Forum: F-16 versus XYZ

Dassault is very keen to export Rafale, so it is not difficult to find the information about Rafale....

Web-sites for the Rafale:

http://antislashe.free.fr/
http://antislashe.free.fr/fly2.htm
http://www.janes.com/press/pc020628_1.shtml
http://www.eurofighter.starstreak.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=698
http://www.rafale.com.sg/Files/Aerospace2002/RafaleGB2002.pdf
http://home.arcor.de/scorpion82/European%20Air%20Power/Rafale.pdf
http://new.isoshop.com/dae/dae/gauche/sponsors/sponsor_rafale/img/fox3_1.pdf
http://new.isoshop.com/dae/dae/gauche/sponsors/sponsor_rafale/img/fox3_2.pdf
http://new.isoshop.com/dae/dae/gauche/sponsors/sponsor_rafale/img/fox3_3.pdf
http://new.isoshop.com/dae/dae/gauche/sponsors/sponsor_rafale/img/fox3_4.pdf
http://new.isoshop.com/dae/dae/gauche/sponsors/sponsor_rafale/img/fox3_5.pdf
http://new.isoshop.com/dae/dae/gauche/sponsors/sponsor_rafale/img/fox3_6.pdf
http://new.isoshop.com/dae/dae/gauche/sponsors/sponsor_rafale/img/fox3_7.pdf
http://www.snecma.com/en/news/snecma_magazine/6/1SNEMAG006_24a35_ENG_baf.pdf
http://www.jedonline.com/default.asp?func=articles&year=2002&month=11&page=0211j13&doct=cover%20story

Magazines for RAFALE:

IAPR 2002 June
AIR FORCE MONTHLY 2002 July
Combat Aircraft 2002 October
AIR INTERNATIONAL 2003 June
AIR FORCE MONTHLY 2003 December

The data that I informed above is just a little fragments of the information about Rafale....

As far as I know, the Rafale is the only non-US NG fighter that has fighten every "Teen" fighters:

versus the MIRAGE-2000C and MIRAGE-2000F of the FAF and building up the BVR tactics for Rafale.
4 Rafale-M v.s 12 Super-Etendard..........It should be a turkey-hunting..
Dog-fighting with F-14D and F/A-18 C/D for several times during the operation of "Endure Freedom" in 2002. The pilots of 12F of French navy declared that they had won the most of the games, and F/A-18 C/D was the more tough guy than F-14D during the Dog-fighting (AFM, 2002, July)
http://new.isoshop.com/dae/dae/gauche/s ... fox3_7.pdf
versus the F-16 and MIRAGE-2000 of Hellenic AF in 2002, the result is unknown.
2 Rafale-M versus the 4 F-16 MLU of Belgian AF in 2002 for stimulating BVR combat, the result is unclear.
4 Rafale-M versus the 4 F-15S and 4 Tornado IDS of Royal Saudi AF during the Red Shark exercise in 2004, and won the games in both BVR and WVR.
http://www.snecma.com/en/news/snecma_ma ... NG_baf.pdf

F-16.net Sponsor

First of all hiya guys! New here and from the UK and also a lover of F-16s

First of all a few people have said it depends on the quality of the pilot. Believe me the French boys are very good indeed, as anyone who has seen them fly at airshows will testify. Watch the display they put on with the mirage 2000, i have never seen a better turning jet apart from maybe gripen, and the dive towards the ground where the 2000 just hangs motionless before taking off is just breathtaking!!!! and if the navy boys have got the gripen now (I remember them flying the crusader at the RIAT one year, and that is the best display I have ever seen bar none) it is in very good hands.

Also people say dog fighting is a thing of the past, that the latest american jet will take any enemy down before it gets to that, but the USAF learnt that mistake with the phantom, which is why later versions were fitted with cannons specifically for dogfighting. To me the Raptor looks like a big heavy jet that would get its **** kicked in a dog fight with a small lithe European fighter like Eurofighter, gripen or rafale or even mirage 2000. But F-16 is a different matter, in the right hands it could stay with any 4th generation jet which is amazing for a 30 year old design!!! but lets not kid ourselves here, it is down to pilot skill and there is a league of pilots, Russian, American, British, Swedish, French, Israeli are miles in front of say syrian, iraqui, iranian, romanian or egyptian no matter what they are flying Very Happy

Hey madaboutdeltics, I don't really think basing how well an entire Air Force flys on their demo team is very accurate at all. It's like saying who can run faster between two amputees.

madaboutdeltics, please do a little more research on the Raptor. It can easily outmaneuver a Viper in a dogfight. Two engines with 35,000 lbs thrust each and a max takeoff weight somewhere around 55,000 pounds means that the Raptor has a thrust to weight ratio of greater than one to one even when fully loaded. It also has thrust vectoring which means that it can still point its nose even when it's slow and it's not limited in turning as much as the Viper is by its aerodynamic control surfaces. All of this leads me to believe that the Raptor will win the day in a dogfight.

Some interesting news about Rafale:

At low-level, Rafale can fly at 450 knots for 1 h 30 min in a clean configuration.
Rafale can climb to 40,000 feet in under two minutes and accelerate very rapidly to supersonic speed.
More significantly, it can supercruise in dry power, even with four missiles and a belly drop tank.
French Navy sent three Rafale fighters to Florennes, in Belgium, to take part in the prestigious Tactical Leadership Programme. During the exercise, they flew 50.6 flying hours in 28 sorties, recording a remarkable 100% mission availability rate. The Rafales were mainly used in the escort role and usually took off first and landed last after two hours airborne without in-flight refuelling, a testimony of their outstanding endurance.
Airfield performance is impressive too, with a 500 metre takeoff distance and a 400 metre landing run, even without a brake chute.

Source: http://new.isoshop.com/dae/dae/gauche/s ... fox3_8.pdf

toan wrote:

Some interesting news about Rafale:

At low-level, Rafale can fly at 450 knots for 1 h 30 min in a clean configuration.
Rafale can climb to 40,000 feet in under two minutes and accelerate very rapidly to supersonic speed.
More significantly, it can supercruise in dry power, even with four missiles and a belly drop tank.
French Navy sent three Rafale fighters to Florennes, in Belgium, to take part in the prestigious Tactical Leadership Programme. During the exercise, they flew 50.6 flying hours in 28 sorties, recording a remarkable 100% mission availability rate. The Rafales were mainly used in the escort role and usually took off first and landed last after two hours airborne without in-flight refuelling, a testimony of their outstanding endurance.
Airfield performance is impressive too, with a 500 metre takeoff distance and a 400 metre landing run, even without a brake chute.

Source: http://new.isoshop.com/dae/dae/gauche/s ... fox3_8.pdf

İf it is such a good fighter,can anyone tell me why nobody buys it except France..

Forum Veteran Joined: Apr 16, 2005 - 03:16 PM Posts: 800

From what I know it usually fares well in competitions.. It often ends in the top 2 or 3 contenders.

Wonder how the F-16 would do if they threw some canards on it? If French pilots say the Rafale has slightly better turning rate than the F-16 (which I wholeheartedly believe without-a-doubt, since Rafale has canards, F-16 doesn't), then imagine if the F-16 had canards? Hehe! Laughing

That, together with throwing TVC like on the F-16 MATV, would be awesome in maneuvering! Then add AESA radar, helmet mounted sighting... watch out now! Laughing

Wow!

I believe the Rafale would come out on top in a WVR close-in dogfight that had pilots of equal skill and both HMS; only because Rafale came out years after the F-16, thus better designed overall, plus canards help a lot with maneuvering.

BVR? Well, I don't know about the Rafale winning that. AESA radar from the U.S. is the best radar in the world, so F-16 Block 60 most likely will win BVR against a Rafale.

Canard is not the only reason for Rafale's better maneuverability over the F-16, the much lower wing-load, the higher SEP, and the aerodynamic design of the more negative-stabiliy all play very important role for it.

As for the turn rate of Rafale, according to the information I know, the maximal instant turn rate of Rafale is more then 30 degrees per second (Some sources of military information declared that it could reach up to 35 degrees per second), whereas its maximal sustaneous turn rate could reach 24 degrees per second.

The best fighter's radar in the world today is from the AESA family (AN/APG-77V1 for F/A-22), but it doesn't mean that every radar from AESA family can outperform every traditional radars and every PESA radar in every respect. Many newest air-defense frigates and destroyers of European navies, such as F-125 for Germany navy, LCF for Dutch navy, and Type-45 for UK navy have adopted the AESA radars. However, the warship's radar with most capable long-range air-defense and ATBM abilities today is still form Aegis family ~ the radar with PESA.

As for the comparison between AN/APG-80 of F-16E and RBE-2 of Rafale between BVR combat, according to the information I've gotten:

AN/APG-80 for F-16E:

a. The maximal effective detective range for the target of RCS = 1m2 class: 110~130 km away.

b. It can TWS 20 targets at the same time now (It has the potential to be incresaed to 50 targets in the future), and it can attack 4 to 6 targets of them with AIM-120 at the same time.

c. MTBF: more than 500 hrs (The most prominent advantage of AESA radar over the traditional radars and every PESA radars today) .

RBE-2 for Rafale:

a. The maximal air-to-air detective range: 148 km+

b. It can detect the target of standard fighter (RCS = 2~5 m2) 97 to 130 km away, and the target with moderate low RCS capability 65 km+ away.

c. It can TWS 40 targets at the same time now, and it can attack 8 targets of them with MICA at the same time.

d. RBE-2 will be able to be upgraded to AESA radar (RBE-2 AA) after 2010, this upgrading will significantly increase the capabilities of RBE-2's detective/tracking range (50% increasing a least), searching angle (+/-60 degrees --> +/-70 degrees), engagement of multiple targets, and MTBF/reliability.

The minimal frontal RCS of F-16E is about 1.0~1.2 m2, while the minimal RCS of Rafale, according to the declaration of Dassault's engineer (1/10~1/20 of Mirage-2000's frontal RCS), should be 0.05~0.2 m2 class.

According to the formula, the maximal effective detection range of AN/APG-80 to Rafale should be around 52 ~ 87 km away (The most probable range I think: around 70 km); while the maximal effective detection range of RBE-2 to F-16E should be around 75 to 91 km away (The most probable range I think: around 85 km).

AN/APG-80 may have the better air-to-air detection range before the RBE-2's AESA upgrading after 2010. However, because the Rafale has the significantly better low RCS performance, the F-16E still has no advantage in "First-look" and "First-lock" for BVR combat today. As for "First-shoot" and "First-flee away", I think Rafale has the more advantage and better chance because of its better performance in acceleration, cruise (With dry power, it can fly in the speed of higher than Mach 1, even with four missiles and one belly drop tank), and turn rate.

toan wrote:

As for the turn rate of Rafale, according to the information I know, the maximal instant turn rate of Rafale is more then 30 degrees per second (Some sources of military information declared that it could reach up to 35 degrees per second), whereas its maximal sustaneous turn rate could reach 24 degrees per second.

OK, but what is the Viper's turn rate then?

The information that I got for the maximal instaneous turn rate of F-16C is 28.4 degrees per second.

However, different fighters have their maximal instaneous / sustaneous turn rates in different corner speed and altitude, therefore, it's not very suitable to compare the Rafale's and Viper's maximal instaneous / sustaneous turn rates so directly without considering the factors of speed and altitude.

As for the comparison of sustained turn rate among different fighters:

http://www.eurofighter.com/Typhoon/SwingRole/

"Mission Effectiveness"

According to my information, at low altitude, the max instant turn rate of the F-16C clean (2 sidewinders, 2 amraam, 50% fuel) with F110-GE-100 full AB is 26.2°/s, under 8g maximum. Its max sustained turn rate is 22°/s. I may correct my figures later, I'm not sure to remember exactely. But what I post now is very near from the actual figure.

My figures were right, according to my paper...

F-16 vs Rafale --> Nothing new ? No rumors about TLP, or some exercise ?

duplex wrote:

İf it is such a good fighter,can anyone tell me why nobody buys it except France..

Part of the reason is not just the aircraft but also the financing and other 'perks' the selling country has to offer.
If a country selling weapons is able to offer foreign military assistance (FMA) or loans between 1% and 2%, the offer of increased trade, providing assistance in building a technology base in the country making the purchase, etc.

One country recieved FMA loan, did not need the money at that time, invested the money and several years later repaided the USA and the invested money had doubled by that time so the country had the original amount of the loan.

Adrian

http://new.isoshop.com/dae/dae/gauche/s ... ox3_10.pdf

French Navy Rafale M versus Belgium AF F-16A/B MLU.............

Forum: F-16 versus XYZ

F-16 versus Rafale