Yes, I should note that the interview was done in mid-2023, and in early 2024 is when it appears that they had sped up the deliveries of Rafale F.5.
Allegedly this is in response to China’s J-20 undergoing several upgrades and also the fact that the Franco-German SCAF won’t be in service for a long while.
Shame about the SCAF delay, but unsurprising. It’s ballsy of France to bet on the Rafale but its still cool.
I’ll presume for now that the XG is slated to be delivered with the F.5 standard.
I think RBE2XG and Rafale F5 are pushed because RBE2XG might serve as experience for the SCAF radar that we still don’t have any detail about.
maybe, but i dont see what feature sets it has that others dont have with the addition of greater raw tracking ability.
For starters, the RBE2 PESA will have electronic scanning at a time when everyone else in-game will be using mechanical scan (maybe except Mig-31’s PESA). This would allow for far more accurate tracking, greater situational awareness, and better fox 3 performance relative to other radars as the missiles would be quickly updated to a more accurate location and heading of enemy targets, as well as being harder to notch. This would matter far more than radar range.
Once everyone gets AESA, the importance of RBE2 diminishes greatly and Rafale would have to rely on all the other features it has besides its radar.
Being hard to notch is going to be an issue for everyone, eft for example tracks through the notch filter and has a 3 band interlaced mode. As for being the only thing to get AESA, why would it be? American jets were getting AESA around the same time.
I just mean that quicker scan rates from PESA makes it so it quickly picks the target back up once it’s no longer notching.
I said PESA, which is Passive Electronic Scanning Array or something of that sort. Different from AESA which is Active Electronic Scanning Array.
AESA > PESA > Mechanical (if all else being equal).
Only France had gotten PESA in the west for their fighter jets. Pantsir in-game uses PESA. US and rest of Europe skipped PESA and went to AESA. Russia had went from mechanical to PESA to AESA.
Not necessarily
The best Mechanical can beat the worst PESA
I’ll edit what I said so that the sentence is accurate when all other factors are equal.
I don’t see the Rafale coming before AESAs are added.
It’s also a bit premature to talk about advantages between the 3 in game as it has yet to be seen how they will implement ESAs. Our best bet was for an F-2 to start getting ideas, but that was unfortunately muddled into the F-16AJ.
I wouldn’t be surprised if all they did was make the notch gate smaller and turn the scan speed up 500%. AFAIK that’s relatively close to how actual ESAs work while still being simplified enough for the game.
Realistically speaking, yes, I don’t think a properly modeled Rafale F.1 (early) has any place in the game until AESA 4th gens but some people cannot wrap their head around how powerful the Rafale was/is until they see it firsthand in-game.
The F.1 had PESA as its first radar, with TV/IRST, and was a low-observability aircraft.
PESA + TV/ IRST with MAWS/LWS and low-observability is enough to provide an asymmetric balance against AESA only aircrafts like the late US 4th gens (not even including the better flight performance).
They did already implement ESA. You can observe it in the Pantsir in-game. Extremely fast scan rate is the most obvious difference.
And Pantsir’s radar is specifically PESA, so it’s an applicable comparison.
Why would it be ballsy?
It’s a very good aircraft.
Betting on a 4.5th gen over 5th gen when it seems many other countries are going for 5th is ballsy.
It is very very good of course but its still ballsy.
its really not there a lot of capability gaps 5th gens have right now that the rafale can solve all in one aircraft.
If you keep in mind that France is in NATO, that the only aspect of 5th gen, which also is a marketing term, is absolute focus on stealth technology, while France seeks to maintain autonomy, capability or in short sovereignty whereever possible it is a most reasonable choice.
Wether a fleet of F-35 would dominate a fleet of Rafale or Eurofighter as handily as some people would have you believe is questionable.
Especially in a prolonged conflict.
While France of course would also fight alongside F-35 anyway.
Germany bought F-35 to replace Tornado in the nuclear bomb sharing role with the US.
Wether Germany would have bought F-35 otherwise is questionable.
So many more factors to look at.
Sticking to Rafale or Eurofighter for now is more conservative than ballsy I’d say.
Ballsy would have been if Germany had bought Rafale and ASMP instead of F-35 to enter a nuclear sharing contract with France.
And you forgot that France is Currently skipping full 5th gen, to go in 6th gen with SCAF ^^"
I did not…
On that very post of yours, you did not say it,…
It is more or less the baseline for why it might be resonable to stick to Rafale or Eurofighter while autonomy is French doctrine of course.
We are both talking past each other I just noticed.