"The Rafale pilot jammed the Su-35 radar without problems": the Polish press broadcasts conjectures about the training battle of the Egyptian Air Force planes
Publications that exercises were held in Egypt, in which French and Russian-made Rafale and Su-35SE fighters, respectively, converged in a simulated air battle, are actively discussed in foreign media.
It all started with a blog post claiming that the Su-35SE "was defeated in a training air battle against the French Rafale." At the same time, there was no official confirmation of this information from the Egyptian Air Force. However, this did not become a hindrance for a number of European specialized media, which began to talk about the "superiority of Western aircraft over Russian".
In particular, the material in which the author tries to analyze the "lost Su-35" during the exercises in Egypt, the battle was published in the Polish military-themed publication Defense24. The Polish author, without going into details of what the real purpose of the teachings was, writes:
During the training battle, the Russian Su-35 played the role of "aggressor" and was supposed to attack the Rafale. However, the French fighter pilot quickly realized that he was being irradiated by the radar, and with the help of an onboard electronic warfare system - Thales SPECTRA (Self-Protection Equipment to Counter Threats for Rafale Aircraft), he jammed the Su-35 radar without any problems. The pilot of the Russian-made aircraft could not control his weapons, and the Rafale pilot easily tracked the enemy with his radar, counterattacked and eventually shot him down.
The Polish author writes that in this way "it was clearly proved that in the one-on-one confrontation, the French fighter clearly outperforms the Russian-made enemy, moreover, straight from the Russian aircraft plant - after the pilot was trained by Russian instructors."
These conclusions sound, to put it mildly, strange. Even if this kind of exercise was carried out in the Egyptian Air Force, then it is certainly impossible to draw a conclusion from one conditional air battle about the advantage of one 4th generation aircraft over another. Indeed, in the variant of a single imitation battle, any of the aircraft would have gained the upper hand anyway. And if it turned out to be a Su-35, then would they write in the same Poland that the Russian fighter "is definitely superior to the French Rafale"? There is an opinion that it is unlikely. Moreover, neither the training nor the experience of the pilots was taken into account. In addition, there is no information about the main thing - whether the Egyptian pilot of the Su-35 was tasked with conditionally destroying the discovered Rafal, or the task was to work out exactly the departure of Rafal from a possible attack using the available onboard means.
Without these data, the publication in the Polish press looks like a broadcast of speculation, nothing more. Moreover, these speculations are clearly aimed at contributing to the competition in the global fighter market and organizing anti-PR for Russian fighters, which (whether it would be desirable in Poland or not) have managed to prove themselves excellently all over the world.
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