Forum: Modern Military Aircraft

Based on what we know, it seems that the Typhoon should be better than the Rafale in A2A (lower RCS, better maneuverability, supercruise etc.), but apparently the Swiss thought the Rafale was better than the Eurofighter in every category except pilot workload. They favored the Rafale, but of course, Switzerland ended up picking the Gripen for cost reasons.

I don't know how legit this link is, but a Rafale fan boy posted this elsewhere:

http://files.newsnetz.ch/upload//1/2/12332.pdf

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Typhoon with a lower RCS than the Rafale? I would think quite the opposite, which is what has always been claimed to my knowledge. With regards to supercruise, has it ever been definitively declared what the configuration for supercruise was? In all honesty, these two jets are so closely matched anyhow.

HV

Some of the stats from the Swiss competition seem to be due to how long it takes the plane to get off the ground. Also, I believe the Swiss preferred Spectra to DASS.

Either way neither plane has had the funding to develop properly. It's not really a surprise the Swiss chose the Gripen.

For most roles used F-16's will do the job for most countries.

shingen wrote:

Some of the stats from the Swiss competition seem to be due to how long it takes the plane to get off the ground. Also, I believe the Swiss preferred Spectra to DASS.

Either way neither plane has had the funding to develop properly. It's not really a surprise the Swiss chose the Gripen.

For most roles used F-16's will do the job for most countries.

I wonder why Block52+ hasn't been offered to Swiss ? They have good experience with US hardware,very happy with operational availability and performance of F-18.
so why go for a Swedish? is Gripen considerably cheaper than Block52+? on the other hand you have the most combat proven fighter in the world. ( together with F-15 of course)

The US isn't as cooperative when it comes to offsets and ToT, for smaller customers in particular. The US originally offered the F/A-18E/F, but pulled out in April 2008. The Gripen was largely selected on cost grounds. That the Rafale fared so well has multiple reasons, including maturity and operational flexibility. The Typhoon was barely multirole capable at the time of the evaluation and still had some reliability issues with some of its systems in the evaluated configuration. If someone reads the doc properly you will figure that's not only the pilot workload favouring the Typhoon, but also ac performance. It would be interesting to see the mission essential task scores for the first phase of the evaluation. The sole MET score chart available is that from the 2nd phase of the evaluation concerning the airpolicing mission only. It's worth noting that second phase was based on the 2008 flight test results, but the impact of proposed upgrades was taken into account. However a "risk factor" was included in the proposed upgrades, technologies and capabilities further along the road had a lower risk factor than those which were in an earlier development stage.

I'd like to add on side note that the Swiss evaluated the vanilla Gripen. I think a lot of its deficiencies were remedied with the Gripen NG, which is a great low cost multirole fighter IMHO. I guess that's exactly what the Swiss were looking for.

HaveVoid wrote:

Typhoon with a lower RCS than the Rafale? I would think quite the opposite, which is what has always been claimed to my knowledge. With regards to supercruise, has it ever been definitively declared what the configuration for supercruise was? In all honesty, these two jets are so closely matched anyhow.

HV

Wingtip IR missiles and fuselage BVR missiles. No under wing stores or drop tanks since they will add too much drag.

Interesting. I guess the tradeoff then becomes performance versus range. I find it amusing that the numbers I've seen quoted is supercruise at mach 1.1-1.5. I really can't see a EF doing Mach 1.5 w/o burners,unless it uses burner to get up to speed perhaps.

Even the Swiss AF recognised and pointed out Typhoon's supercruise performance stating M 1.4, though tje configuration has not been stated.

Forum: Modern Military Aircraft

Rafale better than EF in A2A?