Rafale Enters FRENCH AIR FORCE

D A S S A U L T A V I A T I O N - S N E C M A - T H A L E S N°8

FOXTHREE

Summary

Editorial

Here is the 8th edition of "FOX THREE", a RAFALE INTER-

NATIONAL publication specifically dedicated to this new

generation omnirole fighter: the RAFALE!

From this edition, we elected to evolve the "FOX THREE"

newsletter into a twice-a-year publication with more content

and photos.

A new format for a lot of RAFALE news, with the latest order

announced by the French MoD for 59 new RAFALEs bringing

total orders so far to 120 aircraft. Some articles about this

fabulous omnirole fighter already operational in the French

navy, and now entering French Air Force service. And, the

timeline of the RAFALE in-flight display to be flown during

Le Bourget Air Show 2005: don't miss it…

Enjoy!

The "FOX THREE" Team.

Copyright: F.Robineau-Dassault Aviation, French Air Force, SIRPA AIR, French Navy, SIRPA MARINE, H.-P. Grolleau, Henri Hémon.

p.4/7 p.8/11

French Air ForceRafale

Air defence missionfor 12F

p.12/13

RBE2 AESA

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Focus onthe M88

The French MoD has recentlyannounced an order for 59Rafa le omni ro le f igh te r s ,bringing total orders so far to120 aircraft - 82 Rafale B/Csfor the Armée de l’Air and 38Rafa le Ms fo r t he Mar ineN a t i o n a l e - o u t o f 2 9 4required. Deliveries of these59 Rafales will stretch fromJune 2008 to January 2012,with 47 fighters for the FrenchAir Force (11 Rafale B two-seaters and 36 Rafale C single-

seaters) plus 12 Rafale M car-rier-borne fighters for the FrenchNavy. The order also encom-passes 138 Snecma M88-2turbofan engines. The 59 fighters will be pro-duced in the latest, fully omni-role F3 Standard capable ofundertaking an extremely widerange of roles: air-defence/air-superiority missions with MicaIR and EM air-to-air missiles,precision attacks with Scalpcruise missi les and AASM

modular air-to-surface arma-ments, anti-ship strikes withthe acclaimed AM39 Exocetsea-skimmer, reconnaissancewith the Thales new genera-tion reconnaissance pod, and nuclear deterrence with ASMP-A m i s s i l e s . Among o t he rimprovements, Standard F3Rafales will be fitted with theS a g e m G e r f a u t H e l m e t -Mounted Sight and with anenhanced Thales Spectra self-defence suite. Their ThalesRBE2 radar will offer high-res-olution cartographic modesplus a radar terrain-followingcapability on top of the high-resolution 3D digital databaseintroduced in the F2 Standardvariant.

FRENCH MINISTRY OF DEFENCE ORDERS A FURTHER59 RAFALE FIGHTERS

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In-depth evaluation

The evaluation of the Rafale’srobust air-to-air and air-to-sur-face capabilities will imposea major effort to the CEAM.«The advent of the Rafale withits modern RBE2 electronic-scanning radar, its Front Sector

Optronics, its advanced elec-tronic warfare suite and itsMul t i func t ion In format ion

Distribution System link 16datalink has forced us to devisea comprehensive evaluationprogramme, says Lieutenant-Colonel François Moussez,the Officer in Charge of theRafale evaluation at Mont-de-Marsan. It is anticipated that,by mid-2006, more than 600Rafale evaluation sorties will

have been logged by CEAMspecialists. Numerous firingswill be conducted in the coming

year, with Mica IR air-to-airmissiles, Scalp cruise missilesand AASM air-to-surface arma-ment, all to be tested in realisticconditions, including jamming.When operational testing iscomplete, the aircraft will bedeclared fully combat-readyin the air-to-air and air-to-sur-face arenas, and the oper-

ating manuals will be readyfor the first front-line squadron.»

CEAM

The whole evaluation phasewill be conducted at Mont-de-Marsan by the CEAM (Centred ’Expér iences Aér iennesMilitaires), the French Air ForceEvaluation Centre. «The CEAMhas now begun a rigorousseries of tests to assess theRafale’s performance in allm i s s i o n a r e a s , e x p l a i n sGeneral Eric Rouzaud, CEAMCommander. Whereas devel-opment testing conducted bythe integrated test team mainlyinvolves demonstrating thatthe aircraft meets or exceeds

the specifications laid out bythe Ministry of Defence, oper-a t i ona l t e s t i ng i s gea redtowards using the aircraft inits role as a fighter. As a result,the Rafale will be flown in awide var ie ty o f scenar iosagainst various threats. Here,we also handle initial Rafalep i l o t c on ve r s i o n and wedevelop new tactics and pro-cedures adapted to the air-craft.» The number of FrenchAir Force Rafale pilots is cur-rently rapidly expanding, witha steady flow of newcomersarriving at Mont-de-Marsanfrom various Armée de l’Airbases. The first five pilots and

five navigators were all expe-rienced aviators drawn from awide range of backgrounds,and some of them had pre-vious Rafale experience withthe French Navy. They startedflying the Air Force Rafales atMont-de-Marsan in December2004 and became the firstcadre of instructors in orderto train the following wavesof front-line aircrews.

FRENCH AIR FORCE RAFALE OMNIROLE FIGHTERS ENTER SERVICEIn December 2004, the f irst three Rafale f ighters arrived at Mont-de-Marsan Air Base, in the south-west of France, where theyare utilised for initial conversion training and for the Rafale operationalevaluation.

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On 24 February 2005, Mrs Michèle Alliot-Marie, the French Minister of Defence, undertook a sortie in two-seat RafaleB304 from Mont-de-Marsan Air Base. The pilot who flew the Minister of Defence, Lieutenant-Colonel François Moussez,said Mrs Alliot-Marie was ‘totally at ease’ during the 1 h 30 min sortie. The mission included long-range and short-rangeair-to-air engagements, an in-flight refuelling by a French Air Force C-135FR tanker and some low-level flying duringa simulated attack profile with Scalp cruise missiles.

French Minister of Defence Flies in a Rafale fighter

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…FRENCH AIR FORCE RAFALE OMNIROLE FIGHTERS ENTER SERVICE

A fully omnirolesquadron

By early June 2005, six Rafaleswill have been delivered tothe CEAM and this numberwill grow to fourteen by theend of the year. «In July 2005,the f i r s t Rafa le squadron,Escadron de Chasse 1/7‘Provence’, will officially reformat Saint -Dizier, in easternFrance, reveals Lieutenant-Colonel Louis Pena, EC 1/7’sfuture Deputy Commander.However, the aircraft and air-crews will remain at Mont-de-Marsan until early 2006, whenthe first Rafale fighters willr e l o ca t e t o Sa i n t -D i z i e r.Currently, the squadron andthe operational evaluation unitshare the aircraft.»When the first squadron isdec la red ope ra t iona l , i nSeptember 2006, the aircrewswill be cleared to carry out awide range of missions withtheir radar-guided (Mica EM)and infrared-guided (Mica IR)

missiles, their AASM poweredbombs and their Scalp mis-siles. EC 1/7 will eventually beequipped with 20 Rafales, fif-teen two-seaters and five single-seaters. It has already beenannounced that the secondRafale squadron will be sta-tioned in Saint-Dizier too, whe-reas the third will be based inMont-de-Marsan.

A superb fighter

The a i r c rews a t Mon t -de -Marsan are all enthusiasticabout their new aircraft. «Sofar, we are extremely pleasedwith the first results of the eva-lua t ion , s t resses Genera lRouzaud. Obviously, we havetaken advantage of the Navy’sexperience: thanks to the exper-tise they have passed on tous, the Rafale’s introductionis all but a step into the unk-nown for the French Air Force.Dassault’s technical supportis outstanding, and our strongpartnership will allow us tofully exploit the capabilities

of the fighter very soon.»All aircrews agree that theRafale is a big improvementon existing jets. «Early assess-ment has been satisfactory,explains Louis Pena. The man-machine interface is very intui-t i ve and easy to use . Thereclined seat proves extremelycomfortable and g-tolerance ism a s s i v e l y a m e l i o r a t e d .Endurance is excellent, evenat low-level where we can flyat 450 knots for 1 h 30 min ina clean configuration.» Theairframe, engines and avio-n ics su i te are a l so h igh lypraised. «The fighter provese x t r e m e l y a g i l e a n d t h eSnecma M88-2 turbofans arev e r y powe r f u l , c o n f i r m sFrançois Moussez. Engineresponse is instantaneous, acrucial advantage in a dog-f i g h t . T h e F r o n t S e c t o rOptronics will allow new, inno-vative tactics to be devised.Finally, the RBE2 radar cantrack multiple targets, evenwhen enemy fighters split.»

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Construction of a new high-tech facility for the first Rafale squadron officially began at Saint-Dizier Air Base on 03 February2005 when General Wolsztynski, the French Chief of the Air Staff, laid the building’s foundation stone. When fullyoperational, in December 2005, the 12,000 square meter building will be divided into four areas: a hangar largeenough to accommodate five fighters, a maintenance / servicing facility, a storage area and an office / mission planning block.

Rafale squadron facility construction begins

At Lann-Bihoué

The detachment was composed of two pilots and sevenmaintainers/armourers. The two Rafales were each armedwith two Magic 2 heat-seeking missiles at the wingtips,and one of them also had two Mica EM fire-and-forgetradar-guided missiles under the wings. Both were equippedwith a 1,250 litre fuel tank on the centreline pylon andwith an array of flare and chaff decoys. During the wholeweek, the two fighters were cocked and ready to go in justseven minutes, ready to be vectored off to intercept anythreat. At the end of each sortie, the engineers had 30minutes to turn around the fighter, including ten minutesto fill up the tanks. However, the aircraft was usually oper-ational again in 15 minutes, and no major technical problemarose during the deployment.

A very well-suited fighter

«The Rafale is ideal for the job, stresses one of the two duty pilots.It can climb to 40,000 feet in under two minutes and acceleratevery rapidly to supersonic speed. More significantly, it can super-cruise in dry power, even with four missiles and a belly droptank. Endurance is excellent too, and we can stay airborne upto two hours with one tank.» The pilots also praise the Rafale’sadvanced man-machine interface which considerably reducestheir workload. On average, the fighters were launched oncea day for training, but two live intercepts were also carried out.The participation of Flottille 12F to the French air-defenceeffort has been so successful that it is expected that the exper-iment will be re-conducted in the fall, between two training deploy-ments of the Charles de Gaulle’s carrier air group.

AIR-DEFENCE MISSION FOR FLOTTILLE 12F

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In early 2005, Flottille 12F, the first naval Rafale unit, was tasked to participate in theair-defence of the French airspace. Two Rafales were detached to Lann-Bihoué NavalAir Station, in western France, to replace a pair of French Air Force Mirage 2000-5 fighters.I t i s h igh ly unusua l for Navy a i rcraf t to take part in a trad i t iona l A i r Force mission, but Armée de l ’Air Commanders had requested help from their Navy counterparts to share the burden for a week, as an experiment.

First Rafale participation in the TacticalLeadership Programme

To further increase its tactical capabilities and ameliorateaircrew effectiveness, the French Navy decided to sendthree Rafale fighters to Florennes, in Belgium, to take partin the prestigious Tactical Leadership Programme. Duringthe exercise, the three aircraft (including one spare) flew50.6 flying hours in 28 sorties, recording a remarkable100% mission availability rate. The Rafales were mainlyused in the escort role, and they usually took off first andlanded last after two hours airborne without in-flight refu-elling, a testimony of their outstanding endurance. Theirweapon system and their self-defence suite proved extremelyreliable and impressed all participants.

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THE RBE2 AESA: a major asset for the Rafale and a critical component of operational superiority

Designed from the outset todeploy an electronically scannedradar, the Rafale is equippedwith the RBE2 radar from Thales.In production since 1997, theRBE2 is the first multi-functionelectronic scanning radar devel-oped for a combat aircraft. Withits advanced electronic scan-ning technologies, the RBE2offers new capabilities, par-ticularly in air-to-air, air-to-ground and air-to-surface func-tions, terrain following andterrain avoidance. Most of thesenew capabilities are beyondthe reach of conventional radars. Electronic scanning in bothplanes makes it possible toauthorise simultaneous desig-nation of multiple targets to dif-ferent air-to-air missiles, whileat the same time performingsearches in directions com-pletely independent of the tar-gets tracked. In this respect, theRBE2 marks a radical breakwith all previous-generationradars. This level of tactical sit-uation awareness gives theRafale the ability to counterenemy tactics with remarkableeffectiveness.

For very low-altitude pene-tration missions, the RBE2 usese lec t ron ic scann ing tech -nologies to generate a three-dimensional ground map cov-ering a wide area forward ofthe aircraft, supporting terrainfollowing and manoeuvres inthe horizontal plane within thearea scanned by the radar. In addition, the RBE2 on theRafale F3 standard will offerhigh-resolution ground map-p ing modes tha t a re a l sounique in Europe. To date, the RBE2 is the onlyEuropean electronic scanningradar equipping a new-gen-eration combat aircraft in oper-ational ser vice. I t has suc-cessfully completed variousassessments and out-of-areacampaigns.

The active electronic scanningantenna (AESA)

Certain radar functions weredesigned from the outset to beperformed by an electronicallyscanned antenna, and theRBE2 is thus inherently suited

to the AESA active antenna.The transition to electronicscanning technology, whichin the case of the RBE2 con-cerns transmit and receivetechnologies only, will pro-vide new capabil i t ies andenhance performance, whileat the same time improvingreliability and reducing main-t enance cos t s . The radar the re fo re o f fe r s a un ique opportunity to capitalise onthe know-how gained throughthe development of its variousfunctions, which are based,from the start, on electronicscanning technologies. Thanks to the RBE2’s scalablearchitecture, the upgrade tothe act ive antenna s implyinvolves replacing the tubetransmitter and passive elec-tronic scanning antenna witharound 1,000 active modules.This operation is independentof other functional develop-ments underway. An activemodule is a transmitter/receiverbased on sol id -s ta te tech -nologies (gallium arsenidesemiconductors).

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Enhanced operational effectiveness

The AESA active antenna will increase theRBE2’s range and the quality of its angularcoverage. In air- to-air mode, longer range makes i t possible to detect new threats with low radarreflectivity (new-generation fighters, stealthtargets, etc.) at an earlier stage, allowing moretime to process them, and ensures coherencewith the arrival of future missiles (Meteor, etc.). In air-to-ground mode, the higher power budgettranslates into better contrast on synthetic aper-ture radar (SAR) images. In addition, due to the antenna’s large numberof active modules and the phenomenon of pro-gressive degradation, failure of some of these

modules will have no noticeable effect on performance. Real-time analysis of antennastatus can be performed at any time for main-tenance scheduling. As a result, the active antenna is much more reliable from an operational point of view,thereby guaranteeing higher operational avail-ability of the Rafale. Its simplified maintenanceconcept will also contribute to reduced costof ownership. Lastly, the use of active antennas opens upnew possibilities for further development ofradar functions, particularly in areas such asresistance to countermeasures.

Radarology: an antenna is said to be “active” when its radiating surface comprises several tens or hundreds of elementary modules, each performing both transmit and receive functions. These modules are based on solid-statetechnologies. In other words, they use monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs) and not tubes.

In July 2004, the French defence procurement agency (DGA) awarded Thales a contract to develop the second-generation activeelectronic scanning antenna (AESA), specially adapted to the RBE2. Development is underway. The first demonstrator met allperformance objectives and has been flying on the Rafale since April 2003.

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FOCUS ON THE M88A s ta t e - o f - t h e - a r tfighter engine

The M88-2 engine powers thenew-generation Rafale multi-role fighter. Featuring a redun-dant fully digital control systemfor exceptional ease of han-dling, the M88-2 also offersa modular design for enhancedmaintainability, new-genera-t i o n ma t e r i a l s and o t he radvanced technologies. Theoutstanding performance ofthe M88-2 is largely due to itsstate-of-the-art control system,designed to optimize engineopera t ion th roughou t the flight envelope. The engine is particularly well suited to low-altitude penetration and high-altitude interception missions.Powering both the carrier-

borne and land-based versionso f Ra fa le , t he M88-2 hasalready proven its excellentperformance and dispatch reli-ability in service.

Snecma has deve loped a new version of the M88-2, the M88-2E4, that offers lowerfuel consumption and cost ofownership, with longer servicelife for the engine’s criticalparts. A new demonstratorengine, dubbed “ECO”, hasalso been developed as partof an advanced R&D program.It aims to demonstrate the fea-sibil i ty of reducing the lifecycle cost (LCC) of the M88-2at its current thrust level. A sec-ondary aim is to use the tech-nologies developed throughthe ECO program to pave the

way for a higher thrust engine.The possibility of developingan engine developing 90 kN(20,200 lb) of thrust with reheathas been demonstrated.

Snecma has de l ivered 90 M88-2 engines to date, with thef leet logging over 22,000hours in flight. The M88-2E4engines deployed by the Frenchnaval air arm and air forcehave pos t ed ou t s tand ing dispatch reliability.

A recent flight evaluation witha foreign Air Force spotlightedthe excellent performance ofthe engine, along with theadvantages of its innovativemaintenance concept.

At the end of 2004, the FrenchMinistry of Defense placed anorder for 59 additional Rafalecombat aircraft. For Snecma,this means the production of118 M88-2 engines as wellas the associated spares, fordelivery starting in 2007.

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RAFALE FLYING DISPLAYT h e R a f a l eomnirole fighteris regularly dis-p l a y e d a tmajor airshowsa r o u n d t h eworld by EricG é r a r d , aD a s s a u l tAv ia t ion tes t

pilot credited with over 5,300flying hours, including 600 in

Rafales. «Dur ing the t ight display routine, I push the air-craft to its limits to demonstrateboth its outstanding agilityand the fly-by-wire’s ‘carefreehandling’ feature that won’tlet the pilot stall the aircraft orpull too much g, he says. Thehighlight of the display is theSquare Dance, a 360 flat turnwith four rolls, a very violentmanoeuvre only performed by

the Rafale.» During the six-minute show, speed will varyfrom 100 knots for the slowpass to 500 knots, roll ratewill reach 270 degrees persecond, and g-load will peakat - 2.5 / + 9 g. Airfield per-formance is impressive too,with a 500 metre takeoff dis-tance and a 400 metre landingrun, even without a brake chute.

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DATA FUSION

D a s s a u l t A v i a t i o n • S n e c m a • T h a l e s

While rival late-generation fighters build pilot ergonomics around inherited technologies, Rafaleoffers a revolutionary man/machine interface designed around the plane’s most vital component:the pilot. The result is the most advanced modular integration of data, communication andcontrol ever engineered into a combat aircraft. Rafale. The OMNIROLE fighter ■

RAFALEINTERNATIONAL

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