sancho
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Yes, but the tonnage the aircraft carry.. along with the operating costs are also different.. are they not?
Of course, my point was only on the performance with heavier loads and extended range / endurance.
I heard about rafale with the 'same' (a2a&a2g) capabilities while its radar is on a2g mode and Spectra for a2a operations. @sancho can explain
The advantage of Rafale is, that it uses many different sensors to aquire target data, which then can be transfered to the weapons, be it A2A or A2G. It doesn't even need it's radar to do that, but can use FSO and SPECTRA instead, that coupled with the capabilities of MICA and AASM makes it very effective to attack many different targets pretty much at the same time. So when you needed 3 x fighters in strike and 3 x escorts in the past, with 1 or 2 attack runs to destroy several ground targets, you basically need only 2 x Rafales and a single pass, while being able to counter enemy fighters in BVR.
But as Oscar said, when it gets into close combat, Rafale has to get rid of unnecessary payloads too.
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