And what did they get from Eurofighter program?

They were heavily involved in the very early days of the programme, shared and exchanged information with the other partners so they would have received a certain amount of knowledge and know how, and they’re hardly going to forget all about that after they left… It’s pretty self-explanatory, isn’t it not?

France needed a smaller fighter than UK wanted so as to use on carrier.

Indeed, they also wanted a significant amount of share, too. Much too much. And I’d hardly call the Rafale a smaller fighter than Typhoon, same class more like, excluding the carrier part obviously. Not sure where that popped up from.

If they come back and say that T3B features new engines and tvc and conformal weapons pods, then maybe that will change the minds of at least 2 of the partner nations (who are purchasing F35)….

I doubt there’ll ever be new engines for Typhoon, upgraded/enhanced ones yes, nothing new, they already provide more than their fair share of grunt. TVC ain’t never going to materialise in my opinion, there’s really no need for them – similar reasons for afore mentioned. Conformal Weapons Pods, there’s more chance of a Time Machine being invented in the next week before those… In any case, those upgrades/enhancements won’t persuade anyone to think twice, it’s all about cost, and cost is the primary reason why they’re being cut or either cancelled. Nothing to do with capabilities.

For all we know they’re probably just moving it from point A to point B to free up space in point A, nothing more. Stick it in the shed for now.

On the other hand, it does look to have had a different scheme for some reason, reason(s) I can’t imagine why. So maybe they’re starting on something, working out dimensions for fresh blueprints, maybe? Now that we’ve got a slightly better look of it’s angles via video it does like it’s just a rough idea for an airframe; make it as Stealthy as possible, quite literally cut corners to get a minimum RCS then start to be more realistic for an operational airframe, larger nose, larger wing area, possibly lengthen it etc… Basically a slightly larger version of the Replica, who knows.

Something is definitely happening though, Typhoon will need to be replaced at some point, so now’s the time to start coming up with ideas.

Been to Silverstone, that was awesome. Met Damon Hill 3 times, great guy. I asked for his steering wheel the first time… He said no! In a nice way, because Williams were too tight to give anything away. When I met him the second time when he was driving for Jordan, we had a great discussion. I asked how does the Jordan 198 drive. He said it drives as good as Eddie’s (Jordan) shirts look! 3rd time was at Croft with his son Josh and wife Georgie, great bunch. Georgie bought us all a Bacon Sandwich from a Burger stand. What’s nice is, Damon remembered me from the previous two occasions. 🙂

EELightning I could not agree with you more. I would add to that but Moggy already thinks I am a Nazi when I mention some of our neighbours and allies.

I believe a simple sentence: ‘It’s not our doing to introduce rules, the real architects of new rules are the ones that commit acts of uncalled treatment to others.’

I have spent a good deal of my life rescuing cats and trying to find homes for dogs but enough of that or my mouth will get me into trouble!

That’s jolly nice to know. You shouldn’t keep your mouth shut for something you believe is the right thing to do, and what you do is the right thing. I’m quite an Animal Activist and I do everything I can, not to boast but. I have a second job that pays well, it involves touring (Musician you see) and the downside is that we can’t keep pets at home because we’re away from it a lot, my Girlfriend comes with us too, so we can’t look after anything. On the plus side, we donate a percentage of our wage to various Animal charities which is split between them. And as a bonus, it’s poke in the eye of the HMRC too.

Sadly, there never seems enough to be done.

Most of us have seen the horrific pictures and video by now. I really despair at this I and I have trouble in coming to grips with it all. Simplistically it seems some people want to be closer to Russia and others want to join the EU(unless I have got this wrong) It saddens me to see so much death and violence in what is supposed to be a democratic country. As for the woman be executed by shooting her in the head(images now thankfully removed from the net)

Here-here.

Why would we want barbarians in the EU?

We already have, Romania. Different country, totally different topic I know, but… In Romania there’s a situation happening where it’s absolutely legal to capture stray Cats and Dogs, more about Dogs than anything as there’s more of them, and brutally beat them to death right there and then on the streets. The whole point of this is to get rid of stray animals off the street, no matter how; bludgeon them to death, shoot them, hang them from Trees, drag them behind from moving vehicles, you can even torture them… so long as they’re off the street. Like the situation in the Ukraine, this makes me sick… And this is an EU country that commits these acts of cruelty, it’s not against the law… but it is against the law and ‘illegal’ to own and set off Fireworks.

It’s about time the EU had new rules. Follow Human and Animal equality otherwise you’re not going to be part of the Union. Simple as.

Yes, you got it right. Things are not the same as they were 6-7 years ago. Now the “second-best” is gone and the whole thing is just lagging behind.
That’s just a pity it took 6 years or so to figure that out.

Some people, the more ignorant ones, have a common belief that if anything isn’t reported to the public, then it has received no upgrades nor enhancements = inferior in every way. Such as the way the Troll Princess thinks, the one that has had more Bans and Usernames than a my Amp Heads have had a change of Tubes.

Your contribution is… appreciated…

I agree that the MOD almost certainly do not plan to procure more Typhoon. However, if it transpires that F-35B costs $10,000 per hour more to fly than Typhoon then every squadron of F-35B (say 20 frames) will cost $10,000 x 20 x 6,000 more than Typhoon over a service life of 6,000 hours = $1.2 billion. It may be that the harsh reality of defence spending limits will make it necessary to choose to operate more of the less expensive type and less of the more expensive type.

Such costs are rather too early to speculate about, harmless nevertheless but one sees your point. If one chooses to operate the less expensive type than the other then the situation for the latter is going to be quite a headache to work out when it’s pilots and ground crew are brought into the view. In the British Armed Forces, training and deployments are exempt from budget cuts where as the equipment isn’t, if the more expensive does see less flight time then something will need to be done for the crew. The RAF at least calls for a certain amount of hours per year on simulators for frontline fast jet pilots – IIRC is around the 40 hour mark per pilot, annually, actual flights are well over 240+ hours a year per pilot (note: from moment of take-off to the moment of touch down), excluding international deployments… Those hours will have to be made up somehow. However, as afore mentioned, equipment isn’t exempt from cuts so there’s a little uncertainty where the ‘more expensive to operate aeroplane’ falls in to which category, if you like. Does it have to be kept in the hanger more often due to high operating costs there for personnel will lack training and deployments… Or does it get used as the same amount as the other aircraft because the training and deployments standards need to be met annually, regardless of aircraft operating costs. One suspects the latter… Either that or more pilots per aircraft.

Yep, they seem pretty pessimistic about the cars. However, Lewis Hamilton stated in Jerez, where they lack in power compared to the ’13 V8s they make up with Torque. With the KERS and Turbo on the V6s actually produce around 30-40 more HP than last years engine. Which is interesting… I suspect the lap times will be very close to last years or slightly quicker even. In ’13, the KERS + V8s couldn’t always get the power down on the track when the drivers wanted, sometimes but not always, they wasted a lot of power sometimes. The ’14 F1 cars seems to have more power available to them when needed… But we’ll have to wait and see in Melbourne.

With regards to the technology, I think the FIA have took the wrong path, but it’s still early days, so… I think they need to go back to the V10s or V12s… and hey, why not W16s? Why?… Look at the road cars of the likes by Audi, McLaren, Bugatti, Mercedes, Porsche, concepts by Jaguar and BMW etc… They’re making these huge engines that produce insane amounts of power, have bonkers amounts of Torque yet they somehow produce less emissions than most small cars and even less than the likes of Toyota’s Prius, and they use less fuel than previous engines of the same size… I honestly think bigger the way to go.

Give the same F1 engineers say, a V12, give them the same rules and regulations but make them aware that fuel efficiency is the key, and they could make it work. I’d bet my last Quid on it they could come up with something, quite simply, stunning and ground breaking!

10 years ago on Top Gear, Jeremy Clarkson drove an Audi A8 with a TDI V8 engine from London to Edinburgh then back again on one 20 Gallon tank of fuel. 10 years ago…