Rafale

[lancer]

By the way - Lyon - nice place to live

Indeed, very beautiful city and very nice by night
But for modeling, Paris is better...(but I'm not crazy enough to live in a so big city!)

You got the right idea Pollux,  live somewhere nice and just visit the big city..Thats what I do.
BTW, would you mind if I borrowed your Japanese Rafale idea and modify it a bit for my owmn Japanese scenario.

[PolluxDeltaSeven]

BTW, would you mind if I borrowed your Japanese Rafale idea and modify it a bit for my owmn Japanese scenario.

Do it !!! I'll enjoy watching other models like mine. And I'm not a very old modeler, so I like to learn how to do rights things when I look at the others...


Oh!! I forgot! I draw last year a fighter I love very well!!! But it will be too difficult to scratch it for me. So I want to post some pictures of it, if someone is interrested. Do I have to post it here, in this forum room or in an other??



EDIT: What does it mean "BTW"??

[elmayerle]

BTW = "By The Way"

One of the many "Netspeak" abbreviations out there.  

[Leigh]

Welcome to madhouse PDS. And kiss your wallet and your sanity goodbye. Love that blue and grey Rafale, got me thinking about a U.S.M.C. aggressor. Hell they used Kfirs so why not?

[nev]

"arrives in thread late*

Don't Gekko Graphics do a decal sheet of what is Rafales?

Also, what about an RAF Rafale "Eurofighter".  France were asked to join the Eurofighter coalition, but demanded that the plane be designed, tested and built in France, with Dassault as the principal contractor.  Basically they wanted everyone else to help pay for the Rafale, then Dassault would sell them it back    As one MoD official said "one wonders what they would have demanded if they weren't interested in a co-operative project"    

[PolluxDeltaSeven]

The picture I posted with an Australian Rafale is the one you can see on the Gekkographics website.

All the drawing and models on this site are wonderfull !!!!!  The Swiss Rafale is amazing!!!

[GTX]

Hi folks,

Came across these a little while ago - some of the early steps towards what is now the Rafale:






Regards,

Greg

[AeroplaneDriver]

nice find Greg!

Love the twin-tailed one.  

The wing shape is not too different from the one on the BAe pre-EAP mockup.

[PolluxDeltaSeven]

There were plenty of other designs that were studied for the Rafale, most of them being scale down Mirage 4000 with the typical long nose and big canards...

But finally, mostly due to the needs of the naval variant, the size was reduced, the nose shortened (for carrier landing visibility), with smaller canards (to reduce RCS and because they mostly act on the wing aerodynamics than as direct control surfaces) and much more integrated general forms...

I think that one of the other proposed design was a twin tail Rafale with double-delta wings... This one looked very good!

[Jschmus]

That second one looks like an updated Cutlass.  Cool!

[PolluxDeltaSeven]

Following the "Rafale - The early years" topic, I thought it could be a good idea to create a topic about the possible evolution of the Rafale design (and not the alternate designs of the ACF project).

From now, we already know some of those evolutions that never became true, mainly due to lake of founds:

Rafale N
The Rafale N (ex-Rafale BM) was a twin-seater variant of the Rafale M developped in 1999 in order to give to the Marine Nationale a plane able to operate in harder and more dangerous conditions than the Rafale M (or in the same conditions but with more security).
60% of the Carrier Air Wing had to be based on the Rafale N, and the Rafale N was planed to operate most of the cruise missile missions and 100% of the recce and nuclear strike missions.
But due to the lack of gun of the N version, we could guess that the Rafale M will be preferred for CAS and interception missions, but also for tanker missions (as the single seat variant carry more fuel)

Whatever, in 2004, one year before the prototype first flight, the variant was canceled in order to free some money. Sadly, this money was not used in order to increase the Rafale M orders by 5 units, as it was initially wished.

But what if the Rafale N entered operational service? It would have probably look like that:


One of the reasons I always support the Rafale N idea was that such a plane could be just a perfect leader for a little UCAV squadron!!

Indeed, French Navy will only have 60 Rafale with a lifetime shorter than our new aircraft carrier! But even without that, with such a little Air Wing, it was calculated that the Marine Nationale will only have enough aircrafts to fight a SINGLE major war!!
And if such a war happened after the production line of the Rafale is closed, we'll be very happy to have UCAV (such as X-47) to complete the Rafale or, even better, to die instead ofthem!!


So, a Rafale N with 4 QF-47A UCAV (or naval NeuroN) sounds good to me!


Rafale Mk2
Back to 1999, again, Dassault proposed for exportation a Mk.2 variant of the plane. The main was to offer an export Rafale in 2003 with better equipments that the French F3 standard, planed for 2008!!

The first customer was planed to be Korea, and the Mk.2 had to be later presented in Singapore, Saudi Arabia or Brazil. Sadly, after the defeat in Korea, Dassault didn't found the money to keep the development going, mainly due to the schizophrenic policies of French governments, that want to help the exportation but didn't want to pay for that until the first export customer is found   :dum:

Whatever, the planed goodies included state of the art sensors and weapons. Just look at that:

-AESA radar RBE2-AA
-M88-3 engines, rated at +90kN instead of 78kN (without higher fuel consumption)
-New generation OSF (advanced FLIR, TV, laser range-finder, with better track abilities and new air-to-ground abilities)
-Damocles pod in order to fire EGBU, Paveway IV and/or AASM etc...
-CFTs for around 1200 litres
-RecoNG (new generation real time recce pod)

Dassault even planed to integrate a newly developed ECM pod and anti-radar missiles. Meteor missiles and classic NATO weapons (Maverick, JDAM etc...) had to be integrated in the Rafale attack system later. The external wing hard points, never


Rafale Mk.3
Other equipments could have been developed for an potential Mk.3 variant that could have appear around 2010-2012:
-Towed Decoy system (probably fixed on redesigned wing-tip missile rails)
-Radar and engines modernizations
-Larger CFTs for around 1800+ litres
-Modernized gear for greater maximal weight
But the main modernization could have been a better integration of European and US weapons and pods, with the help of some of the main export customers (Brimstone, Alarm, Harm, JSOW, SLAM-ER, NSM, Litening III and Sniper pods, Taurus, Sidewinder, IRIS-T, maybe AMRAAM etc...)

Note that nothing official came about this variant, even the name is not official. The information I got went from some guys I know that use to work for Thales and the Armée de l'Air (as this variant simply didn't went trough the "restaurant discussion" phase of conception, nothing is classified... because nothing really exist!!   )


Well, maybe it could help some of you that wanted to build some Rafale models but have no credible ideas.
For my part, I have thousands of credible ideas about the Rafale, but it's quite impossible to find any 1/72 kit of the Rafale in my city  


If you guys have any other information, or even good ideas for customers (realistic or not! Don't forget that all realistic solution mean boring grey scheme!     ), don't hesitate!


I will come back later in order to talked to you about a stealth evolution of the Rafale.

[GTX]

I recently came across a reference to a Mk4 version of the Rafale - no real details (it may have even been a typo) other than it was seen as a counterpart to the F-35.

Regards,

Greg

[GTX]

a Rafale N with 4 QF-47A UCAV (or naval NeuroN) sounds good to me!

How about a UCAV variant of the Rafale - remove the cockpit to start with.

Regards,

Greg

[PolluxDeltaSeven]

I recently came across a reference to a Mk4 version of the Rafale - no real details (it may have even been a typo) other than it was seen as a counterpart to the F-35.

It could be the "stealth" variant of the Rafale I heard... or maybe a confusion with the F4 standard that is a kind of MLU for the Rafale (with no information about it, as the French government didn't chose already what will be its need for the 2015+)

As far as I know, some studies were made for a stealthier variant of the Rafale.
The Rafale is already a very "discreet" plane (don't know how to say that in English! I mean that the Rafale is not fully stealth, but stealth enough to have a advantage against SAM and AWACS threats, specially compared to Mirage 2000 or Typhoon interceptors)

Initially, Dassault proposed an internal carriage for the missiles, but it was canceled because of the additional weight (and cost) it gives to the plane. But the plane incorporate a large number of technologies made to reduce the SER, including new generation and still top secret jamming systems.
In case of war or for missions that require more stealth abilities, a system of disposable tapes will be applied on the panel lines, in order to significantly reduce the SER (such a system is not used in peace time for a reason of cost, because they have to be removed after each flight!)
Moreover, before the Rafale B and Rafale C designations (in order to separate the twin and the single seat variants), both variants were called Rafale D, for "Discretion".


The "stealthier" plane that was studied some years ago (and maybe still studied) would have been largely modified, with a system of tapes on the panel lines that is more sustainable (it require a better management of the maintain hatches), a better internal jammer.
Some annexe reports talked about an external jamming pod, and some "stealth technology demonstrators", with no other precisions.

We also know that Dassault and Thales used to worked on a semi-conformal fuel and weapon tank, something like what is planed for the FB-22, or on the Super Gripen.
It is a kind of CFT under the fuselage, able to carry fuel, BVR missiles or both!
Stealth tanks for bigger payload (bombs, air-to-ground missiles) were also planed but canceled not far from now.

I just don't know if Dassault still worked on this variant planed to be the F-35 counterpart, as you said.
Personally, I think that Dassault had to find some customers for the F3 variant before thinking about a F4 or F5 MLU variant, or even a stealth variant. France will simply just not pay for that, not until 2015-2020 at least!!

How about a UCAV variant of the Rafale - remove the cockpit to start with.

Good idea, mate!

I think that the real life Future UCAV will look like the Neuron, i.e. a medium stealth flying wing, but in a whiff situation (like a WWIII, something like that), it could be interresting to have an UCAV-Rafale, faster to design and build!

[elmayerle]

I'll agree the the Rafale is a reduced RCS aircraft, though I'd love to know more about some of the materials in the structure to get a better idea.  Covering the panel joints to maintain an uninterrupted surface definitely reduces RCS and careful design of the access panels, both in number and location can also be a help.  There are ways of reducing the RCS of the engine inlets, but I'm not at all certain that the Rafale has the best of them as it's something of a proprietary method, as far as I know, developed by NGC.  It's one reason they do the F-35's inlets.

If the aircraft is fly-by-wire, a UCAV conversion gets to be a lot simpler.