Yes, can we get a list that's actually accurate? Just off off the top of my head that chart is wrong in: -The Rafale is not Low Observable in any sense to modern radars it's signature is laughably huge compared to the F-35. The F-35 to X-band by any sane definition counts as VLO in any case with an RCS on par with other stealth aircraft against those threats. The Rafale is no more "Low observable" then the Super Hornet which no one with a brain considers even slightly stealthy. -The Rafael is most certainly not "low observable" to IR given it has, you know, a giant blow torch called a jet engine on the back. Certainly no more then the F-35 is anyway. -It can supercruise... with a light A2A payload only. If you want to bomb anything it losses that capability and is no better then the F-35 due to external weapons carriage. -Agility is debatable both aircraft are more agile then legacy machines, but being a largely conventional delta and lacking thrust vectoring it's unlikely the Rafale is significantly more agile then the F-35 at sub and transonic speeds where dogfights actually happen in reality. -The Rafale does not really carry more missiles in the much vaunted super-cruising air to air configuration. 4 to 6 depending on who you ask with the F-35 can carrying 4 internally or up to ten if using external hard points. If it does go internal only it of course enjoys a gross advantage of stealth that almost certainly offsets the loss of two missiles. Beyond that there are proposal to allow block upgrades of the F-35 to carry six AAM internally totally negating this "weakness". -The Rafale's sensors fusion and passive SA features don't hold a candle to the F-35s. Acting like they're comparable is farcical. It would be like saying the Rafale and an F-4 Phantom's radars are comparable because they both have one. Just because you say you have something doesn't mean it's as good as other examples. -There is no operational data on sortie and maintenance for the F-35 yet making this entire section speculation at best. The F-22 has not proved any harder to upkeep then older fighters though and once fully ironed out for operational use it seems unlikely the F-35 will either (the B model excluded by it's nature of having additional systems it will be more complex, but the Rafale can't VTOL can it?) -Climb rate: given that the F-35 climb rate is classified it's impressive that that this chart can apparently definitively state the Rafale is better. Even so given that it's clear both can climb vertically at tens of thousands of feet per minute this has to be considered a wash at best. -Split second shots and cockpit visibility: So, does the Rafale display all aircraft data on a helmet mounted display in place of a HUD that also allows a pilot to look through the floor, wings, etc in 360 degrees? No you say? So... why exactly is it superior to the F-35 then? Oh wait it's not. -Guns, missiles: There is virtually nothing to chose from between a 25mm and a 30mm cannon in targeting modern fighters. Both will shred the enemy with handful of hits the 30mm is perhaps slightly more lethal, but the 25mm carries more rounds. Pick your poison. There is nothing to chose from between the Aim-9X and any other modern short range IR missile. There is nothing to choose from between RF missiles either until and if Rafale ever actually gets Meteor. (if Meteor is ever actually deployed it's how many years behind now?) Though this is stupid anyway because it's not like the F-35 can't get new missiles and in fact it's already planned to integrate a number of different weapons for end users.
The Rafale along with the Eurofighter are the last of the old generation. In a few areas of of increasingly meaningless performance like acceleration, raw speed, and perhaps agility they might be better, but as in other regimes air combat is rapidly moving beyond the point where the platform's performance matters as much as what's on it. In terms of sensors, stealth, situational awareness, and adaptability the F-35 destroys the Rafale and if I had to pick a horse going forward for decades it sure as hell wouldn't be the Rafale. The F-35 is a next generation base that can be upgraded and grown, the Rafale is a last generation machine desperately trying to cram next gen systems onto itself to stay competitive.
I read that the F-35s sensor package is practically worthless since missles can't take advantage of it. Might be able to see other aircraft, but won't be able to hit them.
I read that the F-35s sensor package is practically worthless since missles can't take advantage of it. Might be able to see other aircraft, but won't be able to hit them.
You read, very, very wrong. Honestly who would even take that shit seriously? At some point it just gets rather laughable that people seriously think something as broken as the moronic 'watchdogs' claim could be progressing ahead. Every minor teething problem is blown out of proportion or equivalent in other programs ignored, every advantage downplayed or brushed aside, every new capability dismissed as 'unimportant'. It really has become almost like bad comedy how much some so called 'experts' hate the thing.
To add to the numerous refutations of a shamefully inaccurate chart posing as fact:
-Supercruise: F-35 can supercruise at M1.2 for 150mi. The configuration tested wasn't specified but I wouldn't feel particularly obligated to point it out anyway, considering the chart didn't either, and, as mentioned, the Eurocanards' vaunted supercruise capability is with very light loads.
-Agility: First order of business is to put aside the chart's conflation of instantaneous and sustained turn rate and deal with the subject in those terms, i.e. those which are actually relevant and measurable. -STR: Rafale has inferior sustained turn performance to even latest variants of the F-16, which, in turn, are inferior in both STR and ITR to the F-35 at combat loading. -ITR: Rafale has a superior instantaneous rate, at the expense of bleeding off all of its energy hilariously rapidly and causing John Boyd to rise from the grave to slap some E-M theory into you. Also, have fun regaining it, considering the Rafale's best regime is low-speed/low-altitude and your SNECMA M88s are underpowered. Also, considering both aircraft have HOBS capability with their primary SRAAMs, have fun slapping some ordinary, non-E-M theory related sense into yourself after realizing an MBDA MICA has a somewhat higher ITR than you in the launch platform.
-Acceleration: F-35 outdoes every other strike fighter in the USAF stable with combat load going from cruise to M1.2 at 20,000 feet. Everything else is drag-limited thanks to not having internal carry.
-HF/UHF radars (and EHF, while we're at it): L-band radars, despite the hype given them on the Internet, are not magic; you are trading detection capability for angular resolution and waving EM signatures the size of India at aircraft with excellent (and in the F-35's case, class-leading) EW suites.
-Gun: More ignorant conflation; F-35A has integral GAU-22.
-BVR missile: Very interesting. Guess this thing isn't a BVR missile.
-Since the chart didn't mention the aircraft's own radars, I will: AN/APG-81 is hilariously capable; the fact that it can jam AN/APG-77 should make that obvious. RBE2, which was only even delivered within the past couple years in AESA, is not, and the AdA doesn't plan to refit older Rafales with it anyway.
-Cost, also not mentioned: Rafale is as ruinously expensive, both in acquisition and maintenance cost, as F-35. The difference is that F-35 production numbers are ramping up, are already right about at passing those of the Rafale, and will top them by hilarious amounts in coming years. I'll let basic economics speak for the rest.
I also love the note on Rafale LO, way at the bottom, of "not in full combat configuration and only from the front." Good thing fighters never face opponents A. while in combat configuration B. who aren't to their front.
While we're here, for a bonus, here are some more ridiculous "arguments" that I see floated around that I figure should be preemptively shot down, so to speak.
-Pugachev's cobra: Please don't overwork zombie John Boyd with dope-slapping. Also, combat aircraft are not called "combat aircraft" for their ability to attend airshows with no weapons and minimal fuel load and do flashy tricks at 150 KIAS.
-The US war in Vietnam: We aren't using AIM-4s anymore. Interestingly, a more recent and relevant comparison to today's AAMs, the Falklands War, never gets mentioned, mostly because an 80% success rate (AIM-9L) doesn't make for good doom-and-gloom.
-Just buy Russian planes, they're cheaper anyway: Recent Russian fighters have had the worst maintenance and upkeep costs of all competitors, when RAC has fulfilled its maintenance obligations in the first place. (Overhauling and chucking engines every 1K and 5K hours gets old. Doing the same every 6K and 30K with a Western engine gets old about 6x slower.) Or, if you're Algeria, you never get to that point, because the planes aren't even what you specified in the contract.
I originally posted that image as a semigag (I often do things like that on ModDB, especially on anything countryball related), didn't really think a actual serious discussion would results. Apologies for rage incited over this.
Though on a more serious note, I don't even know what to trust in the great debate on the merits of the F-35 given the sheer amount of vested interest is distorting the facts available. From Lockheed and the Pentagon the F-35 is a wonder fighter (except for that little bit about the stealth being downgraded but they assured that that is not a problem: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/not-so-stealthy-the-15b-fighters/2006/03/13/1142098404532.html https://www.f35.com/about/capabilities/stealth). Meanwhile, supposed independent think tanks like Air Power Australia has been lambasting the fighter excessively (Seems to be a combination of over pessimism and possible nostalgia involved in their analysis: http://www.ausairpower.net/jsf.html). Quite frankly I don't even know what the facts really are (or which facts to believe), and most people (from politicians to lobbyists to internet peoples) tend to pick/back the facts that suit their agenda/bias.
tl;dr We don't know for certain whether or not the facts we quote are 100% accurate and we really shouldn't causally dismiss any facts that don't fit with our predisposed views.
Air Power Australia's stuff is full of combination of facts and paranoia introduced by the introduction of Flankers into Asian air forces, some of which aren't...flying. In fact, the only reason to get something other than the F-35 is that you're not allowed to own the F-35 (politics), nothing more, nothing less.
-Just buy Russian planes, they're cheaper anyway: Recent Russian fighters have had the worst maintenance and upkeep costs of all competitors, when RAC has fulfilled its maintenance obligations in the first place. (Overhauling and chucking engines every 1K and 5K hours gets old. Doing the same every 6K and 30K with a Western engine gets old about 6x slower.) Or, if you're Algeria, you never get to that point, because the planes aren't even what you specified in the contract.
I apologize for perhaps apparently overly flippant dismissals, but in the context of the argument over the F-35, the problem is not spurious dismissals of facts but, in the spirit of Christopher Hitchens, spurious assertions of the same "facts." While I may not know 100% that some of my assertions are true (the ones that aren't trivially true, anyway), though I trust my sources, I do know 100% that some of the assertions presented by prominent figures in the Internet anti-F-35 crowd are false. Not for lack of information, but simply because they're outright lies. For example, from Don Bacon:
"The jet returned safely to base. As a routine safety precaution, the Joint Program Office (JPO) has temporarily suspended F-35 flight operations until a team of JPO and LM technical experts determines the root cause of the generator failure and oil leak,” Lockheed Martin F-35 spokesman John Kent said in a press statement. . .Kent noted that the F-35 has now flown 657 flights and this appears to be the first time a flight has encountered this problem. “Once the cause is known, the appropriate repairs and improvements will be made before flight operations resume,” he said."
quicksilver at f-16.net points out: "Bacon pulled the above quote from a Generator failure a couple years ago. How do I know? John Kent left the F-35 Communications Department several years ago and now works at LM Missiles and Fire Control IIRC [he does ]. He most certainly has made no such comment on the oil leak this week.
Also, "657 flights...?" The F-35 fleet passed 17,000 total flight hours recently. That would be a helluvan average sortie duration... [26 hrs]"
Heck, I don't even have to do that much detective work - parts of this 2011 article about a generator failure should sound eerily familiar. Poorly hidden dishonesty, or incompetence in conflating news reports over 3 years apart? Either case doesn't sound like the kind of source I want to trust. Nor does APA, whose much-cited (because it was/is on Wikipedia, although I can't seem to find it again) table of kill ratios was, IIRC, an unrepeatable methodological black box published before many aspects of the involved aircraft were known or even set. And the problem is that easily debunkable nonsense like this from the likes of Bacon, ELP, Kopp, Solomon, et al. are widely taken as gospel.
As for those links that tell of how F-35's stealth was "downgraded", in short, they don't. Putting aside the SMH article's wording that implies F-35s are $15 billion apiece, the "news" it was reporting on was nothing more than a US DoD redefinition of VLO and LO, resulting in no change whatsoever in the VLO or LO characteristics of any aircraft on Earth. The Lockheed Martin information page is also non-news. Stealth indeed is not invisibility. It never has been - ask 250. raketna brigada, Serbian PVO. Dispelling the popular notion that it is is the only thing that LM page is meant to accomplish.
Edit: I figure I've left something to clarify as usual, which is here that my crotchetiness is not directed at here, but at the ostensibly journalistic and analytical root sources of the usual dis-, mis-, and non-information.
@kst: Indeed, and a fun experience I hear that's been. (For anyone else wondering what I'm talking about with respect to Algeria, which I probably should've said in the first place, Algeria returned 15 MiG-29SMTs in 2008 after finding them to be poorly refurbished rather than the new-build airframes they were expecting.)
In all likelihood, though, with respect to the Internet debate, facts are pointless. The day the F-35 stops receiving nonsense sensationalist bricks through the window is going to be the day its successor is announced, and not a single day before. Lest we forget our predecessors and all the tried and true options that were once overweight, overcomplicated, F-111B repeats (F-14), short-legged competition-losers (F/A-18A-D), and snail-paced masters of none (Super Hornet) before they were the tried and true options.
Edit: I recently came across information I wasn't aware of before regarding the unfortunately well-known APA report, courtesy of smsgtmac. Namely, that it was 1. run on Harpoon 3 (PDF, page 6) and 2. rejected by the RAAF.
It's illegal to export them and they haven't been built for years; makes them hard to consider.
EDIT: Also don't think they'd make very good carrier planes.
To add to this point, making a carrier plane out of a land-based version isn't as easy as a matter of adding an tail hook and a bunch of strengthening (there's a whole lot more involved other than that). That is the reason why MOST carrier aircrafts these days are designed to be that from the start (cases like the Su-33 and MiG-29K are exceptions to the norm). Heck, even most of those in the Cold War are designed that way.
Then again, back in the late 1980s when everyone have a massive hard-on for the Advanced Tactical Fighter the Navy actually considered a version of the Raptor for the NATF (which they abandoned in the early 90s for various reasons that we don't need to speculate).
Honestly, while I have a personal fondness for the Gripen, it's been far oversold by terrible sources like Bill Sweetman and company at Aviation Weak. Particularly in terms of its low cost (and thus, it's implied, ability to be fielded in large numbers). The USD 4,700 CPFH number that Saab likes to advertise is, frankly, garbage. Swiss government estimates for Gripen NG CPFH came out at over 5 times that; Norwegian numbers came out more expensive than the F-35. Add that to the continuing problems Swedish press have reported with G-suits, ILS, etc. and the fact that the Gripen NG is still a paper airplane, and the JAS 39 being touted as a "sixth-generation" wunderfighter starts to sound like a bad joke.