A good update on the Rafale F4.1 Standard that has just entered service with the French Airforce.
https://youtu.be/b5bID0-Ky6U?si=Yy7ULCbHgIMTES5b
From the video the points that I found to be very interesting are:
1) New Talios targeting pod will replace the Damocles targeting POD, used on the earlier models. India did not opt for the Damocles pod and has stuck to the Israeli pod and it seems it was for good reason. The Damocles pod was not really up to the mark.
2) To integrate the Talios pod, the French have added a dedicated fiber optic link from the POD pylon to the cockpit.
3) The Rafale demonstrated buddy targeting capability around 2005-2007, with an aircraft firing a Mica missile, which was being guided by another Rafale aircraft. However, the F4.1R series now advertises a "Now Connected' aircraft logo.
4) The long term goal for the Rafale is to make it compatible with the F35, by the F5 standard. The French alluded that it would require significant rewiring of the aircraft.
5) The Rafale has two data busses. The slow speed bus has a data rate of 1 Mbps and generally used for transmitting signals within the aircraft.
The high speed bus has a data rate of 20 Mbps. No publicly available data on the computing power that the aircraft has.
The Euro fighter Typhoon also probably in the same league.
6) In comparison, the F35 has a data bus with a speed of 3.2 Gbps. That is a few order of magnitudes higher than the Rafale. This is what it really means to be a 5th gen fighter.
This is a lesson for every other fighter program as well. Just having a stealthy shape does not make an aircraft 5th gen. Having a cutting edge GaN based AESA radar, a highly effective integrated EW suite, advanced engines that can reduce the IR signature of the plane and give it supercruise capability and above all a very high level of sensor fusion, is what makes a 5th gem aircraft. The F35 has a much higher level of sensor fusion than even the F22 and would make a perfect mothership for a swarm of loyal wingman UAVs and loitering drones. The wars of the future will generally not involve low level flights to penetrate enemy air defense systems and trying to attack some vital installations. It will simply be too risky.
Also, for everyone dhoti shivering about the Pakis someday getting their hands onto Chinese F-31 type aircrafts, please remember that apart from a stealthy looking shape (stealth is overrated anyways), there is nothing that would qualify the F-31 to be regarded as a 5th gen fighter aircraft.
Also, something for us to also keep in mind. Recently the MK1A flew with a new DFFC. Supposedly it is based on a PowerPC based platform. Given the kind of data rates the F35 can support and the kind of lead that the Americans have over the others in this field and also assuming that they would probably even have matching computing power onboard the aircraft, it just shows what we should be aiming for. It would be required for the Super 30 upgrade, Tejas MK2, TEDBF and finally the AMCA programs. At a bare minimum, the Tejas MK1A, MK2, Su-30 MKI and Rafale should all be able to talk to each other and share data amongst themselves, along with ground based stations, AWACS and in the future even space based assets and I-Stars type aircrafts. The F35 can currently do all of this at data rates that are a few order of magnitudes higher than any other fighter aircraft.
