SupersonicMax said:
HMD is a lot more than a cueing systems in A/A. What is displayed in it helps maintain SA on the fight. You can see your wingman (with distance and altitude delta), see there the targets are (no need to guess from the radar display as to where to look), launch acceptable regions and get aircraft state information. I use it more in that context than for cueing.
Aside from the fact that the HMD can be added it has also recently come to my attention that the Rafale has it's own kind of stealth technology called "Active Cancellation" something of which I'd never heard of before. It is the reason the aircraft can go into hazardous environments in which the F-35 was meant to go. For instance, here is a source.
https://hushkit.net/2015/12/18/typhoon-versus-rafale-the-final-word/
Here is the quote:
The French (and Swedes) have long excelled in electronic warfare and jamming and the Typhoon has a way to go yet if it is to catch up with the other two Eurocanards in this area. It is also worth remembering, however, that part of the Rafale’s appearance of being able to go places Typhoon cannot due to SPECTRA is explained by the higher (and admirable) tolerance for risk in the Armee de l’Air compared to the RAF or any other European air forces. Even if Typhoon had SPECTRA, the RAF would not have sent it into Libya before the US air defence suppression had been carried out.
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Except I think he's missing the fact that Rafale can get in and get out because the Active Cancellation makes it very difficult to lock up the aircraft. For instance.
Here is a source.
http://tejasmrca.weebly.com/military-aviation/dassault-rafale
And here is the quote:
Rafale is officially said to have a frontal RCS of about 0.1m2 and comes under the category of Low observable (LO) aircraft. But with the aid of SPECTRA which can perform “active cancellation”—receiving a radar signal and mimicking the aircraft’s echo exactly one-half wavelength out of phase so the radar sees almost nothing, the RCS is reduced to about 0.06m2.
But it doesn’t stop there. Dassault has admitted that a new upgrade package is almost ready for operations which would further decrease the RCS of Rafale to that of a Sparrow! Called DEDIRA (Demonstrateur de Discrétion Rafale / Descreet Rafale Demonstrator) it aims to improve the SPECTRA suite on the F3R version of Rafale. This program is linked with another one called INCAS (Intégration de Nouvelles Capacités à Spectra) which deals with the integration of GaN modules in RBE2 and SPECTRA suite along with GaN modules incorporated ‘smart-skins’ for all-passive day/night and all weather long-range detection and targeting capability involving all passive sensors available to sensor fusion.
The DEDIRA program will further improve the active stealth aspect of SPECTRA to bring down the frontal RCS of Rafale close to 0.0006m2. For reference, the unofficial frontal RCS of Raptor is 0.0001m2 without active cancellation, which is a Very Low observable (VLO) aircraft. DEDIRA is already integrated on a test Rafale numbered B301.
The above article has disappeared, here is another source, look under active cancellation.
http://fullafterburner.weebly.com/next-gen-weapons/secrets-of-stealth
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I'm not sure if this capability has entered the conversation before now.
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