I asked myself the question of when the well known Rafale would be added to the french air tech tree.
As I researched trough the internet I found that the first flight of Rafale was in 1986 on the fourth of july . Right after this I looked up the first flight of the jas39 Gripen which was in 1988 on the 9th of december.
The diverent betwen these 2 flights are just 2 years in which case flew the rafale the first.
So heres my question why is the Rafale still not in the game ?
If yall think the Rafale would be too op, then just add the Rafale A just like GripenA and the F-15A
and give it current french missles: the Magic 2s and the 530Ds. But if yall still think that you couldnt add a prototype or the community wouldnt like that, then my counter would be that yall already did it with a few planes and even one of the newest plane added the Mirage 4000 which never went into prodution and is cause of this a prototype. Another fact is that if the Rafale A would be in the Game, france
had a way better chance of competing with other nations like Russia or USA. Iam not saying that france couldnt keep up with them but if you compare them in real life situations the USA and Russia
would win in most situations.
-So my final please is to add the early Rafale or the Rafale A into the french air tech tree.-
(if youre asking where I found the dates just search in google and the dates should stand there)
Rafale A with in-game missiles would be great whenever.
Rafale M F1 among the first wave of Fox-3 equipped 4th gens
Later versions… Later
People need to understand that European aircraft also have a number of subvariants with increasing capabilities, even if those are not as dramatically different or frequently discussed as variants of American or Russian aircraft. So no Meteors or MICA-IR yet, but that’s fine because there are models of the Rafale without those.
First flights, manufacture dates, date of adoption into service… none of that matters. Gaijin adds in vehicles based on capability. The Rafale if added to the game now instead of the M4K would clap literally everything.
Not to be a killjoy, but we likely will not see this plane for a good while, possibly not until some time in 2025. The Mirage 2000 5F is still waiting on the MICA missile to be added, both EM and IR, depending on how adventurous gaijin is feeling. It’s a very good plane in flight performance but right now is held back by a subpar weapon and radar suite, but given that gaijin is reworking modern radars and is actively developing fox 3s, it’s likely that this will be France’s top tier contender for a good while. The 4000 is out of the question for carrying MICA missiles unfortunately. Still, I do feel like once things get adjusted the 2000 5F will be a very enjoyable plane.
Date of service/first flight means nothing in the game.
Trust me, there is no French plane family i want more than the Mighty rafale, but the game right now is not ready for it.
Best things to do would be than both EF for UK/ITA/GER and Rafale for France come together as an “European Canards” named update, since you can’t find planes that close in capability. But i doubt it is even for this year 2024.
It will come, but not soon.
We still have room for improvment before rafales:
Mirage 2000-5F (getting MICAs soon i hope)-> Mirage 2000-5F MkII → Mirage 2000-9 → Rafale C and variants
Mirage 2000D-R1 → Mirage 2000D-R2 → Mirage 2000D RMV → Rafale B and variants
And for a naval line i wish we got, Super Etendard → Super Etendard Modernisé → Rafale M and variants.
France got better than anyone except Russia and maybe sweden last major update with the mirage 4000. Doesn’t have to deal with miniscule mouse movement=wing rip bs. However, the rafale is a pretty cool airplane, think it would go well with the f-18 and maybe f-14d.
Well there is way shorter possibles planes that what you say
if the actual Mirage 2000-5F has ground poundings weaponry, it’s because they said they mixed up the French service 2000-5F and the 2000-5 MKII, so this one is out of the picture
The Mirage 2000-9 is basically an exported 2000-5 MKII, so it would be a copy paste of the actual heresy that is the 2000-5F in game.
The only way i see another 2000-5 coming, outside of a premium/event, is if they rename the current one 2000-5 MKII and add a new Mirage 2000-5F, but i don’t think they will bother with that.
on the 2000D side, i don’t think they will bother with the 2000D-R2 either, because it would be too redundant with the 2000D RMV. It would be better to directly add this one with its new 30mm gunpod that doesn’t take any GBU hardpoints, and maybe just Magic 2 if the MICA IR is not ready not be added, like they are doing with the 2000-5F.
And for the Super Etendard, the one we have is already an SEM one, a weird mix of differents standards however.
So what i see as possible for this year outside of the Rafale is Mirage 2000D RMV and Mirage F1 MF2000 ( with RDY radar and 2 MICA EM/IR instead of the Super 530F )
"The prototype, piloted by Jean-Marie Saget, made its maiden flight on March 9, 1979, one year after the Mirage 2000, reaching a speed of Mach 1.6. On April 11, during its sixth test flight, the aircraft exceeded Mach 2, thanks to two M-53 engines taken from the Mirage 2000 program.
From the 280th flight (May 22, 1987), the single Mirage 4000 is powered by Snecma M53-P2 engines, then from the 319th flight (September 16, 1987), it carries out tests from Istres as part of the ACX Rafale program. It flew for 18 minutes at Mach 2 on December 22, 1987."
Way more than a “paper plane” with all these flights x)
Didn’t take off in sales saddly, but still was a really good testbed for the Rafale. Some sort of ancestor of it.
Ig I was right. 1972 for the f15a on Wikipedia. Y’know the f15c msip first production model was 1985. Gripen is from 1988, and the production su-27 ingame is 1985. Kinda weird tbh.
Ye kinda dumb. Some ppl say stuff about how it has some stealth design choices but I think that’s in the later models, not what we would get in game. Even if Im wrong, it probably won’t be stealthy enough to cause a huge impact
I’m not a pro in stealth, and I’m sure the demonstrator was not that stealth, but yes, the Rafale today does use some stealth technology.
The general shape, the materials used, and all the electronic sensors and countermeasures.
Indeed, it’s not at the level of an F-35 (apparently the next variant in work(Rafale F5) will be even stealthier than the actual one), but even today, its radar icon is greatly reduced, and it’s not a large aircraft for start ^^
Also, we don’t use the same techniques. I think the Rafale is more focused on jamming than simply be invisible.
