The F-15 is a strong contender however, it offers a local assembly, commonality to former aircraft and possibly a good price. But the F-15 was sold as fighterbomber recently, questionable if it can convince in a2a. Remember, the assumed enemy is the Chinese Flanker and J-10, so performance is a huge issue. Somebody who actually wants an F-22 will hardly be satisfied with its predecessor.

It depends on just how upgraded a version of the F-15 the Japanese buy though. If they’re willing to spend the $$$ there are a lot of performance upgrades that could be added.

The first date was a pure estimate.

The second date by Pogosyan was for late 2008. Which only puts the delay at 8 months.

Compared to the PAK-FA the F-35 is a disaster program in the making.

Is it not fair to say, that until it actually flies, that any date given is purely an estimate? Nothing Russophobic in that statement is there? In fact I think there’s a lot less Russophobia than you think. It’s more a reaction to over enthusiasm and unrealistic claims.

Good trolling. :rolleyes:

Lighten up Francis. That was at the very least mildly amusing.:cool:

By the way: my remark concerning the cup holder was purely fiction (sometimes I funny, but not often), this is what is normally called a cup holder:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cup_holder
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So, anyone who took my comment serious either have some holes in his English vocabulary or a mental issue when it comes to Rafale to Eurofighter (this reflex-like defense very much proves that people fear the shortcomings of their favorite aircraft).

I understood your comment, and found it very funny!:cool:

I complained about the fact that some of us dared talking about Rafale in a TyphoonVSsuperbug thread, and i have to do the same here.

There’s no point in posting such a comment, in addition, you know nothing about what the Rafale can do. :rolleyes: (i’m not pretending that it’s better than XYZ).

If the purpose was to learn what the Rafale is capable of, then, the only thing i can tell you (and you have to trust me) is that a video on TV showed a Rafale HUD at M1.6 pulling 8G (not sustained of course).

I think the main point here is that while the Rafale may be able to pull 8G at M1.6, you’ll most assuredly spill your drink in doing so.:cool:

It wouldn’t lose that much potential performance, but it would significantly bring down the maintenance and outright purchase costs. The issue with any future follow-on program to the F-22 is cost, which is why you would make the switch to the F-135/F-136.

I think a switch to six wet points for an F-22B type of project would help out. Your outer two can be smaller, maybe even the outer four could just be 450 gallon tanks if it saves a more massive redesign.

One of the advantages the F-22 has over the F-35(and a justification for its added cost) is the raw performance though. The price would have to come down a LOT, for #s to go up considerably.

I never had any arguments with regard to that in the first place. 😀 Only when people say that its impossible to defeat stealth even in future….:(

Stealth isn’t a monolithic thing. It means reduced signatures to a variety of sensors. It will always have an advantage over a non-stealthy design.
When you combine this with what I previously mentioned(i.e. EW/EA/Decoys/etc…), it’s still gonna have an advantage. There are physical limitations to radar frequencies that no amount of technology can overcome. Certain freqs do very specific tasks well. Others not so much. The ones that are good for fire control are the most susceptible to “stealth.” This will be true in 5, 10, 50 yrs. Other techniques will be required to improve the defense against LO targets. You also have to take tactics into account. The better the tactics, the better the chances of success for the attacker or defender. The F-117 shootdown was a case of bad tactics by the aircraft, and good ones by the defenders. If F-117s had been shot down on a regular basis, then one could argue that their stealth was of no use, but the fact that they flew hundreds/thousands of missions without a scratch, shows that this wasn’t the case. Using a freak occurence/lucky shot as evidence that stealth isn’t effective is a bit premature. Modern LO designs are even harder to detect than the F-117, and the aircraft have much higher performance and situational awareness as well.