This sounds reasonable to me.

Yeah if they mess around with the Eurofighter deal the F-5 might well be the only thing they could afford to operate.

Plenty of companies would be happy to give them a life extension. Anyone know how many different F-5 upgrade programs are around at the moment? I know Israel and America offer upgrade programs as well as at least one Asian nation.

That is a flyaway tag of some 9 aircraft.. That says pretty much all.. They won’t cancel EF2000 to save money on something cheaper if this is connected with paying fine that cancels out all financial advantages.

Yep Flex it would be utterly bonkers to cancel on those terms, I have a hunch we will see some face saving on both sides on this one.

Fascinating really whilst India has shown itself to be good at licence building and improving other countries equipment she has problems with indiginous develpment.

Politically, once building work starts it’ll be very hard to make a split and there will be a lot of pressure on both countries to stay with the program, even given the structure of the deal.

On another note, does anybody know what catapults the French version will use? Will they use an Emcat? If they use steam catapults it’ll mean fitting steam plant to the design, which will be a significant change to the machinery fit and could have implications on other parts of the design.

Standard American C13 steam catapult and probably Mark 7 Mod 4 arrester gear engines.

Whilst I support the local product in the form of Typhoon I must admit I was surprised at Austria choosing it. The Typhoon is a large long range state of the art air superiority fighter with a secondary strike capability. Considering the Austrians use their jets to intercept and photograph intrusions into their airspace it does seem a bit much, actually if you look at their situation carefully in many ways the Gripen is overkill as well when what is really required is a point defence fighter.

Nobody is making cheap point defence fighters these days except for the Chinese who would probably find it hard to break into this market. Considering the JF-17 is Sidewinder capable, has western Mil-standard type avionics and is multirole (if thats what they secretly desire) it would be quite agreeable for there needs.

If the Austrians do overturn the Typhoon order (which might not happen considering the penalties they would have to pay) I can see the surplus Gripen A in Sweden as being very tempting if they can afford them after the penalty payments. If Typhoon dosen’t go through and any penalties have been paid I can see the F-5 lease being extended or even changed to an outright purchase.

So something new then.

Frankly there would be better things for Beriev to invest their money, I don’t think they would find the market to justify the investment.

Also don’t forget that the governments of the Eurofighter partner nations will now subject Austria to some fairly hefty arm twisting.

As of yet none have been delivered but at least one is flying now.

Realistically how important is the STOVL mission to the RAF, other than the Harrier tradition? The missions are mostly in need of rugged forward-base capable fighters, something that normally favours mechanically simpler construction. I suspect the RAF would be much better off buying F-35Cs, and putting some extra emphasis on forward basing support.

Whilst a few years back the RAF only wanted STOVL for various reasons now that they have lost the FOAS program more are supporting the idea of an F35c buy to avoid a shortage in long range strike capability. The main group pushing a STOVL buy now is industry who are set to gain from a STOVL purchase.