I mean, im gonna catch flak for this considering the thread, but the SEP it had at high alt was absolutely absurd. Afaik there was no reason to believe the Rafale should be exceeding the F-15E/I or EFT in high alt high speed acceleration considering the engines, TWR, and probs the aerodynamics at play as well. Thats simply not what the Rafale is designed for, not as far as I can tell at least.
The HUD fixes/improvements are gonna be nice if they come through tho.
I mean it seems accurate to change it
And I don’t think it would effect gameplay for the most part, not once have I had those conditions in a match
Seems the lack of range on mica now makes it fiddly to engage just about anything first with Rafale. Not sure why they brought the Russians to parity with everyone else but left us behind. Su 30 SM feels better engaging a rafale than engaging su 30 with Rafale.
I don’t see fireball’s report holding up.
From his excerpts, he basically claim that the top speed of the rafale is under Mach1.8, capped by the engines, while primary sources already stated Mach1.9 is achievable commonly, while Mach 2 has already been achieved several times.
As mentioned by people in the FTTR, it does look like more that the datapoints are using G404 equipped rafale rather than m88.
That would seem more coherent as the G404 is known to be very bad in supersonic regime, as seen on the gripes with its inability to supercruise for exemple, or the F18s with pretty terrible supersonic speed and acceleration
Gripens can supercruise actually.
Oh I thought it barely reach Mach 1. How fast does it actually goes ?
Iirc Gripen C with 4 missiles and drop tank can supercruise at altitude while Gripen E can do it with fully loaded.
But not in game ? Or can it ?
I don’t have it so I can’t check
In game it can supercruise with 2 to 4 missiles on low fuel at 3-4k alt, havent excessively tested tho.
Afaik even the first Rafale C came with M-88-2 engines, only the Rafale A used the G404 and later changed, but the engines are still pretty similar, considering the Rafale A prototype completed flights with one engine being the M-88-2 and the other a G404.
Rafale C01 did test the G404 at the beginning, circa 1990-1991
I thought the rafale C was built with the m88 from the start, the m88 is quite a bit smaller in size than the g404.
Not to be the guy but it seems Flame has personal crusade against other European Delta Canards, he also made a bug report about Gripen’s sustained turn rate according to British MOD documents.
Fireball_2020 posted the Rafale report, Flame2512 posted the Gripen report.
Both seem to have the same source, which is a declassified british defense report.
I think they’re both british.
I don’t think he has a hate
C01 was a prototype platform owned by dassault, not an actual C. It’s not a complete platform that is intended for the Air Force. It did use G404 at the beginning.
Also, just so you know, G404 and M88 aren’t so different that they could be impossible to mount in a m88 engine bay. The rafale A did carry both at the same time at some point to make the initial tests of the M88
Also in general, jumping on @Panther2995 remark.
First fireball and flame are two different people.
Secondly, they both source the British MoD for their source.
Thirdly, as usual with British info, I take their claim with a mountain sized grain of salt (they are very adept at distorting the truth or outright lying).
Visibly, their claim that they have received access to actual Dassault datapoints for the rafale is untrue. They apparently have asked, but dassault denied after asking the French MoD if they could.
But since they « asked », they pass their open sources research as if it was actual data.
Anyway, this is still unclear at the moment, some information needs to be confirmed and sourced.
But if it is indeed open source data, then they probably got information about the G404 equipped rafales, as the M88 data wasn’t made available until a few months/years after fireball claimed MoD statements.
This is untrue the info was given as there were backup plans to buy the Rafale if the Eurofighter hadn’t worked out and where given the info from Dassault
There is no proof that they made fake performance documents on the Rafale
Yea it could be but as you’re said i’ve take those claims with grain of salt.
As for the confusing their names my bad on that part.
And there is no proof that their sources about Rafale’s performance is hundred percent accurate, cause if we take it their source as the main one we should also reduce EFT’s top speed to 1.8 due to RAF’s official web page.
I did not say they were fake.
I say that the MoD probably did not have access to infos straight from Dassault. They claim that they have asked for it, and then make a comparaison using data.
If the fact that dassault was not allowed to share them data is true, the only data the MoD would have had access would have been the only data known at the time which would be of G404 equipped rafales.