You are confusing the impact of thrust at launch with that of lift.
If you don't have enough thrust at launch, you add lift, increasing wing surface or augmenting the lift force by flaps, LEF, angle of attack etc...
On the contrary, a fighter jet designed with performance in mind will be limited first by the thrust available in dynamic conditions (Flight maneuver, Acceleration, altitude... ). There the impact of lift augmentation devices being drastically diminished by the g number (divided by two, three... 9 in a matter of seconds). Thrust becoming the lead parameters.
Carrier launch and arresting design are only a fraction of the limitation an aircraft must meet. See how Naval fighters happens to outperform their land based rivals from time to time.
Then there is the cost. French MoD has certainly a good projection of Dassault aircraft cost by weight. Even factoring-in the impact of the diminishing parts count, they are probably able to make good projection of the maintenance cost.
And we all know that's not the good aspect of Dassault and Airbus designs. Hence see this reported limitation as a fairly prudent requirement to keep the project alive and perform.
Also, being rational, 16t is 60% higher than Rafale empty weight. It seems compatible with what we are given to see.
If you don't have enough thrust at launch, you add lift, increasing wing surface or augmenting the lift force by flaps, LEF, angle of attack etc...
On the contrary, a fighter jet designed with performance in mind will be limited first by the thrust available in dynamic conditions (Flight maneuver, Acceleration, altitude... ). There the impact of lift augmentation devices being drastically diminished by the g number (divided by two, three... 9 in a matter of seconds). Thrust becoming the lead parameters.
Carrier launch and arresting design are only a fraction of the limitation an aircraft must meet. See how Naval fighters happens to outperform their land based rivals from time to time.
Then there is the cost. French MoD has certainly a good projection of Dassault aircraft cost by weight. Even factoring-in the impact of the diminishing parts count, they are probably able to make good projection of the maintenance cost.
And we all know that's not the good aspect of Dassault and Airbus designs. Hence see this reported limitation as a fairly prudent requirement to keep the project alive and perform.
Also, being rational, 16t is 60% higher than Rafale empty weight. It seems compatible with what we are given to see.
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