Posted on 02/11/2011 7:42:05 PM PST by sukhoi-30mki
French Rafale is best at dogfight
Prashanth G N, TNN,
Feb 12, 2011, 04.45am IST
BANGALORE: If there is one thing the French Rafales can do best, it's the dogfight. Small and menacing, the Rafale can plunge in and out rapidly for short distances, hitting the enemy aircraft swiftly.
Five French pilots have flown the Rafale all the way from France to Bangalore -- over 5,000 miles. "We flew in with three air-to-air refuellings. It was a beautiful flight with the two fighter aircraft following the fuel tanker in front. We had a stopover at UAE before coming to India. In all, we did the distance in 9 hours at around 550 km/hour," Rafale pilot Plu Vinage told The Times of India.
Vinage said the French Rafale has superb electronics and cockpit. "It can do a mach 1.8, 9G and 30-degree angle. It's a great aircraft to fly. Lovely handling and manoeuvrability."
How does he see the Rafale with the F-16, F-18 and Su-30? "The Rafale is light and is fantastic when it comes to fights in close proximity. The F-16, F-18 and Su-30 are heavier aircraft to fly. The Su-30 is really massive and requires a lot of power and fuel. But it seems like a very powerful aircraft."
Vinage says the strength of the Rafale lies in the dogfight. "We can hit swiftly when aircraft are close up. Weaponization is lethal. Not too many aircraft can do the dogfight as well as the Rafale."
De L'Air, Vinage's colleague, expresses not one iota of fear in flight. "We are well-trained and the aircraft are good. You have these two, where's the fear? We've been in this for years and over time, you get to understand the aircraft. You know what to do, but you also know what not to do."
Vinage said some of his best moments in flying were during the Indo-French exercises. "We went in with the Rafale and IAF came in with the Su-30. That's when we got a good look at the aircraft. The first thought that came to my mind was power -- Su-30 is about power and being powerful. But for the dogfight, I'd go for the Rafale."
The Rafale is more advanced than the Mirage 2000, which is also French. "The Rafale is a fourth-generation aircraft. It's fly-by-wire and has two engines. If one fails, it can fly on the other. It's a guarantee. The Mirage has been a single-engine aircraft. That's the crucial difference between the two French frontline strikers." PI
On Friday morning, the Rafale took to the skies in a burst of power, swerving to the right and inverting before taking off vertically into the high skies, leaving behind a trail of smoke. The fuel pipe on its cockpit giving it a rather masculine look, the Rafale is a French offering packing punch in the close-ups.
Ping.
dog fight???
They still do that?
I thought a “dogfight” nowdays consisted of pushing a button and waiting for the blip on your screen to disappear.
Those old WWII movies are great for living in the past.
No sane fighter pilot is intentionally going to fly into a dis-advantageous situation. Adversaries that can, will shoot from as far away as possible. Mixing it up is hard on pilots, hard (stressing) on airframes, and it only takes one mistake or lapse in concentration/judgment to lose the fight, regardless of the capabilities of your aircraft. Fighting BVR is a safer, easier bet that lets you come back and fight again tomorrow.
I'm not saying you don't need to have dogfighting capability. (witness the F-4 without a gun, oops!) But I don't think that mode of combat should be your primary tactic, nor the primary deciding factor for a modern multi-role fighter. Being a good dogfighter is nice. Being a good enough fighter to get the mission done and avoid the dogfight is even better.
9 hours ...
Guess that does not include in flight pit stop
Obligatory “wouldn’t even see the F22 that shot it down, and if it did close, the F22 would chew it up.”
But obastard has killed the F22 in favor of the F35 boondoggle, so nevermind...
BTW, not to derail, but some airpower experts are likely to drop by.
Can someone explain to me what’s so hard to understand about air supremacy doctrine? You fly the baddest azz possible fighters and anti-SAM planes, clear the airspace, and then you can fly busses with wings to provide ground support/bombing. Instead we’ve killed the F22 in favor of a “multi-role” F35 that won’t own the air nearly as well.
Insanity. Or am I missing something?
I wonder why Dassault haven’t bothered to compare the Rafale against the Eurofighter Typhoon, which is known to have excellent maneuverability.
Our fighters already stretch the limits of what is possible in a manned fighter. The next thing is going to unmanned fighters. Put your money on the next technology, not the last.
Hmmm. Good point. Are we doing that? Hope so.
In fact, that makes sense. Why buy F22s when unmanned fighters can own the air? Hope that’s what we’re doing. If so, then obastard was hoodwinked: he thought he was gutting our air power, while he was in fact gutting old tech. Wow, a rare win in this day and age...
One would think that a fighter capable of maneuvering well for a dogfight would have an internal GUN....
I saw a Military Channel show on the latest US fighter just a couple of days ago. They basically stated that the US fighter is superior to anything in the air, and has reached the limit of what you can do with a manned fighter. The computer already does almost everything. The plane is unstable because they cut off all of the features that would make it stable in order to give it the ability to do stuff that other planes can’t do. The only way to keep it from spinning out of control is to use the computer to fly it. And with the Gs that are created, the man is really useless when the plane is pushed to the max in what it can do. In fact, the plane can do far more than what it does do, but they can’t tap that potential because it would kill the man. They said that there really isn’t much point to trying to push the manned fighter design any further, and the next step is to eliminate the man and go to an unmanned fighter. So I assume they are working on it.
The other problem with the US fighter is that it is incredibly expensive, which is probably why the rest of the world is not interested in buying it. Ironically, though, it means our planes will continue to be the best in the air for some time to come, and that we will have a virtual monopoly on those planes.
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