I Found the Rafale's Weak Spot 

There are some mistakes and information missing which makes the conclusion flawed : 1) The rafale over the shoulder targeting and shooting in the late 2000's was done trough link 16. This should have been mentioned in the video and it missed it. 2) Rafale F4.1 introduces a rafale specific directional datalink like the F35 has which is intrisincly more resilient to jamming and more discrete than link 16 + better bandwith than link 16 for video more data sharing etc. a) It will allow exchange of data & better passive location of ennemy sensors increasing situation awerness allowing more tactical possibilities. With F4.1 datalink you exchange & process raw data between aircraft to build a more robust SA while link 16 you are just sharing an already processed track to your wingman. b) It will be a first step towards collobrative fighting with drones (expected with the F5 standard based on the Neuron). F5 standard is still being defined but discussions are around a next gen GaN AESA radar with EA capabilities, true Sead role which is currently missing + remote carriers based on the Neuron + replacement of current ASMP-A nuclear supersonic missile with an hypersonic one. 3) Scorpion HMS is not an american HMS, it is from Thales, France and it is ITAR free. Big mistake here for an expert video. 4) Rafale 4.1 is the last standard for which all older rafales can be retrofitted. Newly delivered rafale 4.2 will have structural changes and will differ from the F4.1. Only new rafale 4.2 will be able to fully evolve toward future "blocks".

It’s not a secret, it was publicly said by the french airforce. The f4 was always about having it’s own version of interpatrol com system allowing raw sensor data to be shared. That’s the all point of the f4 standard (the f4.1 to f4.3). F5 is supposed to allow for the rafale to order drones around him.

The Scorpion HMD is a Thales design and ITAR free "Scorpion is flying on board 700 platforms and 1,500 systems. This head-worn display (HWD) already equips platforms including Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcon (Blocks 30, 40, 50 and 70), Fairchild A-10 Thunderbolt II, F/A-18C Hornet, Lockheed AC-130, F-5 (Aggressor fleet), H-135M, H-145M, H225M, MD-530G Block II (BII) and KAI LAH Korea. More recently it has been selected to outfit French Air Force Rafales. " thales website

I always thought the rafale’s data-bus was fibre optic. At least the backbone. This seems to be corroborated by a quick search “MIL STD 1760 is the military standard electrical interface between a military aircraft and its weapon systems/on board avionic systems. This standard has a fibre optic backbone and can facilitate high speed data communication. Rafale's avionics are integrated through four MlL STD-1553B data buses and two MILSTD-1760 data buses.” (Center for Public Policy Research)

Very interesting video. I'm curious why you hinted the Gripen E was any different. Another day, perhaps ?

As an avionics tech back in ancient times, 1960s, I find the concept of data fusion and cooperative aircraft passive sensing fascinating. Your comment about fiber optic connection in the weapons pylons kind of took be aback. Fiber is pretty fussy and pylons are in a harsh dirty environment. I would have expected any connection to weapons would be copper.

From what I remember, all older of the rafales (F3R and under) are planed to be upgraded to the F4.1 standard at some point, but wont be upgraded to any higher standard because of the outdated hardware. But, Rafales that are manufactured at the F4 standard (so I suppose Rafale being made right now) should be of the F4.2 standard, with some internal hardware upgrades compared to the older ones, and will have the capacity to be upgraded to the F5 standard, F6 if that becomes a thing.

Using another plane for targeting was done in 90's by SAAB with older generation of Gripens using their unique datalink. Six gripens could use each other sensors and weapons system and other planes or other platforms just receive data.

Colloquially, the wiring may generically refer to electronic systems.

2:55 a rare sight of a flight of rafale's looking for a mate

I noted with interest the part about you having your doubts about Rafale's active radar cancellation system being "the only" EW suite capable of active cancellation. I would note that active cancellation is easiest when: 1. The RCS of the protected aircraft is relatively simple and changes gradually with azimuth and elevation. The more complex the aircraft's shape, the harder it is to correctly estimate the required amplitude of the cancelling signal. Note that diffractive/resonant returns are fairly easy to predict, while specular ones are much more complex. 2. The radar to be canceled has relatively low frequency and bandwidth. It's a lot easier to cancel a VHF-band surveillance radar than it is to cancel an X-band targeting set. So if I were designing an aircraft with active cancellation in mind I would design it to use shape and RAM to defeat higher-frequency radars, and I would keep the shape as simple as possible to make cancellation of lower-frequency radars as easy as possible. If you look at the stealth aircraft landscape, there are three that seem tailor-made for active cancellation in these respects: B-2, RQ-180, and B-21. The fact that the US abandoned the B-2's low-level-specific "beavertail" in the B-21 further suggests that it believes that it has solved the problem of ground-based low-frequency radars, and active cancellation is perhaps the most obvious way that might have happened

Side note: Home wiring data speed can achieve Gigabits level, as most home are not subjected to strong electronic interference. ie radar of the aircraft or that of another aircraft next to it. Copper wiring shielding and various EMC reduction measures can only protect to certain interference levels. My Guess, why some Aircraft are able to transfer at higher data rates, usage of Fiber optic cable.

i'm thinking that the Passive sensing exists but isn't correlated between aircrafts yet. also that such old data buses make some sense for the period where it was engineered (early 80s) it's good to be back, couldn't watch your vids for a while due to IRL stuff

I learn something new every time I watch your videos. Awesome jam

I really enjoy your highly informed engineering approach to military aeronautics. In an internet filled with stick-and-rudder people, it is information and interpretations hard to find anywhere else.

Love your videos keep it up !

Wow, this was an awesome video. I wish u could do such a deep research on LCA Tejas Mk1-A. It's also a new variet of Tejas (it's first flight will happen this month). Perhaps u can do a deep research on it as well and find its capabilities and upgrades.

No need to watch to said "good job"

To use the comment of this video on another website by Picdelamirand-oil : "The video makes unjustified assumptions and errors about the Rafale's characteristics. For example, a key point in the reasoning behind the low throughput of the Rafale's internal data buses is based on the fact that there is a need to upgrade the throughput of these buses to be able to use the Talios pod, which would only be possible with F4.1. But this is completely untrue, since Talios is already in use with F3R, so there's no need to upgrade. From that point on, everything falls apart. In any case, if by chance he was right, we wouldn't try to pass video on a 1553 system bus, which is a control bus, but we'd add a Video bus to the architecture, for example a 7221 bus."

Great video! Thank you.

Always enjoyable. Thank you. The data-bus is the literal backbone of all modern aircraft.

As the rafale infrastructure is at least 25yo, I do not doubt some legacy parts are aging fast. 4.2 standard should change completely the infrastructure of the plane to be compatible with future F5. And Omnirole means, it can switch role during a single flight and totaly reconfigure the plane instantly for the new role without having to go back to the base for a reconfiguration.

Thank you. Superb explication and explanation, as always. No surprise that the onboard computer system is getting past its ‘use by’ date. I suspect that this is why the RAF reassigned their early Typhoons as ‘air to air’ aircraft.

I hope your health is ok man, i remember seeing a video a while ago about you talking about it

I paused @8:21 and searched on the wikipedia for VMEBus : the two CPUs seems to be plug in a VME industrial bus : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMEbus The early versions supports only 40 MB/s speed (byte, not bit), as rafale was designed on the 80's, it's probably the system speed of prototypes and F1 variants. As far as I remember, SPARC CPUs have been upgraded at least one time, if it's still on VMEBus, the last revision (1997) is limited to 320MB/s, so it could support a network card up to 2.56Gb/s, which depending on the low level bus protocol used on the F35, could match its 3.2Gb/s but no more and can saturate the computer system bus.

They did not talk about the computers because you can replace them much easier than the cabling. 21 MBit is far too low speed to be effective. hobbyist devices have higher bandwidth than that one.

Let's add that AFAIK cooperative engagement capability is something current 3F release of the F-35 just doesn't have (together with a lot of other things Lockeed advertisements gave for granted or imminent already long time ago) and would be implemented just in the new versions after increment Three.

An Italian, talking to Americans, about a French jet. I guess we can all get along.

They call it omnirole not only because it is indeed multirole, but also because mission profile change can be done on the fly in the air.

the processors themselves don't really matter if you have sufficient hardware accelerators to do the heavy calculations (think FPGAs and ASICs) the new fiber optic cable may be required as a specialized communication channel between the pod and the pod-controlling computer

The J35 Draken missile engaged a target designated by another aircraft in the late 70's The JA37 Viggen successfully achieved radar lock on the SR-71and simulated hit in the mid-1980s... The missile was guided by the ground station, which had the power to penetrate the SR-71's defenses. Both the J35 and JA37 radars and sensors could link up to four jets and one ground station. Jakt Länken (hunting-link) It's even declassified by now. lol

Can’t stop loving that music with info that makes sense.

I don't follow this channel much, but I have been very impressed by some videos which I've seen in the past. A couple of things.. if the Raffle is a carrier aircraft, why don't the wings fold? I was stunned when I saw them in the hangar! If the wings folded an extra 50% more could comfortably fit! I'm baffled, unless this is just a land based system adapted to carrier use. Secondly about high speed data links and incredible computing power - are they hardened against nuclear EMP, as I imagine that this is more difficult using cutting edge architectures than (say 5nm) than the larger architectures (like 90nm). I know that spacecraft, at least the ones which are designed to operate beyond the Earth's magnetic shield use large computer architectures to remain functional. Doesn't this apply to military aircraft, or since the end of the first Cold War is it assumed that EMP won't exist? Do say if I'm completely wrong about either point. All the best. 🇫🇷🇬🇧

It's such a pretty jet though

9:50 The logo is that of the PSG football club, not the institutions

I belive that most 4th-generation aircraft have similar databus limitations, unless they've been substantially redesigned as in the cases of the Block 70 F-16 or the F-15EX. That's arguably the biggest differentiator between those aircraft and their respective predecessors.

Stop the video at 4:17 Damn, that's a good looking thing. Almost like a scifi vehicle design from a 1980's anime movie.

No elephant and no Otis today signiore.... I hope they are OK. Thanks for the interesting info.

The wiring also might something to do with power. The computers in fighter jets are not latest generation so their electronic systems tend to have a rather high power requirements. To receive, process data there might not be enough power for the computers to work and cool.

@millenium. Please have a look at tragedac, you will understand a lot. Passive ir targeting vs stealth plane. You will also notice that the faf is very heavy relaying on future mica ng ir missile. Also new osf ir sensor and the 3 are very coherent. The faf will use ir is air to air much more than radar. (Until multistactic radar solution has matured probable after 2030).

how could a cancellation of radar returns work? is the aircraft a huge antenna that transmits the radar return shifted in phase to cancel the radar waves like a noise cancelling headphone works?

👍👍 very interesting analysis - like your "strange" videos .. 😉

An excellent explainer as always.

Great info!

So basically, they added wifi to the F4.1.

SDR has been implemented with Indian Rafales which are f4.1 equivalent

LOVE the look of the tandem seat Rafale….

nice video,very educatinal as usual...

I really cannot wait to see the first public display, or declassified information of from a successful test with tactics, maybe a BFR engagement with a dogfight component, using either the F-35 or one of the new NGAD fighters utilizing CCAs, Collaborating Combat Aircraft, that can pull whatever G's the drones are designed to sustain and can be specialized for specific tasks such as electronic warfare, air superiority, missile truck, decoys, some carrying fuel, and whatever else people think up. Those CCA's could also fly escort for B-21's which could even turn out being the best setup of all.

_"They needed the Rafale to replace the venerable Crusader 2"_ Hmmm, afaik the Rafale replaced the Super Etendard. Crusaders were long gone by the time the Rafale entered service 😂

... This reminds me of the Sega Saturn. It also had a funny A-F control bus.

Great video as always. I'm very worried that in fact (as many have stated in the past of history repeating itself) humanity is again building technologies that have implications that are so complex decission makers always will get it wrong. In a war one or the other side wins or both lose. A win win scenario isn't possible. France prudently whishes to remain independent. It wants to rearm on a more war footing. In the (mid) long run France won't be able to keep up in the arms race. Europe could as a whole build non exportable high tech weapons outside a closely agreed amount of nations. These should be both the extreme costly high end weapons. AWACS replacements etc. But also within these selected nations such as Japan South Korea, Australia besides NATO stand alone weapon factories to produce slightly superior to the rest prolongend war weapons for conscript large armies. MAG, .50 cal, basic Fiat G91 philosophy mass weapons that work.

Thanks for updating us on Rafale, your knowledge and understanding of systems are second to none. The network fusion may be relevant for coalition missions, the US and any other country, such as Japanese F35s and the US F35s, and non-NAT countries. or among NATO countries. However, interoperability requires the same bus speeds, network cabling data transportation, and power generation to process and run the onboard computers. The most important thing is the architecture and computational power itself. Your presentation and research have indicated some serious limitations for the 4.1 gen. Rafales' capability to use the onboard computers' data fusion and computational power is compromised or below the threshold because of the speed lag from sensors to the bus and computer and to ground stations, air or even satellite networks, as indicated in the presentation. I think the French are pitching Rafales to possible coalition partners, let us say the Indians to buy more or the Qatari AF, about the future integration of their aircraft with the F35 sensor fusion system and network regime for interoperability.

Very insightful... since the avionics and electronics develop at a much faster pace than the air frame, shouldn't a "6th Generation" aircraft have a modular electronic structure, such that it can be easily adapted with time? If stealth is losing importance, what does that mean for future aircraft? Is the F-35 going to be outdated in 10 years because its electronics are going to be outdated?

I remember that a future variant (F4.2 or F5) should have a totally revamp internal wiring that make previous version mechanically incompatible with the previous one, a first with the Rafale.

I go with @arthur, though I think interoperability between different types of aircraft is a too a bigige risker to take

@16:53s I think the computational capability and upgrade-ability is all SAAB talkes about!

Thank you again for an ever enlightening and current video ...and the Gripen never ceases to surprise !!💪👍

Amazing BS in the comments already.. some didn't watch the video apparently. Thanks for the heads-up on the Rafale F4.1. Rafale (only) got a viable platform with the upgrades and especially the F.3. Upgradability and the speed of implementation and validation by DGA is one of the strengths of Rafale. As I understood it the F4.1 standard is more an upgrade program for existing airframes (especially Rafale M) whilst F4.2 will be newly build airframes which likely have improved wiring. For now a possibility could be separate wiring for the systems (not the prettiest solution but a stopgap measure for pre-existing airframes with remaining life). Especially with the focus on cooperative fighting and new AESA radar (RBE2-XG) these hardware issues needs to be addressed. Challenges also include cooling requirements (as seen with F-35). Love to hear your thoughts.

The talios pod dates from 2018 a new order took place in 2022... It is not new and in service since 2020 The mica NG is not new either, it dates from 2028, it is the mica ng ir version which arrives in 2026... There are EM and IR versions on this missile. It's always funny to see English speakers discussing the omnirole. You should know that multi-role planes in France have existed since the 1970s, the two best known are the Mirage F1 and its counterpart the Super Etendrdard or SEM, which were called the Swiss Army knives... For optical fiber this is not surprising and fiber cables are old and very resistant. The Scorpion helmet visors come from Thales and in my opinion do not have US components... The Rafale helmet is an Arlesian...

Looking into the limitations of link 16 might give you some insight on this subject...

I think the only problem with the mirage is production volume. That and depth of armament inventory and production volumes.

Given that passive radars (analysing changes ín electronic "chatter") were shown ín expos like 15 years ago, as a gut feeling I risk that Low Observability gives diminishing returns.

Could it be that they have added a direct fibre connection to the pod, bypassing the fibre loop that all the other systems use? The various optical systems are capable of generating stupid amounts of data, so secondary direct bypasses would make a lot of sense.

It would be interesting to see how a Generation 4.5 fighter with advanced computing would do against, say, an F-35. Also, in the news this week were some photos of stealth external fuel tanks. I wonder how the RCS of a Generation 4 fighter would be affected if you installed a stealth tank, particularly from the side, versus a clean wing.

Great video.

Professionals always have some unexpected perspectives and discover key details. the mf 1553b

6:18 No, the first AASM variant was for 500lbs/ 250kg bombs.

Can't the Gripen do the same thing when it comes to canceling radar returns?

Hmm, given that Saab offers to upgrade Gripen-C/D models to the E/F standards I feel mayhaps they still lack the capability to approach the F-35's data fusion. The amount they can achieve IS impressive and Saab is the leader in Europe in terms of fighter avionics. I just can't imagine that 20 years old data buses and cables would match semi-modern ones. Of course it's entirely possible that Saab is willing to disasemble old planes and put them back together with new wires. If anyone is crazy enough to streamline such process it's Sweden. IKEA plane is not that much of a joke, I swear.

I wouldn't compare the internal bus of a single user system to internet architecture. 21 megabit, probably bidirectional, on a managed local network segment where every component has strict transmission slots, can push a LOT of data around without "choking".

Today nearly every town in France has a Fiber optic connection (Or they are very close.) Very early on France made the forward thinking decision to install fiber optic connection across the whole country but it ended up taking much longer than planed so only large city's like Paris had Fiber and fast internet and for a long time and many small towns had to suffer with really really slow French phoneline DSL! (Like the Rafael I suppose.) Ironically the US did not opt for ubiquitous fiber in the early days but internet over cable TV advanced so fast that my internet in the USA was 100X the speed I got in France. Now they are catching up across the board.

Certe cose le vedo solo su questo canale. Grazie!!!

I absolutely love the way Rafale looks, maybe on par with the SU-33....

Non ... Le casque est français et produit par thales ... Et le programme scorpion est un programme français qui permet la fusion de toutes les données ... Du fantassin, aux blindés, aux hélicoptères, et aux avions ... Pour détecter, cibler, et toucher l'adversaire ... Avec tous les capteurs à disposition ...

"20 megabit per second" is that dialup modem ? cannot be fiber

I believe both Gripen E and Eurofighter Typhoon will be using the Litening 5 Targeting pod and that is more advanced than the built in Sniper in F35. In fact F35A sold to The IAF had the Sniper system removed for the more advanced model. As usual the speculation as to who has what is just that. Cancellation technology is widely known and used by several ' friendly nations ' and is not a French novelty. That Rafale lacked moving target indicator and 2 way data link to weapons will be remedied but F4.1 still does not get 2 way data link. Gripen has jumped ahead of its cousins by having more advanced weapons intergeneration and GaN technology on its radar..The Arexis EW system looks to be the basis of the upcoming German EW Eurofighters and again the Swedes have found a clever solution that others are trying to copy. The popularity of Rafale sales is partly down to ITAR FREE purchases backed up with French Government loans . The failure in Eurofighter sales is partly due to a lack of ITAR free technology and also German export licences to Saudi Arabia and mutterings of an export ban to Turkey. Before we look to far ahead the collaboration with other countries may give cost savings but has its negative side if you are reliant on a dithering partner. FCAS has a major hurdle to meet before work begins and Dassault are sure to be nervous about its bed mate. Perhaps we should look at Gripen E/F as a Super Hornet compared to a legacy Hornet as much has changed including Engine, Radar, Avionics, fuel and weapons load. Neither Rafale nor Eurofighter have metamorphed in such a significant way as Gripen. Yet. .

7:11 Talios is already available on F3R. So that wiring story doesn't make sense.

I believe the situation is worse than that. Europeans have that habit of investing enormous money in projects that in the end obsoletes (recall the ISDN communication standard)

Could we have an episode on SPECTRA and electronic warfare suite? Please.

You got 2 good eyes bravo

Great video

Nice video. What it struck me was the SPARC CPU architecture. SPARC was a joint venture between Sun Microsystems and Fujitsu. Practically it is a DEAD architecture for 10+ years, ever since Oracle acquired Sun, X86 CPUs became more competent and affordable for big enterprise workloads and ARM CPUs came in to offer more power efficient solutions. My guess is that Dassault would need to redesign the computing hardware to new architectures and then port Rafale's software into the new system. I can assume that would cost them billions of Euros. Investing in such endeavour would cost them time and resources from the development of FCAS. It would make sense to upgrade Rafael only if they have many orders and contracts to justify it.

this is my favorite plane for being named after my favorite teenage mutant ninja turtle. what a great idea to name a fighter jet after him

Here's a theory: interoperability with the F-35 will require the installation of some "black-box" hardware that cannot be produced under license. They need to install a new data bus that will be compatible with the new hardware.

Thanks!

France is getting Phantoms? Awesome! /s

Btw HD FHD 4K video requires 3 Mbps, but go down to HD in Grey scale it goes down under one. FYi looks like thats what their doing the software is criticle here, and that is probably why they chose this road.

A correction: the first 4.1 consigned was not the French one in the new but the ones to Croatia that were taken to such a standard from the F3R one before being consigned last year. Deal made between France and Dassault for developing the new version obliged infact France to not retrofit older planes (almost for the moment) with it but to acquire new ones. So France had to find someone to take the older ones, Greece was first and Croatia followed so taking the most modern ones (F3R is from 2018) but NOTHING forbade them to upgrade the planes to the new standard. Only difference is that Croatia got mostly single seat planes (10 on 12) while new ones for France are all two seats, given that new standard is moslyt about A2G missions so an extra operator is definitively an advantage there.

Very good point

Bravo, molto interessante

Nothing about price per hour comparison between F35 and Rafale ? Nothing about reliability ?

The definition of "stealth" IS "low observable"

Why are you in the car? Oh security, it's secret squirrel stuff 😲

I thought that was only true of the older Typhoon variants. I was under the impression that Tranche 3 onwards they inalled a new processing unit and new fibre optic bus.

Rabbit hole...!

Saab will deliver to competing planes. Saab is to deliver the Arexis sensor system to German Eurofighter planes. What is the difference between Rafale and gripens EW capacity?

Something is missing! That’s what they also said about that Boeing door.

Why did France go with MICA NG when the best missile for air to air is available the Meteor missile

Omni-role except carrying heavy cargo.