Then again the Seaquest is beating them all

Add a couple of F414s or PW1120. Sorry Scooter, F110 won’t fit on it. The largest turbofan you can fit on it were the Speys.

In theory, brand new F-4s, with modern radars, avionics and turbofans can play with 4th generation fighters in a hit and dash, vertical maneuver game, just don’t turn horizontal. The same can be said of the F-104. As strike fighters, modernized F-4s and F-104s can still do the job equally as well or better.

To be honest Crobato the Spey doesn’t fit in the Phantom as well!:p

It took a fuselage redesign to make it fit in the UK Phantoms.

I always thought that the EAP was more of a hands on experience to develop the EF Typhoon kind of project, and not really meant to field a workable fighter for commercial success. :confused:

True Nick 76, it clearly was intended as a test program for a future aircraft but Bae couldn’t ignore the success of the test program. Considering the EAP used off the shelf assemblies from the Tornado program there certainly would of been cost savings in the development process.

Looks aside the EAP shares virtually nothing with the Eurofighter, on the other hand it shares a lot with the Tornado. The rear fusealage and engines are off the Tornado.

When it comes to EAP I must admit to thinking “what if?” Bae Systems did push the idea to the RAF of going it alone with a development of the EAP. The government didn’t want to go through the cost of developing a fighter on their own, in retrospect maybe a mistake.

The EAP test pilots certainly liked it, one of them described it as a “Ferret with a firework up its bum!”

OK it is all a bit of a fudge but we shouldn’t focus too much on the fact that they are getting Tranche 1 aircraft rather than tranche 2. In the end a fair amount of the differences between both tranches are software based. For the partner nations the plan was to upgrade the tranche 1 airframes to tranche 2 anyway, if the need arises for Austria to have full Tranche 2 capabilities I’m sure EADS can make a very attractive offer for the upgrade(actually I bet EADS expects this to happen in the end).

Sorry Bager, to my knowledge (admittedly culled from several books and articles) CVA-01 never left the drawing board. Perhaps you are thinking of the wartime HMS Malta supercarrier laid down and then broken up on the slipway or the USS United States? The order was never actually placed. I wish it were the case, the likelihood then would have been the ship would have been built. From what I can see CVF’s design, development and construction is a lot further along than CVA-01’s.

Whilst CVA-01 never hit the slips as far as I’m aware some long lead items were ordered. I think one of the catapaults and the arrestor gear engines that were eventually fitted to Ark Royal were intended for CVA-01.

As for todays press reports now that Browns name is directly linked with the leaked information I think it’s fair to say that the carriers will finally get the go ahead (thank God) but sadly Type 45 7 & 8 have been dropped (no surprise to anyone really). On the other hand there is some scope to use the Type 45 hull design (without the expensive Sampson radar fit) for a Type 22 Batch 3 replacement so maybe not all is lost.

The Times is reporting it might happen next week. I’m optimistic. 🙂 And really it doesn’t matter if it has been ten years because if there are two massive 70000 tonnes CVFs in the Royal Navy it will be in a different league to now.

I hope the Times is right Rob but we have been here before.

Lets hope it isn’t another fudge (like the previous split development plan).