Orcishwarrior, in my reply to you in the Singapore At War
thread, Page 44, I underlined what is IMO the advantages of the
Rafale over the Typhoon, I will repost that here.
The Typhoon is very capable aircraft. No doubts about that. On
paper, everything in its specs would make it almost Rafales equal,
or even surpass it slightly. However, if we look a little deeper,
here's where the problems start stacking up against Typhoon for
Singapore.
1)
Everythings on paper. The program has faced numerous delays and
problems, brought about in part by having to sort out the kinks in
the working relationships between the partners. Almost every aspect
of the scheduling so far has been pushed back, again and again. The
latest high profile delay is German delays over the Typhoons main
armament, the Meteor BVRAAM. The CFT program only exists on
paper(pretty much like everything else). The multirole version is
still a few years off. Compare this to the Rafale development. It
is in squadron service, has already undertaken combat missions over
Afghanistan, the CFT program is on track with aircraft having
already flown with CFTs, the multirole versions are ready for
production once the French frees up the funding
2) Weapons
Both Rafale and Typhoon are scheduled to receive the Meteor BVRAAM.
But its only scheduled to arrive in the later part of this
decade(even before the Germans started their old tricks again). So
whats in the interim? The American AMRAAM for Typhoon and the
French MICA for Rafale. Both radar versions of the missiles are
rough equivalents of each other, little to choose between each
other. Which is fine and good if you're an EU/NATO operator of the
Typhoon. But, as has already been demonstrated in the Korean F-X
program, the US will not allow integration of AMRAAM to countries
which buy non-US products, effectively relegating non-NATO/EU users
of Typhoon to Skyflash and Sparrows until Meteor is ready, which
are only semi-active radar homing, and at least a full generation
behind AMRAAM/MICA. Of course MICA will have no such export
restrictions to the Rafale.
3) Timetable.
Eurofighters order book is 600+ machines. Rafales is 200+/300.
While some have taken this to mean that the Rafale is an export
failure, things must be put into perspective. All except 12
Typhoons for Austria will go the the development countries. And
export order of 12 units hardly makes Typhoon a roaring export
success. Where the advantage of Rafale is that if Singapore does
order it, we will be assured of receiving our aircraft according to
OUR timetable, and not having to wait till other countries who've
ordered earlier receive theirs before we get ours.
4) Training
Singapore has a training detachment set up already in France. A
training detachment for Rafales in France will also make things
simpler in terms to logistics, and theres no need to set up a new
detachment in another country
I've heard a lot of denigrating comments about the Rafale; M88-2
engine poor in hot and high ops, RBE2 A/G modes being a joke,
incompatible with American weapons etc.
Well, heres my rebuttal to these points:
M88-2: It is a non-factor. The M88-3 is already cleared for export,
and it offers vastly improved thrust for almost no trade off in
weight.
RBE2: Again a non-factor. This applied to the original RBE2. The
A/G modes are being debugged as we speak, and export Rafale get the
AESA radar anyway.
Yank weapons: Rafale has carried and dropped GBU-12s with combat
load of 4 GBUs, 3 tanks, 2 Magic and 2 MICA(4 MICAs in operational
service). And if US refuses weapon sales because we didn't buy
American jets, whats the use of integrating American weapons
anyway. And to be honest, I'd take SCALP/Apache over JSOW any
day.
The link Joe Black posted in the "Singapore announcing fighter
acqusition soon" is a fantastic guide to everything you need to
know about the Rafale, read it. But you need Acrobat Reader
though...
