Posted on 11/20/2009 3:22:33 AM PST by sukhoi-30mki
Dubai 09: UAE hosts first mock dogfights for F-22, Typhoon, Rafale
By Stephen Trimble
The United Arab Emirates not only attracted the Lockheed Martin F-22 to the Dubai air show, but also staged perhaps the first mock dogfights between F-22s, Dassault Rafales and Eurofighter Typhoons.
In parallel with the air show, the advanced tactical leadership course at Al Dhafra air base near Abu Dhabi hosted a five-nation fighter exercise, says the UK Royal Air Force.
France, the UK and the USA each sent six of their top-line fighters to the exercise, and those were joined by jets from the UAE and Pakistan. The Abu Dhabi manoeuvres marked the first publicly known event where the F-22 met Europe's two most advanced fighters.
The Rafale previously flew against USAF Boeing F-15Cs during the Red Flag exercise at Nellis AFB in August 2008. The USAF, however, withheld the F-22 from the Red Flag manoeuvres, which also included South Korean Boeing F-15Ks and Indian air force Sukhoi Su-30MKIs.
Multinational exercises provide air forces the rare opportunity to become exposed to the tactics, capabilities and limitations of countries using rival equipment.
Journalism at its best.
Anyways, I wonder if the Pakistani pilots will get debriefed by their Chinese masters after the dact?
As for the Raptor, I wonder if itsstealth was the silver bullet it would be at longer ranges of engagement considering all fighters would have been quite close. What I would really like to see is an engagement between a rafale with spectra active stealth starting at BVR against a Raptor. It would be interesting to see whether one of the best jamming/discrete systems would force the Raptor into the merge by making bvr Amraam shots useless.
Well, one can wish.. It would be interesting to see that.
Wet dream or not, I cannot bring myself to admire a place where the poor are treated like vermin. The same poor who’ve built the place into what it is today.
http://www.qatarliving.com/node/14416
(click on the images)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/gallery/2008/oct/08/1?picture=338366526
whoa! I definitely did not see that part of the UAE (although someone once told me that in the smallest Emirate state - Ajman, which is the tiniest of the 7 Emirati states) Indians and Pakistanis are put in really atrocious conditions. I’ve not seen it, but when I asked my taxi driver he seemed to concur that there is an underworld of enslavement, forced prositution, and other human rights abuses that would chill one’s soul. I didn’t see it myself (I was in the glitzy parts), but if that glitz is built on shattered dreams and bloodied sweat then it is cursed. I see your point, and share it. Kind of wipes the polish off Dubai, huh.
The reason the US has withheld the F-22 from such tests in the past is that it didn’t want potential adversaries getting information on sensor effectiveness (particularly IR sensors).
Figures that 0 wouldn’t have a problem with it...
How is the Raptor in a knife fight?
Just imagine if all the western dollars which went to these muslim loons (sorry Mr. and Mrs. Loon) was spent on oil recovered in the US instead. Then what would NYC look like in domparison with Dubai?
No of course not - the entire fleet of 22s are up for sale to highest bidder to pay for healthcare and lower the 12 trillion, soon to be 24 trillion, deficit. Just a little advertizing, is all.
very very good ...although in the era of helmet mounted sights and advanced IIR missiles, a knife fight is the last place you want to be since it is quite likely that near peer adversaries will kill each other at the same time. Btw, the Raptor doesn’t have a HMS system yet.
Was priveledged to be able to watch F-22s and F-15s dog-fight on Okinawa while I was working at Kadena Air Base - a sight to behold.
mock dogfights? If the F-22’s dogfighting, hasn’t it already failed as weapons-delivery system? Ain’t the networked F-22s gonna do their killing from clean over above another continent?
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