dASSAULT's Wind Gust

You would have guessed from the heading that this article would be about the famed Dassault Rafales which India just inducted into it's air force. If you didn't know, Rafale literally means gust of wind in French. Rafale is everything but a 5th generation fighter, that is it does not have stealth characteristics, and this point has been repeatedly reported by news outlets that are not friendly towards our country.( Yes, media houses from Pakistan and China has been churning out stories about how the Rafales are inferior).

But something that has escaped public notice is the fact that Rafale was designed considering 21st century threats to an aircraft which certainly includes radar detection and engagement by radar homing missiles. Also one other point missed by Indian media is that French Rafales operated in atmospheres containing dense anti aircraft weaponry like that of Syria and Libya, along with 5th generation aircrafts like F22s and F35s without incurring a single combat loss. Now this begs a question as if to how they stood shoulder to shoulder with aircrafts that are at the least half a generation ahead of them ?

Let me give you a simple physics lesson. We all have thrown stones into ponds in our childhood and many of us would have noticed that if we throw two stones (of relatively same size) a small distance apart at the same time, the waves produced by the respective stones cancel out each other. Now, destructive interference works on the same principle, if two signals with same characteristics were to meet head on from the opposite direction, they tend to cancel out each other. (Take a look at the above picture if you didn't understand what I so elaborately explained.)

Rafales utilise active cancellation (that is, destructive interference) to negate the tracking of it through radars. This gives Rafales a sort of pseudo stealth capability by delaying it's detection. This is accomplished by external pods fitted on to the aircraft (refer Thales Spectra) that contain sensors to capture and evaluate the incoming radar signals and after that it sends back the exact same signal with a phase difference of 180 degrees. Simply it reverses the signal. Though it might sound easy mind you it is being done when the aircraft is flying at almost twice the speed of sound and at a very short notice. To successfully be able to achieve this requires high precision sensors and ultra fast yet compact computers. Therefore Rafales are much more capable than just another 4th generation aircraft, in fact it is the most advanced in the inventory of Indian Air Force.

So ladies and gentleman rest assured Rafales can hold their ground against any aircraft that our adversaries may throw at us. Before I conclude let me give you a quick food for thought, what if we could master destructive interference ?, we could also make our indigenous aircrafts invisible to the enemy.