The Military-industrial Scientific Research System of the Academic Master Chapter 911

Chapter 911 Confronting 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.

First of all, 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 superficial performance demonstrations such as flight demonstrations to affect the final decision.

But later, more and more organizers discovered that buying planes in some countries is as careless as buying food.

Furthermore, 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 participation 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.”

This kind of direct diss about an opponent's model is naturally impossible for Dassault, as the boss, to say it himself.

Hence, 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 plans to upgrade the active phased array radar to the F16C/D?”

A lieutenant colonel from the Greek Air Force next to him put down his telescope and said to Ed Steiner.

“That's just a plan after all.”

The latter shrugged and replied:

“And it only upgrades the phased array antenna, and cannot replace the underlying design of the radar backend.”

“In addition, our Rafale is far superior to the F16C in terms of maneuverability and bomb load.”

Ed Steiner is familiar with publicity tactics, and he mentions the shortcomings of his own planes in passing.

For example, due to aerodynamic design limitations, the radar antenna area of the Rafale is almost the smallest among the third-generation aircraft.

This results in RBE2, as a more advanced electronic scanning radar, being inferior to 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 greater power than the mechanical scanning radar. Can your model ensure the stability and reliability of the operating state?”

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 program 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. While providing a maximum thrust of 7,600kg, it can also take into account a maximum power generation capacity of 25kw, so there is no need to worry about this..."

It is another typical strategy of avoiding important matters and taking advantage of the light.

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.

So, 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, the Rafale fighter jet should be considered a frequent visitor to air shows throughout the 1990s.

Hardly 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 were effectively grounded.

So rumors soon spread that the Rafale might be canceled directly like the Mirage 4000.

As for Snecma's cooperation with China...

At least at the time, everyone basically took it as a joke.

Hence, 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 be unveiled in a state close to service and to shatter all doubts about this model.

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. At this time, he was holding a telephoto camera and pointed it at the aircraft that was heading towards the aircraft. There was a burst of continuous shooting from the tail of the Rafale fighter jet taxiing on 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.

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 improve 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 actually 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 calm:

"When I was wiping the **** of the EJ200 engine before, I accidentally reviewed a paper written by a Chinese scholar about unstructured overlapping grid generation. At that time, I knew that they must have something hidden in their hands. Less good stuff.”

“So...that paper inspired you?”

Latham looked like a curious baby.

"no."

Even though 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 stopped writing just before reaching the most critical point…”

At this point, Elinor calmed down a little, and then continued to explain:

“I spent about a year afterwards, but I still couldn't figure out how to realize the grid form mentioned in that article on an engineering level.”

“Fortunately, our laboratory later built a brand new supercomputer, and the calculation speed is thousands of times faster than before, so even if we use the old method, we can still solve the problem.”

“Ah this…”

Latham never expected this kind of plot, but he didn't know how to comfort him, 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's unlikely.”

Eleanor's answer was very straightforward:

"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 the Rafale is better, we can still have a clear advantage. Only the mechanical scanning radar is a hidden danger, so you BAE have to speed up the progress..."

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 almost half the length of the runway as the former, it relied on the aerodynamic torque brought by the long-distance coupled canards and the total thrust of the two EJ200s of 18 tons to complete the takeoff in an almost vertical attitude.

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 mid-sized machine is matched with two high-performance mid-range thrusters with a thrust-to-weight ratio close to 10.

Even in low-altitude and low-speed areas where it is not good at, it still brings extremely incredible agility and maneuverability.

Obviously, if you want to face off against an 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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