked aspect is Finland's commonality with Denmark and Norway, which makes servicing and cross-training much simpler as the support infrastructure will exist in each nation. It's a huge boon for Finland that two of its three closest neighbors use the same aircraft.

That the F-35 was judged as having superior performance in everything ranging from range to situational awareness and survivability is just the icing on the cake.

...

Christmas tree formation.

Capture.PNG
 
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Draughr said:
The package LM offered to Finland was rivaled only by Saab. JASSM-ER, AIM-9XII, AIM-120D, SBD I and SBD II, major industrial support and investment, it was an all around offer that, when coupled with an aircraft that is still in it's infancy versus competitors nearing the later stages of their upgrade cycles, made the choice for the F-35 a clear winner. The whole package won. But the F-35 was also judged to be the superior aircraft in performance and cost, which for performance isn't overly surprising, but the cost is getting cheaper and cheaper every year as a global industrial base is being built and brought online.

An overlooked aspect is Finland's commonality with Denmark and Norway, which makes servicing and cross-training much simpler as the support infrastructure will exist in each nation. It's a huge boon for Finland that two of its three closest neighbors use the same aircraft.

That the F-35 was judged as having superior performance in everything ranging from range to situational awareness and survivability is just the icing on the cake.

...

Christmas tree formation.

View attachment 22034
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Seeing Gripen dominate in this and the Canadian deal, I wonder if the gripen could end up being the MMRCA 2 winner. The ES/05 is the most advanced AESA in the market right now and with its weapons suite and ew, I don't know.
 
AbRaj said:
So beyond all the hype, it’s clear that a Fourth gen non stealth fighter has no chance against a Fifth gen LO fighter.
Clearly it’s not that unexpected.
I think we in India now should look seriously to counter the upcoming upgraded J20 and J35.
J35 can be tackled by AMCA(possibly) and for J20, we need some novel solution.
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Yep. This tender makes it clear that the IAF needs the Su-57.

Anyway, AMCA is an ASF, it can take on the J-20. But by the time it comes in numbers, J-20 will be 20 years old, with the Chinese already flying a 6th gen jet in large numbers by then.
 
sunstersun said:
Well we're all doomed if that's true, India, France and USA.

so it's probably not true.
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Nah, even if it turns out to be true, the US's main hitter will be the NGAD + B-21 combo. Only the primary ASF matters, everything else can be scrubs.

I wouldn't worry about the F-35 failing as long as NGAD picks up the slack.
 
Picdelamirand-oil said:
But Rafale is a LO aircraft, F-35 is a VLO aircraft and the approach of the Rafale is that LO + SPECTRA = VLO
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This is where Rafale fanboys go past the point of reality and bring scorn and ridicule.
randomradio said:
Based on Korean terminologies, Rafale would be an RO aircraft, reduced obserable (<0.1m2), not LO (<0.01m2).
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India has the SU-57 at 0.5 m2. Do you really want to say the Rafale is 0.1? Even clean without tanks and missiles, I don't think the Rafale is 0.1
 
Optimist said:
India has the SU-57 at 0.5 m2. Do you really want to say the Rafale is 0.1? Even clean without tanks and missiles, I don't think the Rafale is 0.1
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That's average RCS, not frontal RCS. The Su-57 is VLO. So, while the Su-57's frontal RCS is insect class, the Rafale's is 0.1m2 class.

The Su-57 was said to be 40 times smaller than the Su-30, ie 0.5m2. The Canadians claim the F-35's RCS is 95% smaller than a typical fighter jet, which in their case is the Hornet, with an RCS of 3m2. 5% of 3m2 gives us 0.15m2. Which makes it 20 times smaller.

So the Su-57's 0.5m2 is competitive with the F-35's 0.15m2, or a difference of 3.3 times. As per the Russians, the F-22 is at 0.3m2, a difference of just 1.6 times versus the Su-57. And when it comes to frontal RCS, all three are in a similar class. To have any sort of tactical advantage with RCS alone, you need a 10-20 times difference, as long as your sensors do not compensate for the difference. You need 16 times the difference to reduce your detection range by half.

And the Su-57's airframe is still WIP and being refined further in new versions.

In case of the Rafale, even with active cancellation, its frontal RCS is still not competitive with the F-35 anyway. As per Dassault, through a program called DEDIRA, SPECTRA reduced the frontal RCS of the Rafale from 0.1m2 to 0.0001m2 class when clean, ie, similar to the F-22, F-35 and Su-57. But Picdel says it's actually 0.001m2, and with weapons it reduces to 0.01m2. So that's still a 100 times difference between the F-35 and Rafale, hence the F-35 retains its tactical advantage.
 
I can't put up official numbers. I think the sites that claim above 1.0 m2 is more credible. We can speculate, I disagree with your speculation. The Rafale doesn't have the design features found of low RCS fighters. Starting from the top, with the vertical tail, delta wing, external canopy bow and fuel probe. There are more design differences. Where do you want to start?
 
Optimist said:
I can't put up official numbers. I think the sites that claim above 1.0 m2 is more credible. We can speculate, I disagree with your speculation. The Rafale doesn't have the design features found of low RCS fighters. Starting from the top, with the vertical tail, delta wing, external canopy bow and fuel probe. There are more design differences. Where do you want to start?
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0.1m2 is standard for all these more modern 4th gen fighters though.

Su-30 = 15m2
Mig-29 = 5m2
Su-35 = 2m2
F-16 = 1.2m2
M2000 = 0.8m2
LCA Mk1 = 0.3m2

SH, Rafale, EF, Gripen E etc = 0.1m2

KF-X-roadmap.jpg
 
Bruno Revellin Falcoz (then Technical General director at Dassault Aviation) said once (while adding that it was a quite secret data) that the RCS of the rafale was the same as a sparrow

What is the RCS of a sparrow ?

And the LO caracteristics of the rafale are quite special: the shape of the plane is treated so that all reflections surfaces concentrate the residual waves towards some "peaks". Did you see where spectra's emitters are placed ? good ! you've found those peaks :)
 
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