I think there was an open offer of an E3 AWACS and escorting F15 for Pakistan in the event of hostilities but frankly I never really believed it.

Feydaikin,

I also refer to my previous post, you are dismissing the sources without real soures or arguments. It is just too hard for some people to admit it…It is too easy to label someone as xxx “fan” to dismiss the nature of the arguments.

Why would official be liars here ? the weakness of your arguments is that fighter jets are not mass product goods, in the end the airforces which have tested the rafale know the truth. So what the point lying ? Do you think they care about forumers ? (lol) Do you really think Dassault ‘CEO which speaks publicly is a plain liar ? Do you think that the Boss of a firm which is quoted on euronext (with all it implies in terms of information transparency) can lie everytime ?

The national Assembly is a very reliable source because it is where the democratic debate takes place and you have several parties which are participating in the debate and which are composing the defence comitee. Usually they can be very harsh on military expenditures.

As for generalist journos your argument is a joke ! So when they speak about the economic crisis they are all wrong because they are not specialists, when they speak about global warming they are all wrong whenever they do an invetgation report al wrong etc…To dismiss a newspaper with the notoriety of the Herald tribune is extraordinary…! If you have an objection bring evidences ! To dismiss the international herald tribune you need to do some work…

It is funny to note that according to you, you can’t beleive anyone : you can’t believe official statement from the firm, you can’t believe the expression of the french democracy, you can’t believe independent journos like the international herald tribune…In fact you are only ready to believe what you are ready to hear. I don’t think I am the most bias here in terms of intelectual honesty.

Funny how you see one side of the story! You perfectly know that selling a fighter jet is also about politics and economics… I am sincerly ready to be proven wrong (I am not like lordassap) but again bring evidences such a denial or a statement with someone quote ! A few things :
-Being a rafale enthousiast doesn’t make me a liar and I am perfectly able to hear disturbing truth.
-Being a rafale enthousiast doesn’t mean that I rate the rafale better than every thing (I rate the F35 or the SH higher for instance !)
-Being a rafale enthousiast doesn’t prevent you to take the sources that I provided seriously they are perfectely legitimate.

(As far as MMI is concerned I have a source which worth its weight in gold, I have a “specialist” newspaper (air actualité) where foreign pilots which have flown on the gripen, typhoon and the rafale back seat during various international exercises are very directly saying that rafale’s MMI is one class above. I’ll will probably scan this article in the next days)
Besides if you cross check these sources (from dassault, french national assembly, or independent journos) you will see that there is a coherence…

To go back to the debate, I say to Lmraptor that EW counts more than he thinks. If you have exellent kinetics but your missile has a very low probability of geting a hit then you are in trouble. I insist that kinetics altough still important are overhyped. EW, stealth, HMS + HOBS missiles will mitigate (when not anihilate) the benefits of these performances.

I have no doubt that a F35 will be Better in BVR than any 4th gen aircrafts although its not the fastest aircraft. So saying that an aircraft is more optimized for AtA or AtG is becoming less relevant than before.
If you really want more kinetics why don’t you designing a missile that will do that for you ? You could avoid making painful design compromises..

The APG79 with the huge numbers of AESA modules and the power supply and power processing associated to it makes very probably an exellent EW tool. I bet that Raytheon which also produce the amram, perfectly knows how to fool its own missile to give the United States an edge over any other nations (a bit like the degraded version of the F35). So I am pretty confident that the SH blk2 will be more deadly in the BVR arena.
WVR : mutual kill (HMS+ HOBS)
ATG : often overlooked when it represents almost 100% actual war missions.
Winner : the SH blk 2 (better package)

Chill out Arthuro, I’m not attacking your integrity as a forum member here and if you want to believe those sources as gospel then no problem. Its just I don’t think they are… thats all. If you want to present sources then you have to be prepared for people to agree with them or in this case not. I have explained why I don’t agree and believe me its nothing personal.

As I said before the national assembly has a vested interest in selling a French product. I certainly wouldn’t see it as unbiased, thats not an attack on French democracy just my opinion and the same would go for other political bodies when it comes to arms exports. Just for interest UK government ministers on any foreign trip are always given an arms sales briefing before they leave the country and told to promote UK PLC and British arms manufacturers first. Even if the trip was about starving children in africa arms are still the first order of the day.

Dassault and anyone who works for it is going to be biased…just like anybody who works for EADS, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Saab. I would not call the CEO of Dasault a liar (I don’t know him:D) but I know he will spin whatever information he has to paint his product in a positive light, thats just business. I wouldn’t expect you to accept what the CEO of EADS has to say as gospel for the same reason.

I do pay attention to what Journos have to say but I feel that in this case neither of those publications would have the expertise to make a judgement. Actually even if it was from specialist press like Air Forces Monthly wouln’t mean I would always agree with a particular conclusion. It doesn’t make me closed minded to any source or unable to accept any view point. As for global warning why bring it up there is much evidence for it from many sources the Herald Tribune would only confirm something I already know. But saying that I must cite point for point why I don’t think these Newspapers are good or bad sources is stupid, I respect them as publications but what you are asking me to do is just accept what they have to say because they are prestigious. That just closes down debate and I don’t see why I should do that.

As for MMI please dig the report and translate it as that will be an in interesting contribution. But I and others can dig out reports from AFM and other magazines where Typhoon’s MMI is a cut above the others.

I respect your contributions and I know your not a liar but please don’t expect me or anyone to just agree if you cite some sources.

The thing is the RAF is locked into buying more Typhoon then it needs but the numbers were set at a time when it was felt to be correct. What we need to look at is the RAF/MODs fleet renewal plans prior to the end of the cold war.

Firstly the RAF is buying less then first planned by a fair amount (I haven’t the exact figure but its quite a lot). Secondly the RAF tends to buy more jets then are needed in service at any one time to allow for a war reserve and prolong service life by rotating airframes through the squadrons, maintenance and storage.

Secondly we need to look at what the Typhoon was intending to replace which was then Jaguar and FGR2 Phantom. It was only meant partially replace the F3 Tornado. The Typhoon was intended to replace Jaguar and Phantom in the UK and RAF Germany at a near one to one basis with crew staying in the service and transferring. The problem is both types have been retired long before their time especially (and this might surprise some) the Phantom. The Phantoms intended OSD was actually the 2007/2008 time frame, when they were retired in 1992 they were going through a service life extension program to get them through to intended OSD!:eek:

Thirdly we need to look at the GR1 Tornados replacement which was going to be FOAS, whilst the MOD/RAF were looking at Drones and Cruise missiles playing a part, the main line of thinking was towards a Stealthy, Supersonic twin engine type from British Aerospace. The design studies by BAE were clearly going down that path and make no bones about it the RAF intended the manned FOAS type to be the crown Jewel of the fleet not Typhoon which was at the time a Jaguar/Phantom replacement. They wouldn’t say it now but there are many in the RAF who still gnash their teeth over loosing FOAS!

Fourthly this brings us to the Fleet Air Arm and Harrier, looking at design studies from British Aerospace the intended Harrier 2 replacement was clearly intended to be a domestic Harrier 3 ie a new technology type building on Harrier 2 experience and FOAS technology with little American input. This is fair enough as at the time the USN and Marine Corp were concentrating on the A-12 Avenger which was not a good fit for the UK and any intended Invincible class replacement. This would of kept the RAF happy as a GR5 replacement and the RN as a FA2 replacement.

So that brings us back to the 232 Typhoon, too many for our needs now but that wasn’t always the case and we have been hoisted on our own petard when it comes to those numbers. It was the UK which made the contract so tight to stop the Germans reducing their numbers at will and messing everybody around as they had early in the Eurofighters development.

Anyway interesting food for thought.

The problem is anybody can name there fighter whatever Generation they want! Which, most do to make the type appear more advance than it is……So, I agree that is means little in reality.:(

Got it one!

I went to a Farnborough once and you could walk between the stands and see each company list their product and rivals however they felt like.

Actually there was one type (I won’t say which) where you could go between 5 different stands and it was listed from generation 3 all the way through to 5!:eek:

A waste of time and certainly not useful to cite in a discussion.

If it is not the case, why would the RAF be so desperate ot get out of Tranche 3 and sell the Tranche 1 aircraft?

Budget, Budget and Budget! Pure and simple the RAF can’t afford all of the tranches as it stands. Tranche 2 meets all RAF needs and is the priority, after that Tranche 1 is rather limited in capability and Tranche 3 would be nice especially to replace the Tornados but there wasn’t the money. The apparent Oman purchase changes the situation, they get to offload the Tranche 1 Eurofighters which would of been expensive to upgrade to full Tranche 2 capability and spend the money on getting Tranche 3 allowing them to retire Tornado in stages and streamlining the fleet.

Why does the German EF fleet have w worse readniness record then the old F-4F and Tornados?

I don’t entirely know but introducing any new type can be an expensive exercise, the costs will come down and the readiness will go up as the fleet embeds. Remember Germany is moving towards a single type fleet.

Why does aa EF cost 80 mil $ while the US Navy can get a SH for 48$ ?

Difficult and depends if you wrap development costs into, the SH is a very affordable type built upon proven technology with extensive economies of scale.

Why did every published report in recent competitions put the EF behind Rafale and or F-15?

Reports that have been disputed here and other places time and again.

The RAF exists to project AIR POWER across the majority of spectrum, something that the Navy and Army have never ever done and never will be able to do efficiently and effectively. (The reason that the RAF was formed in the first place, and its still valid today as it was in 1918).

Hello Bigvern, haven’t seen you in a while.

Construction actually started a couple of weeks ago at one of the yards, according to a report I read earlier on in the week.

Yeah bits and bobs have been going on, the deck edge elevators are in construction and the steel is arriving at the yards.