In July 2020, France delivered the first batch of five Rafale fighter jets to India, and India held a high-profile reception ceremony. Then the ace pilot from the "Golden Arrow" flight squadron Avami flew a Rafale fighter for a flight show. However, towards the end of the performance, the gust of wind suddenly rushed straight down to the ground, and when it was about to hit the ground, it pulled up violently. The crowd was first taken aback by the thrill of the spectacle, and then cheered for the pilot's prowess. But Ravami was in a cold sweat, because the plane had almost crashed just now.
India ordered 36 Rafale fighter jets from France's Dassault in 2016 for a total of $8.8 billion, with an average price of $244 million. After four years of waiting, the first batch of 5 fighters was finally delivered.
India attaches great importance to these fighters, deploying them at the Haryana Ambala Air Base in the north and reactivating the 17th Flying Squadron, codenamed "Golden Arrow", to fly the Rafale fighters. India also held a grand ceremony to welcome the five fighter jets, one of which was an air show.
Lavamy had previously trained in France and was familiar with the handling of Rafale fighters. He soon piloted the Rafale fighter to complete the maneuvers such as climbing at a large elevation angle, serpentine maneuvers, and continuous maneuvers in the somersault, which attracted a round of applause from the audience on the ground.
However, amid everyone's cheers, the plane plunged straight into the ground like an arrow, and everyone was a little overwhelmed by this change. The plane did not pull up until it was less than 100 meters above the ground, and the chief of staff of the Air Force, Badauria, praised Ravami's first-class piloting skills.
But he didn't know that Rawami was so frightened that he almost peed his pants because the plane had really lost control and made a dive towards the ground. Had it not been for Rawami's quick reaction and last-minute pull-up of the plane, the Indian Air Force's Rafale fighter debut would have crashed.
Ravami was still apprehensive when he came down, saying that the voice command given to his plane was "landing", but the plane carried out the command to "dive".
Badauria, who learned the truth, had a very bad face, and he thought that there was a problem with the design of the Rafale fighter and that the recognition rate of the voice system was too low. But people at Dassault say that Rafale's voice system recognition rate is as high as 98.6 percent, and it is impossible for such a low-level error to occur.
The voice recognition system was first developed by the Americans and equipped on the F-35, and the aircraft can be controlled by sending voice commands to the aircraft through the pilot's spoken language, which can greatly simplify the pilot's workload, free the pilot's hands, and facilitate the concentration of the combat environment and the maintenance of flight.
Countries have since developed their own voice systems. For example, the DVI system of the Typhoon fighter supports continuous pronunciation and can recognize 200 words, with a recognition rate of 95%. The Rafale's CVAS system has a higher recognition rate of 98.6%, and can recognize both English and French, with the export version in English and France in French.
【Golden Arrow Flying Squadron】
The voice recognition system of the mainland J-20 is even more powerful, with nearly 100,000 Chinese characters in 89 dialects in the voice library, and the recognition rate is 100%, far exceeding the "double wind" in Europe.
While the Indian pilot's English may have a curry flavor, the words "landing" and "diving" are words that are not pronounced similarly, which can be misidentified as a sign that there may be a real problem with Rafale's phonetic system.
The Indian Air Force was not reconciled and sent another pilot, Dlajam, to retest. Sure enough, the problem arose again. This time, Dlayam gave a voice command to turn on the radar, but the system gave the command to drop the auxiliary fuel tank. Fortunately, Dharjam was not over the crowd at that time, and there were no casualties from the exploding auxiliary fuel tank.
[The middle pilot is Drakham]
After two consecutive voice recognition failures in one day, India determined that the Rafale fighter jet's voice system was faulty, and said that the move caused irreparable mental damage to the pilot, and demanded 500 million rupees in compensation from Dassault. Dassault rejected the request.
Is there a problem with the Rafale fighter's voice system, or is the Indian pilot's accent too heavy? The Rafale's speech recognition rate is 98.6 percent, so is the other 1.4 percent all on the heads of the Indians?