The various "India-Specific Enhancements" or ISEs that were contracted in the Rafale deal will begin being carried out on IAF's fleet starting January 2022. About 13 of them are publicly available to list:
- Radio Altimeter height measurement increased from 10,000 feet to 15,000 feet
- Radar Warning Receiver (RWR) frequency band from 2.5-18 GHz to 10-18 GHz (could actually be reverse, not sure).
- Addition of new Low Band Jammer (LBJ) pod with frequency band of 1-4.5 GHz
- Flight Data Recorder (FDR) recording time increased from 10 hours data to 16 hours data plus two hours of audio.
- High altitude engine start-up to 12,000 feet (necessitated due to operations from Himalayan bases)
- Non Cooperative Target Recognition (NCTR) mode added in RBE-2 AESA Radar (surprised this wasn't part of original export...understandable though, NCTR is highly sensitive stuff. A lot of air forces actually don't even use it).
- Doppler Beam Sharpening (DBS) and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) modes in Radar (I'm guessing these were removed/dampened for export by default).
- Ground Moving Target Indicator and Ground Moving Target Track (GMTI/T) modes in Radar
- Infra-Red Search and Track (IRST) being added back to the Front Sector Optronics (FSO) suite. The IRST was originally part of it, but the French later removed it for F3 for cost reasons as the TV sensor alone could do most of the required jobs. IAF however requires IRST. Dunno if this could be same one as before or a new/updated one.
- Helmet Mounted Display (HMD) - the French did integrate a Thales HMD, but actually use the jet without it.
- Training Mode in Missile Approach Warning System (MAWS)
- Towed Decoys - Perhaps X-Guard, or maybe something else.
- Very High Frequency Omni-directional Range (VOR) navigation system.
However, this is not all - keen aviation watchers have spotted several unique additions to the Indian Rafale that do not exist on French, Egyptian, Qatari or Greek versions - such as what appears to be an internally-carried
Very High-Band Jammer (VHBJ) below the nozzles (possibly intended to jam the Ka/Ku-band seekers on Active homing BVRAAMs):
Plus several new hatches/access ports on the fuselage that didn't exist previously - indicating possible new LRUs inside at those locations:
However, several such changes/additions find no mention in public domain. Indicating there could be so much more than meets the eye - there has been a longstanding view that the Indian Rafales will be made capable of the Strategic Forces Command (SFC)'s unique requirements for the airborne nuclear delivery mission, replacing the IAF's Mirage-2000 in that role.
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