As already mentioned earlier on The Aviationist (especially when discussing the famous claims by the German Eurofighter Typhoon pilots at Red Flag Alaska 2012) in November 2009, some 1st Fighter Wing’s Raptors from Langley AFB, flew to Al Dhafra, in the UAE, to train with the French Air Force Rafales and the RAF Typhoons during exercise ATLC 2009.
The episode is quite famous because in late December of the same year the French Ministry of Defense released the captures taken by the Rafale’s OSF (Optronique Secteur Frontal) showing an F-22 in aerial combat. In fact, although the U.S. Air Force pilots told that their plane was undefeated during the exercise, the French were killed once in six 1 vs 1 WVR (Within Visual Range) engagements versus the F-22 (the other 5 ended with a “draw”) and one Raptor was claimed as killed by a UAE Mirage 2000 during a mock engagement.
However, the following interesting video just made available by the French website http://portail-aviation.
HUD or sensors’ captures and videos are no more than marketing stuff because, unless the scenario and ROE are known, it is impossible to say when the alleged kill took place, what was happening before and after, which was the tactics.
Nevertheless, the video shows that the Rafale is almost comparable to the F-22 especially when maneuvering at low speed during close air combat.
By the way, when we talk about maneuverability, we can’t but mention the Su-35 Flanker-E and its stunning display at Le Bourget.
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*obviously I know I’m posting on a 6 year old article* It’s interesting to note in this video that at about 2:50 you can see in the HUD symbology that the french pilot first selects a vertical scan, and then boresight scan with the radar (dashed vertical line, then boresight circle hud symbology) and it appears the Rafael has no problem acquiring a lock on the Raptor in this scenario. The way I see it, there’s 3 possible explanations:
1.) Raptor was equipped with some sort of radar reflectors to take stealth out of the equation for this particular scenario
2.) Rafael’s electro-optical/IR sensors are slaved to the radar boresight acquisition mode and he acquired an IR lock, not radar
3.) at this very close range, the Rafael’s radar can ‘burn through’ the Raptor’s stealth
I’d be very curious to know which one it is, or if there’s another possibility I hadn’t considered!
Wait maneuvering at low speed? What about high speed 2 circle sustained turn rate fights? The F-22 can do 19 degrees per second sustained turn based on videos while the Rafale is probably slightly worse than the eurofighter typhoon’s sustained turn rate which is 20 degrees. So the rafale probably turns at a little bit more than 19 degrees per second which gives it a slight edge over the F-22 in the 2 circle.