It's not yet the kind of news we may find in the press, but the well informed people on Delta Reflex have informed us that during November, the Merignac assembly line is receiving the different parts to be integrated on Rafale M10. The aircraft has bee totally disassembled and distributed in various plants before being re-assembled with all up-to-date parts. The work should be completed in 8 months, making the delivery to the Marine possible in June 2014. The M9 should follow in August.
Copyright Eric Estrade
By the way, the Charles-de-Gaulle carrier will be back to sea on Thursday for training purpose, after an overhaul by DCNS and Areva, according to CorseMatin.com. The "CdG" last mission was Lybia in 2011.
Today started the Dubai Airshow on his 13th edition. The Armée de l'Air is once again showing the Rafale, for the last time in 2013, with the Cpt Planche "Tao". The two aircraft comes from the Al Dhafra airbase in UAE.
With BAe and the UK prime minister pushing hard to sell the Typhoon in the disputed deal to replace the Mirage 2000-9, it's quite good to read something slightly different, on Reuters. The decision may not come soon.
2 major projects have been recently revealed by the french DGA.
The first one, called TRAGEDAC intends to extend passive localisation capabilities of the Rafale using cooperative technics. The idea is to correlate and synchronise OSF and Spectra data from different aircrafts through link 16 to compute passive tracks more accurately (especially the target range as it is currently the most difficult data to assess using passive sensors only)
LEA electromagnetic decoy
The second one, LEA, has just been announced at the Paris Air show. It is an active electromagnetic decoy especially designed to jam/seduce a2a missile radars. Unlike a towed decoy which remains attached to the aircraft, the LEA is ejected like a chaff. 4 LEA could be stored in the same place as the present spiral chaff ejector on the Rafale.
This is the long awaited video showing a Rafale taking on an F-22 during one of the doghfights between the 2 machines during ATLC 2009
The interresting thing in that engagement is that there are only 2 high G turns at the begining (400-500 kts / 9G+). Then, everything is about being able to manoeuver at very low speed... down to 80 knots in the Rafale case which is the very edge of its flight envelope.
Also note how the TV camera of the OSF (on the left side of the nose) is moving up and down to track the F-22.
The F-22 is big but still very hard to outmanoeuver thanks to its TVC as shown in that impressive video.
As stated at the begining of the video, this footage is not a demonstration of any superiority of the Rafale over the F-22 in close air combat but merely a confirmation that both fighters match each other closely in that particular area. In fact, most engagements reported at the time were draws with 1 gun kill credited to the Raptor. Now we know that the Rafale pilots also managed to get at least 1 fair and square victory, which is pretty cool :) . Also, videos showing the raptor during actual simulated air combats are still very rare, especialy that long. For that reason I think it is certainly a worthy document whatever the outcome is.
