Chapter 911 Opposing the "Wind"
Just when Yang Quanzhi used his sharp tongue to promote various aspects of the J-10E's performance to Lieutenant General Gidita.
Over Bushell Airport.
The much-anticipated flight show has also begun.
In fact, in the traditional air show schedule, there is generally no tendency to arrange flight performances into professional days.
Firstly, there are too few visitors, so it would be a waste to take off all the time.
Secondly, at the beginning, the people who participated in the professional day were really professional, and it was rare for a simple performance display like a flight demonstration to affect the final decision.
But later, more and more organizers discovered that buying planes in some countries is as careless as buying groceries.
Moreover, the person who makes the final decision may not really understand the Air Force.
So the air show can really have a certain publicity effect.
In the end, we simply set up different performance content every day.
And this time, since it is an air show held in Paris, the first one to take off is of course the model belonging to the host country.
The all-black Rafale C01.
Due to funding problems, only one prototype of the Rafale B and C models was built, and only the carrier-based M model, M01 and M02, was completed according to the original plan.
From flight testing to participating in air shows, all tasks can only be completed by these four aircraft.
Fortunately, the M88-2 engine has now been buffed by Chang Haonan. Although the performance indicators may not be very advanced, there is absolutely no problem in terms of stability.
Even under such high-intensity continuous rotation, the fault interval above the standard line is still guaranteed.
Looking at his own plane, which was close to being in service, flashing and moving in mid-air, Serge Dassault, who was sitting in the VIP seat, finally showed a happy smile.
The Rafale fighter jet adopts a close-coupled canard layout. The distance between the canard and the main wing is very close. It focuses on using the close-coupling effect to increase the unsteady vortex lift and delay the stall of the main wing.
This design makes the Rafale's performance, especially its agility, better at low altitudes and low speeds, making it more suitable for ground attack missions.
Of course, this is also an old tradition of Dassault products.
French fighters have always had shortcomings in terms of power, so they are better at, or in other words, have to be good at differentiated competition.
“The Rafale fighter jet is equipped with the REB2 passive phased array radar produced by Thomson, which is better than the mechanical scanning radar on Typhoon, JAS39 and F16 in terms of scanning frequency, detection accuracy and multi-target tracking capabilities. "
It is naturally impossible for Dassault, as the boss, to say this directly about an opponent's model.
Therefore, it was Ed Steiner who was responsible for introducing the specific situation of Rafale fighter jets to several exhibition representatives from Egypt, Greece, South Korea, Austria and Singapore.
"But I heard that Lockheed Martin already has a plan to upgrade the active phased array radar for F16C/D?"
A lieutenant colonel from the Greek Air Force next to him put down his telescope and asked Ed Steiner said.
“That’s just a plan after all.”
The latter shrugged and replied:
“And it’s just an upgrade of the phased array antenna, and it cannot replace the underlying design of the radar back end. ”
"In addition, our Rafale is far superior to the F16C in terms of maneuverability and bomb load."
Ed Steiner is very familiar with publicity tactics and mentioned them all when talking about the shortcomings of his own aircraft.
For example, due to aerodynamic design limitations, the radar antenna area of the Rafale is almost the smallest among the third-generation aircraft.
This leads to the fact that RBE2, as a more advanced electronic scanning radar, is not as good as the last generation mechanical scanning radar equipped by its peers in terms of hard indicators such as detection range and anti-interference ability.
And it's difficult to circumvent this problem with a simple upgrade.
However, after all, several of the audience members were from the Air Force, and someone quickly asked related questions:
“The phased array radar generates more heat and requires more power than the mechanical scanning radar. "Big, can your model guarantee the stability and reliability under working conditions?"
The person who spoke was a colonel from Austria.
In fact, Ed Steiner knew very well that this person came here to cause trouble.
Because Austria actually decided to join the EF2000 research and development plan a year ago, it is simply impossible to buy Rafale again.
But the air show was open, and it was impossible for him to drive people away from the viewing platform, so he had to bite the bullet and explain:
"The Rafale fighter jet uses two of the latest M88-2 engines to provide a maximum thrust of 7600kg. At the same time, it can also take into account the maximum power generation capacity of 25kw, so there is no need to worry about this..."
This is another typical strategy of avoiding the important and taking the easy.
Since the nose of the aircraft is already very small, the Rafale does not retain a large number of fuel lines for liquid cooling of the radar like the J-11B and Su-27SM.
This results in the failure rate of RBE2 being indeed high.
Therefore, Ed Steiner only answered half of the Austrian colonel's questions.
Fortunately, at this time, the first round of aerial performances had ended, and bursts of applause erupted from the auditorium, interrupting the conversation between several people.
In fact, Rafale fighter jets should be considered a frequent visitor to air shows throughout the 1990s.
Almost never absent.
But the significance of today’s appearance is obviously extraordinary. After the collapse of Operation Allied Force in 1999, the relationship between Snecma and General Electric fell into a freezing point, and the M88 also stalled due to the loss of technical support and important parts provided by the latter.
By 2000, all four Rafale prototypes had entered a de facto grounding.
So rumors soon spread that Rafale might be canceled directly like the Mirage 4000.
As for Snecma's cooperation with China...
At least at that time, everyone basically regarded it as a joke.
Therefore, several countries that originally had the intention to purchase have also turned to other models.
This time, the Dassault Group persuaded the French Aerospace Industry Association to postpone the air show to August specifically to allow the Rafale to appear in full condition close to service and shatter all doubts about this model. doubts.
Judging from the results, it should be considered a success.
......
On the other side of the viewing platform, Andy Latham, the team representative of BAE Systems, occupied the position with the best view of the audience. He was holding a telephoto camera and took a series of shots at the tail of the Rafale fighter jet that was taxiing towards the tarmac.
"So...could it be that the Chinese helped Snecma solve the reliability problem of the M88 engine?"
Latham put down the camera and turned to Professor Roger Elinor next to him and asked .
The tone was full of disbelief.
It is true that the Chinese people publicly demonstrated their third-generation turbofan engine in 1999.
But developing a model yourself and helping others perfect an immature model are two completely different concepts.
The former can be played freely on a piece of white paper, while the latter is equivalent to dancing in shackles.
It can be said that the difficulty is higher.
What's more, it has only been about a year and a half since Snecma cooperated with Huaxia.
Even if we do not consider the issue of mutual trust in the handover process between the two parties, this efficiency is a bit too exaggerated.
“I said several years ago that China’s level in the field of aero-engine design is likely to far exceed our expectations.”
Professor Elinor, on the other hand, looked as if he was doing well:
“When I was wiping the butt of the EJ200 engine before, I accidentally reviewed a paper written by a Chinese scholar, about non-structural Generated by overlapping grids, I knew at that time that they must have a lot of good things hidden in their hands.”
“So... was that paper what inspired you?”
Latham looked like a curious baby.
“No.”
Although it had been many years, Elinor had even forgotten who the author of that article was, but when he heard this question, he still showed an expression of gritted teeth:
"The author happened to be writing Before the most critical point... I stopped writing..."
Speaking of this, Elinor relaxed his mentality slightly, and then continued to explain:
"I spent about After a year, I still haven’t figured out how to implement the grid form mentioned in that article at the engineering level.”
“Fortunately, our laboratory later built a brand new supercomputer, which has a faster computing speed. It was thousands of times faster in the past, so even with the old method, the problem was still solved.”
"Ah this..."
Latham never expected this kind of plot, but he didn't know how to comfort the other party, so he had to change the subject:
"So...if everything goes well with the Rafale project, will it pose a threat to our EF2000 in the international market?"
"It is unlikely."
Elinor's The answer is very simple:
"Although the Rafale and our Typhoon have their own strengths in design, the overall performance is too much affected by the engine. I saw the data on their M88-2 exhibition board two days ago, and the gap compared to the EJ200 is very obvious. "
"In this way, even in the low-altitude and low-speed areas where Rafale is better, we can still have a clear advantage. Only mechanical scanning radar is a hidden danger, so you BAE must speed up the progress..."< br>
As if to verify his statement.
As soon as Elinor finished speaking, an EF2000 prototype numbered DA7 began to accelerate from the distant runway.
Compared to the gentle movements of its competitors just now, the takeoff of this plane can be said to be extremely violent——
With a runway that is almost half the length of the former, it relies on the aerodynamic torque brought by the remotely coupled canards and the total thrust of the two EJ200s of 18 tons to complete the takeoff in an almost vertical attitude.
It even has a transition configuration with three auxiliary fuel tanks.
A truly strong person does not need to conduct word-of-mouth propaganda at all.
When Typhoon's performance was about halfway through, Ed Steiner on the other side realized that his side would probably lose completely in today's air-to-air contest.
The size of a medium-sized machine is matched with two high-performance mid-range thrusters with a thrust-to-weight ratio close to 10.
Even in the low-altitude and low-speed range where it is not good at, it still brings extremely incredible agility and maneuverability.
Obviously, if you want to confront your old rival head-on, you cannot do it solely by relying on the current technical state of the M88-2...
(End of this chapter)
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