But at the bottom of the article are some interesting comments:
¿Opción europea?
El diario Negocio afirma que los expertos no consideran viable que pueda existir una opción europea al F35B a medio plazo. Sin embargo, desde la división Military Air Systems de EADS en España se plantea una versión diferente para el relevo del Harrier. Fuentes no oficiales de la compañía señalaron al diario económico que la versión naval del Eurofighter ha dejado de ser un mero proyecto, y pasará a las negociaciones con la Armada española.
Desde EADS se piensa que el caza podría ser “navalizado” sin excesivos problemas, gracias a su corta carrera de despegue, de solo 700 metros, y la disponibilidad de las toberas vectoriales diseñadas por la empresa española ITP, entre otras cosas.
machine translation
European Option?
The Business Daily says that the experts do not consider that there may be a viable option European F35B to medium term. However, since the division of EADS Military Air Systems in Spain is a different version for the successor to the Harrier. Unofficial sources from the company told the business daily that the naval version of the Eurofighter is no longer a mere project, and proceed to negotiations with the Spanish Armada.
Since EADS is believed that the game could be “navalizado” with little difficulty, thanks to its short take-off run of only 700 meters, and the availability of the vector nozzles designed by the Spanish company ITP, among other things.
is that translation correct?
is EADS moving forward with a navalized Typhoon?
who would be the market for such a craft?
– US: lulz
– France has the Rafale
– UK has a large F-35 investment, but perhaps if they let them convert their tranche-3 obligation (which they don’t want) to Typhoon-N . . .
– Italy has basically committed to F-35
– Spain wouldn’t buy enough to make it economically feasible
– India has already bought a handful of MiG-29K’s, but perhaps if the Typhoon won the MRCA they could be persuaded to buy some T-N’s for ‘commonality’
– China: don’t see them lifting the arms export anytime soon plus aren’t there some US components that give the US leverage to block such a deal?
On the technical side I’ve heard lots of comments about why it would be difficult to accomplish:
– beefing up the frame would basically require a complete redesign of the internal structures
– poor visibility when landing
– too high landing speed
– lots of effort to corrosion-proof everything
who knows how many of those are actually true/an issue, but it does seem like it would be tough to compete with the other western carrier fighters that are either already proven (SH and rafale) or coming online shortly (F-35B+C)
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May 24, 2009 at 7:19 pm