Good bnew for the UAE, so they won´t buy the least developed fighter offered.

You must have had so many sleepless nights trying to think that one up.

No doubt there are a few Boeing execs who want to hang Edward Snowden up by his toes at the moment, the deal was pretty much in the bag for Boeing right up to the leaking of NSA data gathering. Frankly 2013 hasn’t been a good year for US relations with the rest of the world considering all the revelations about intelligence gathering.

Indeed, at the very least it’s damage limitation for the US with the number of their components installed on the Gripen. Not ideal obviously, but they have something out of it, as do the UK too for that matter.

Rii,

Looking further ahead it’ll be interesting to see if Sea Gripen gets off the ground, although we likely won’t hear anything on that score before the end of the decade. One bonus is that it could serve on Sao Paulo as well as a new carrier, which would make the transition period easier.

Still early days yet, however this decision has made the chances of a Sea Gripen likely now, it’s now down to requirements and R&D. If the Sea Gripen comes to light and market for a Carrier capable Aircraft is healthy it’d put it’s chances in good light, possibly being a competitor for Dassault is this area. Rather interesting.

It’s bleak for all 4.5 Generation Fighters………

Hardly…

They’re still sought after in the Middle East where there’s potential serious threats, India/far east, South America, Australia and they’re still being delivered to European nations. Russia, China and the US are still producing these so-called “4.5 Generation” fighters in large quantities. One would hardly call that “bleak”.

As one pretty much said elsewhere, this “Generation” thing is rather overestimated.

What a load of bull.

Which bits?

With regards to Tranche 1 units, they’re not in storage, they’re in very good use. At the moment, until Tranche 2s receive P1E, the former are actually the more capable and versatile Tranche. Also, they’re receiving upgrades and enhancements with elements coming from enhancements for Tranche 2 aircraft and they’re rather active taking part in national and international exercises. However, there is, or was, talk of them being replaced by the F-35B but those talks have gone cold, somewhat.

Thought one would post some snippets from a report in AIR International, ‘Slayer Typhoon’, by Mark Ayton. November ’13.

The author (Ayton) was to keen know how well the Typhoons performed in the air-to-air role, their current primary tasking in RAF service. “It’s always a very interesting question, mused the XI Squadron boss. “If we consider close-in fighting (within visual range), such a judgement can be based purely on the performance of which jet can get to which place. But that depends on so many things. In beyond visual range scenarios red air fighters operated with performance limitations to their missiles and radars to accurately simulate the perceived threats of the future. And a lot of the types we were fighting against were clean and didn’t have extra stores they might typically carry on an operational sortie. Typhoon on the other hand flew in its standard fit. So in terms of pure performance I have not seen Typhoon lacking in any area against jets like the Hornet and Super Hornet, even the F-22, and if you have a 9g fighter with excess thrust (which Typhoon has) then you have options. So do we have any concerns about killing the opposing aircraft in a within-visual-range scenario? Absolutely not.”

Later on the report*

The air-to-air role was one aspect that the Typhoons excelled in at Red Flag. “I lost count of the number of aircraft we shot down,” said the Typhoon pilot. “During the air-to-air debrief of one mission, the squadron’s weapons instructor got a standing ovation for killing six out of six in approximately one-and-a-half-minutes. Each shot was validated in the shot evaluation. The pilot got the nick name ‘Slayer’. But we didn’t go up every time and shot down six out of six.”

On one level Eurofighter have said that Typhoon is a “Lightning killer”…

I’m still quite a bit behind on Typhoon news at the moment, but I’ve not heard anything from Eurofighter GmbH referring to the Typhoon as a “Lightning Killer”.