Focus on the Rafale

[WatcherZero]

So what happened? First, just as important as political considerations is the question of which aircraft is best suited for the purposes of the Indian air force. Rigourous technical trials were conducted in various climates: Bangalore, Jaisalmer and Leh. At the Leh trials in early 2010, four aircraft performed poorly, including reportedly the two American candidates, which were said to have had trouble operating at high altitudes at such low temperatures. In fact, the final short-list should not have been a surprise: Praveen Swami reported the Eurofighter’s front-runner status after trials late last year, and over three months ago, Indian newspapers confirmed that the Eurofighter had finished first and the Rafale second with the Gripen and F-18 rounding off the top four.

The radar is a tie here. Both are good radars, nothing groundbreaking about them.

Typhoon “compensates” for the current lack of an operational AESA radar with a superb IRST system possibly the world’s best—called the Passive Infra-Red Airborne Tracking Equipment (PIRATE).
The PIRATE system is capable of detecting targets at distances approaching that of conventional radars. It combines a long-range IRST sensor operating in the long-wave infrared band with a FLIR thermal imager that is capable of passively searching, tracking and designating targets for weapons launch. All system data is seamlessly integrated with the information collected by other sensors to provide the pilot with a unified track for each target.

I see George has already posted a comment in rebuke to that article.....