France now equipping Rafale with AESA radar

www.flightglobal.com...

French industry is pinning its hopes for reviving the flagging export fortunes of the Dassault Rafale fighter on the entry into production this month of Europe's first active electronically scanned array radar.

"This capability has ended its development phase and is now entering into the production phase," says Thales Airborne Systems chief executive Pierre-Yves Chaltiel.

they need a sale and this might be the key - after snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, twice - they need this really.

France, has taken time to mature the future specification of its indigenous Rafale fighter with more home grown technology, once more proving the nation's capability to design & built such an extraordinarily versatile, potent & cabable aircraft plus a made to measure weapons suite: MICA, METEOR, SCALP`- EG, MBDA, EXOCET AM39 and the awsome ASMP (nuclear stand-off missile). Not to mention such important & effective, perfectly integrated systems such as OSF (Front Sector Optronics) + the famous SPECTRA and the 'Nouvelle Generation' reconnaissance pod. No other aicraft can equal or compare with this potency & effective versatility now to be enhanced with the new active radar and hopefully with up-rated SCEMA M-88 - 3+ engines maybe with 360º thrust vectoring (why not?).
France needs to be confident of the product it has managed to develop & put into operation all by it-self. A real tribute to French competency 6 design flair capability.
Let no one doubt that this aircraft is second to none in all areas, this precisely being the extraordinary point. All it now has to do to prove this, is not to concentrate on exporting the same but to optimise its performance by creating dedicated squadrons for instance for the air-defence of french territory role with the priority inclusion of all the latest cutting edge tecnology, as the finest way to portray the planes undeniable capabilities.
If for instance, pitted against Raptor or the future SU-35 Rafale prevails, no further discussion is nessesary!? For this however the SAGEM "GERFAUT" must also become standard equipment & operational in order to maximise the MICA missile's proven thrust vectoring capabilities (the only missile to have shot down an object trailing the firing aircraft).
This is probably already feasable. Today's Rafale may be cabable of tracking and locking - on to Raptor without emiting any (radar) warning just with OSF + MICA - IR's + detecting Raptor with Spectra.
Let us remember that French electronics are state of the art (they have to be) and designed to be capable of ensuring an aircrafts penetration + survival on a nuclear attack mission in the central European theatre & furher (ie Mirage 1V & 200N). Not to mention a flight of Rafales were to use data link to the maximum.

Incidetally, I happen to be British by nationality but was born & live in Spain!

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The Rafale is a superb aircraft and the French industry is mightlily impressive, but I think that some of the sentiment in that last post was a bit OTT.

Second to none? I'm not exactly sure I'd go that far. Also, the Meteor is not French. The B in MBDA stands for BAE.

Certainly it's one of the best looking modern fighters



An AESA radar can only sweeten the package - hopefully it finally garnishes Rafale some foreign buyers.

reply to post by xmotex


Nah I give that honor to the Grippen then the Raptor IMHO.

The French seem willing to also give away the store it seems in terms of of tech tranpher and offsets so they may get that export sale they crave.

It will be interesting to see how Thales get on with this project. They have little or no experience of manufacturing an AESA and integrating it with existing systems. There is also the question of what compromises will have to be made to fit an ASEA in that very small nose area.

Rafale is a nice, light, 4th gen fighter. But if you read some of the posts from French enthusiasts on other sites, you would think its abilities were extraterrestrial. Its current engines are mediocre and are proving to be less robust than hoped for. It is still unable to laser designate by itself due to delays in introducing the Damocles pod. Mica is an unexceptional missile. The main consequence of it's failure to secure sales is that sales revenues were to be used for the ongoing development of Rafale. Without a number of significant export orders (not face saving 'give aways' or a handful of aircraft to countries like Libya) Rafale will never get the development funds it needs.

reply to post by Fang


Tales is also part of the Euroradar CAESER due to be fitted to the Typhoon from tranche 3 ownwards - so i would say they do have the ability.

The only problems i have heard of is one of heat - apparantly it gets very hot in teh nose of the rafale.

Originally posted by Harlequin
reply to post by Fang

 

Tales is also part of the Euroradar CAESER due to be fitted to the Typhoon from tranche 3 ownwards - so i would say they do have the ability.

The only problems i have heard of is one of heat - apparantly it gets very hot in teh nose of the rafale.

I'm not sure they are. I tthink the Euroradar consortium is SELEX, EADS, Galileo Avionica and Indra. The TALES radar is the RBE2 and I'm sure this is their first stab at building one.