Dossier Rafale :Support and serviceabilityThe Rafale wouldn't be a worthy representative of Dassault's fighters if it wasn't a fighter easy to put into service, not too costly, and formidably reliable.
Idealy, a technician would connect a computer to the aircraft so as to get a report about its systems. For the Rafale, that's what is done. The aircraft needs 30 per cent personnel less that the Mirage 2000 (which already has a good reputation in this domain) and the airframe doesn't need to go back to the workshop during its whole life.
This is due to the reduced number of mobile parts (no mouse in the inlets, no airbrake) and the global conception (such as the canopy which fully open so as to change the ejection seat in 10 minutes with two men). Those performances are also due to, for example, the use of an OBOGS system in the place of oxygen bottles, removing the need to replace them between flights, and the use of pneumatic weapon ejectors instead of the traditional pyrotechnic systems.
The airframe is designed for 7,000 flght hours, and has its self-surveillance system, the "IHUMS" (Integrated Health and Usage Monitoring System) which is able to detect 95 per cent of the anomalies.
The MDPU (Modular Processing Unit for fusion of all data) is tested which an electronic test bench so as to find automatically the faulty LRUs (Line Replaceble Unit). In case of a fault, you just have to replace the "guilty" LRUs and only them. The MDPU is made of 18 LRUs based on commercial componants (PowerPC) known as COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf).
Even the engine M88 is made of 21 modules which all can be replaced with the need for testing. M88's calculators are already able to provide every relevant data autonomously, which means that's there no need for a dedicated test bench. While replacing the unique M53 of the Mirage 2000 took no less than 3 hours, it takes only 1 hour and 45 minutes to replace the 2 M88 of the Rafale. While the M53 had to be checked every 75 hours, the M88 had first to be checked every 150 hours. Now, this figure has increased to 800 hours at least and later may exceed 1000 hours.
The deployment of 20 Rafale for 30 days would require four C-130 to provide the necessary spares.
Author notes :
Sources : various issues of Air Fan, Air & Cosmos, Air Actu, Dassault's PDF...
http://tmor.rafale.free.fr/neuf.html
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