Tuesday, 29 May 2012
Rafale vs Super Hornets
There are only two true multirole in existence today, the f 18 Superhornet and Rafale. The rest are just mere wanna bes, ever claiming to be one.
Sukhoi Su 30s types lack a proper fire and forget missiles, in especially the air to ground sector. Even of the ones they have they are huge in size, hence to transport them is a logistic nuisance or even nightmare. Having large and bulky fighters servicing machine does makes it worse. An airforce might need a few C 130s to deliver such goods for the air forces if the aircrafts needed to be repositioned to a more strategic locality.
Furthermore the existing missles are of tv guided based, thus they have to depend on its weapon operator to guide the missles based on the video sights of these specific warheads to reach its target. Now, this is quite very difficult to do, inespecially in a dogfights: when flying high G's manouveres and in inverted position. Of course these Russian type fighters capablity in air to air and air to sea surface is somewhat remarkable.
Typhoon lacks everything and is expensive to fly.
Gripen can only carry so much weight, only to be reduced to recconaise and enforcing a no fly zone role in an area when there are no enemy planes left qto speak of. Now what does that tell us.
Third generation fighters in the likes of F15 and F16 are doing well after fifth generation upgrades; stealth, AESA, latest air to air and air to surface (ground and sea)and conformal fuel tanks. But for a 4.5th, fifth generation fighters they will never be.
So we are left with F 18 Super Hornets and Rafales to fill up the world MRCA gap.
One could say the Hornet's is a complete MRCA. It practically carries every arsenal in US Air Force, comes with AESA and has respectable range. The Growler's version or betterly termed as conversion scored its biggest marks. Its only weakness is its a 7.5 G fighter, fully compensated of course by its helmet mounted sight. Sure enough the infamous source code issue is the deal breaker. And Ever wonder why Switzerland decided on something nearly as useless as the Gripen when the more capable Super Hornets are simply available for the same price.
Rafale is a higher G fighter than the Hornet. It's Damocles, Exocet, AESA, effective French made arsenals, conformal fuel tank avability, compatibility of land and carrier version are its strong and selling points. However it is without HMD. The French has suspended this program indefinitely. Maybe a UAE Rafale buy will remedy this, or maybe it will not.Dassault must realise that like the stealth, HMD is the way to a successful future. Without it they will fall behind and suffer the very same fate as the MIG 29, a powerful and maneuverable fighter with outdated sensors with no hope for viable improvement to survive this millennium battles or marketability. What a big shame. Boo hoo hoo!
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