The NGJ pods is an interesting read, seems to be finally catching up to what the Rafale has been capable of. Keep in mind that the Rafale has AESA antenna jammers that protect it in a completely spherical coverage while some sources suggest that not even the F-35 is capable of such.
Source: Navair
Thanks to AESA jammers coming with NGJ pods, the Growler is capable of providing protection in a 360 azimuth but I don’t believe it is full spherical like the Rafale’s, so I wouldn’t claim just yet that it is greater in capabilities.
Here you can see that the Rafale is capable of jamming in a 360 degree basis, so both ingress and egress.
Obviously, dedicated jamming aircraft will use far more powerful jammers. I believe a growler at full power can emit up to 10KW. They are made to protect other aircrafts as well, such as other fighters or bombers in a formation. The F35 also apparently has pretty powerful jammers, in the order of 1000W, more powerful than the Rafale (in the order of 100W), then again, because they need to be able to jam for other aircrafts. The numbers I give are what I have seen in other discussions about EW, and I have no sources for them. I however believe they are a pretty fair representation of jammers emissions power
France on the other hand, going 100% rafale in the future, maybe with a few Mirage 2000 in uncontested areas, does not have that need for jamming multiple aircrafts at the same time. Thus, the SPECTRA is designed to only cover the aircraft it’s installed on, but with the emphasis being made to give the largest coverage possible, that is spherical, which only the f35 currently could claim to be able to do so for other fighter jets. (At least I thought it did until @DirectSupport last comment)
In game ?
IRL it probably can as well, just not with a full loadout. The goal of a catapult assisted launch is to get in the air a fully loaded and fuelled airplane that can strike at its max range. There’s a reason why the F35B has an even worse range than even the more normal f35s.
While the Growler is said to be more powerful, it did lack AESA jammers for a long time. The Rafale makes up for the lack of power through AESA jammers which provides directional beams to jam specific radars and missiles. This capability was not there for the Growler until just this past December with the NGJ pods implying that Growlers without NGJ pods lack specific capabilities.
not only its not that silly, it’s very practical because dedicated sead aircrafts are not always available, so it’s strategically a very powerful advantage
What’s so good about the all-Rafale strategy of France is as long as they have a fighter, they can have an interceptor, an air superiority fighter, a reconnaissance aircraft, a sead aircraft, a bomber/attacker, a nuclear deterrent, a small tanker, etc etc
They just need to have the needed weaponry available, which is easier to have than a whole aircraft
Because while it is very capable it cannot hide. You could not fly a Rafale to Moscow and ignore all the Russian Radar and SAMs. No EW suite has that power
Yeah I think the sentiment was, France doesn’t need a dedicated SEAD aircraft, not that it doesn’t need SEAD. The US needs Growler to cover several aircrafts at a time while the Rafale each can take care of themselves if that makes sense.
I think you misunderstand the conversation around the rafale and SEAD. France does not use SEAD specific planes, just like most nations in the world, because it’s not cost effective. When you have only around 360 combat planes (air and naval forces combined), and who knows how many can actually fly (while other are in maintenance, upgrade work…), you can’t spare airframes to do just SEAD, Air superiority…
The Rafale tries to do the second best option : do about everything, and do it good. Best ? Certainly not. As seen previously, dedicated American EW planes are much more powerful because they have to protect EW deficient jets. But the rafale just has to take care of itself, so that’s not a big downside to not have that capability. Is it the most manoeuvrable ? No, but it can defend itself against most jets. Does it have the most powerful radar (AESA included) ? No, again. And the list goes on.
However, a very large effort was made in integrating and fusing a large array of systems, so that, even if they are not the best individually (and sometimes might be the best), they create an overall system that is about as good as other dedicated systems used by other countries.
So, thanks to the fusion between RWR, OSF and weapon systems, the rafale is able to geolocate an enemy radar emission and destroy it with minimal effort with non SEAD specific weaponry about just as good as dedicated SEAD aircrafts for exemple (see for exemple red flag exercise where the Rafale was apparently able to perform SEAD specific missions just as well as the F16CJ, which is apprarently a SEAD specific aircraft) :
So no, it’s not “You don’t need SEAD aircraft”, it’s “You don’t need SEAD specific aircraft”, and I don’t think it’s that silly if you are not the US or China, and actually have a limited amont of ressources
The Rafale due to not being Stealth in the conventional way or 5th gen needs to really rely on its ECM suite. The dedicated SEAD aircraft is very much a thing of the past. The sensor fusion the Rafale, Typhoon and F-35 have demonstrated means you can undertake the task with a singular airframe type.
Best way to kill a long range SAM like an S-400 is to use a long range missile like a SCALP/LRASM/TAURUS
Only really US that has dedicated ECM Airframes and Germany. The rest integrate these capabilities into the aircraft.
