I’d choose neither and buy Hawks :diablo: :diablo: :diablo:

True BIGVERN!

But we all know that if you could strap a seat to a certain ramjet powered surface to air missile that is what you would really want :diablo:

American aircraft bought by the British, at least Naval ones, have dreadful names. Vought Chesapeake?? Curtiss Cleveland??? Grumman Tarpon???? Brewster Bermuda?????

By that record it should be named after a place with tenuous British and American connections, or a dodgy fish name. How about The McDonnell-BAe Cod, Birmingham, Sardine, Harwich, Tuna, or Whitebait?

On a more serious note, I like Fury, acceptable because there was a North American Fury as well as the Hawker variety. For British service I would like to see that or perhaps Firefly.

Are you saying that the name Cleveland didn’t fill the pilots hearts with a patriotic fire and zeal for combat! 😀

Hmmm…

The thing is a lot has been made of the kick down the door concept using stealthy types but frankly during the most recent conflicts a great many none stealth types penetrated dense air defence networks (the Kosovo conflict is a particularly good example).

With good intelligence, planning, situation awareness and SEAD assets it hasn’t presented itself as a particularly big problem.

The RAF has invested in SEAD in the form of ALARM and as is always the case with the UK armed forces make do with what it has.

The Typhoon is operational in the A-A role NOW. The JSF has yet to fly, let alone fire a BVR weapon.

Typhoon is a genuine multi role aircraft, while JSF is a tactical fighter with a robust but secondary A-A capability.

Typhoon will carry Meteor before the UK even receives JSF. Integration of Meteor on JSF is not funded or planned and is MOST unlikely to happen.

CAESAR is likely to be fitted to Typhoon before the UK receives JSF.

While JSF is an all-aspect stealth aircraft, frontal RCS figures are likely to be closer than you imply.

Typhoon will have, or is likely to have:
1) Faster acceleration
2) Supercruise
3) Longer reach
4) Greater combat persistance (more missiles)
5) Possibly longer radar range (with CAESAR)
6) Better DVI (significant in complex multi vs multi engagements)

If the UK were to standardise on one type, Typhoon would be a better option than JSF.

Good points, whilst stealth is a good thing to have I think with the newer generation of radars and more importantly computers to process the information the advantage given is being reduced.

Funnily whilst the new AESA radar for the Typhoon is a must we shouldn’t ignore the capabilities of the mechanically scanned CAPTOR. It really represents the Zenith of mechanically scanned radar development offering many of the performance and features seen on comtempory electronically scanned types. In certain areas it actually out performs some electronically scanned types especially in detection range performance.

Neither one is mine, those are only collected from Web. Seems like people love to do what-if schemes of your cool bird.

The Canadian and Israeli one are surely the wonderful Revell 1/48th kit, others look more like 1/72th scale by Italeri.

I was just going to say the same Flex297 thats certainly some fine kit bashing! I think the one in Canadian is particularly handsome, it has a good feeling of reality.

Considering the RAF already use the Nimrod MR2 over land as a communication and control platform adding a strike capability is a logical next step.

The Nimrod MRA4 uses a MIL-STD-1553B databus so the concept of adding strike weapons like JDAM or Stormshadow is more of a systems integration issue rather than a mechanical one. The MRA4 also has 4 underwing hardpoints so there is potential for various external load configurations. If I remember correctly fitting of LGB’s was considered for the MR2 but there were problems with them fitting in the bomb bay, possibly an external multi rack ejector plus a designator pod would be possible for the MRA4.

Considering the buy of MRA4 was reduced from 21 to 12 there are spare airframes available. One possible idea is to develop a variant without all the expensive maritime patrol stuff. Sort of a Nimrod RA4 with a focus on battlefield control, surveillance and strike. I don’t see this as being a particularly expensive option and it would give the UK a useful strategic capability again.

Of course the main barrier to all this is the MOD’s program budget wich has no give for anything extra. Whilst adding a strike capability to the Nimrod would probably be inexpensive justifying it to the Treasury is almost impossible. I think the RAF probably intends to see if they can add capabilities on an ad hoc basis over time.

I presume the Pakistani F-6 is firing a AIM9 Sidewinder.