Why ask when you think you already know it? The Eagle wasn’t exactly great in its time, it isn’t today. Badger summarized the arguments of the USAF for excessive expenditure on fighter aircraft. The wisdom of the USAf is – looking at its history – questionable.

So what makes the Eurofighter special:

1. It is the first European shared development that actually achieved to produce a truly competitive aircraft. The Tornado was partly successful, too, but very special in its requirements (cold war heavy defense ingress and drop the bomb).
2. It has a competitive price and the overall business case looks quite OK, better than that for Rafale, Gripen and F-22. So from the business point of view, the Eurofighter is a good aircraft.
   Technical Issues:
3. The Typhoon convinces by a low drag airframe with high thrust in the transonic regime, allowing very good acceleration and supercruise even with standard weapon load and external tank.
4. It has one of the best human-machine interfaces (HMI) of all current fighters. The HMI is one of the single most advancements in the Typhoon design.
5. It has a quite low radar cross section when head on, giving it a noticeable advantage in BVR-engagements.
6. The Eurofighter is very agile and allows the pilot to make full use of it. With its level of agility it can stand all current fighters (incl F-22) in dogfight scenarios.
7. It has true multi-role potential with growth potential to heavy fighter-bomber versions. The line is more or less secured up to 2015, which allows continued improvements.

Above “achievements” are not unique, so I don’t deny that other fighters are also good or maybe even better in some disciplines. Still, producing a fighter at the level of the Typhoon is an achievement.

I excluded avionics.

You insulted my aircraft and now I will start throwing funny statements at you which I copy&paste from internet sources and I will call all what you say crap, so finally adapting to average “Fighter A vs. Fighter B” style.

I agree with you the Eurofighter is a great aircraft

I’m right…what I said was….I’ve never seen a Mexican military aircraft at a U.S. Airshow….despite living near the border.

But it does not mean there is no US aircraft at mexican air shows, i have seen USAF F-15s at mexican air shows, and i know the US-Mexico cooperation is not like you are portraying, in fact the US low classes that are fed with right wing propaganda do not grasp the real relations going on between the US and Mexican elites, even do not understand the relations between the US and Mexican military.

If you have not seen mexican aircraft it does not mean there is not cooperation between both countries
Mexico can not stop by itself the drug problem because the US demand for drugs is the real problem, when in the US the lower classes are not fed with a racist, arrogant and short sighted vision of what means cooperation in NAFTA, that day they will start to acknowledge their responsabilities they have as neighborghs of Mexico

Too bad. I was looking forward to having Flankers in the neighborhood to play with.

What Mexico will fly depends in great part inthe foreign policy they look for, Russian and Ukraine have offered building Mi-8 and Antonov aircraft in Mexico, the mexican military budget is relatively small, if the Mexican government looks for independence they will look for NON US weapons, but if the policy of alignment is reinforced they will end up buying second class F-16s

You are right, but it was for the benefit of the others. I forget how limited he was simply. See what he wrote about the initial-climb-rates, what has nothing to do with practical climb-times.

Yeah yeah sense can i joint the selected club of the always right, before judging first Check military parade`s books and act not so self rightious, be humble it helps discussions i never lied when i said to you Military Parade claims that and by the Way the Book is in Russian, not german not english but Russian and has one of the best selection of information i have ever seen on russian military equipment

You did not grasp it, did you?
The MiG-31 never matched the climb ability of the MiG-25.
The MiG-25 reached its superior performances at heigt and speed, where its propulsion-system reached its peak effiency. Most fighters outperform a MiG-25 with ease at heigts below 10000 metre or 30000 feet.
The MiG-31 suffers in a similar way despite its TF engines. To be an effective look-down/shoot down hunter the MiG-31 had to operate at medium heigts. Right here it offers some endurance to do so. Something the MiG-25 could not do related to its TJs. The radar limitations aside.
The MiG-25 was impotent against the B-1A and later B-1B to come, when the MiG-31 was not.
In AB the MiG-31 was guzzelling fuel at a tremendous rate. To utilise the propulsion system, the MiG-31 had to go supersonic and heigh-up or not much fuel is left for range. So it will operate subsonic most of the time. All data given from OKB are correct, but can not be reached at the same time.
But I fear it is a waste of time to try to explain it to you.
It does not hurt a design to learn its strong-points and its limitations. Physics is setting the limitations to flight performances at first.

yeah Sens, so Military Parade and other Russian books are wrong? are not they?

Sens let`s analize this, number one i have books that claim the MiG-31 will climb to 19km in less than 8 minutes.

I actually do not believe your figures because number one the MiG-25 rate of climb is unimpressive, the MiG-29 and Su-27 have rates of climb of 300m/s or around 19 km a minute, the figures you present first portrait the MiG-31 as an sluggish aircraft, the Ye-155 records are really impressive around 2 minutes to get to 20km, that is really impressive, but the MiG-25 operational20km in almost 9 minutes are not impressive and you are bascly claiming your book is the good one according to you to Physics that sound more to me to speculations, number one you have no D-30F manual to suggest how the MiG-31 will perform, niether graphs taken form MiG-31 operational units, the only you have is a book like me, considering that Gordon works usually with the OKB Mikoyan i doubt your figures because they do not sound logic if you have other russian books and specially since it is not logic the Russians made an inferior jet to the one they wanted to replace.

of course you will speculate how the D-30 will perform claiming a cliche the turbofan jet show be not as good as the turbojet, based upon supposedly physics and boasting such as did you grasp it or can you get it? come on Sens, the Russian books i have are good and are written in Russian, therefore i doubt your figures, but it is up to you to believe what you want or the books you want:)

The Romanian Air Force operated a total of 46 Floggers (36 MF and 10 UB) from 1979 to 2001.
The first two MiG-23UBs arrived at Mihail Kogalniceanu AB/57th Fighter Regiment on 23 January 1979, first flights with Romanian crews being made one month later. 12 MiG-23MFs arrived on May 19.
The 93rd Regiment based at Timisoara (Giarmata AB) received soon after the same number of planes, later the number of airframes increased in both regiments.
Original deliveries (36 MF and 8 UB) ended in September 1985, when UB #137was delivered.
Overhaul was conducted at the TEREM facility in Plovdiv, Bulgaria – Aerostar Bacau didn’t assimilate depot-level maintenance for the MiG-23.
Two attrition replacements (UBs) were purchased from Russia in December 1996.
A total of 8 airframes were lost in accidents, with only one fatality.
In August 1998, the 57th Fighter Group ceased operations with the 23, all remaining airworthy planes being flown at Giarmata AB.
The last flight was made in September 2001 at Giarmata AB – most planes were inoperational since 2000, only MF #203,205 and UB #135 being kept flyable for the ROIAS 2001 airshow.

The weapons used (besides the usual unguided stuff) were:
*R-23R/T
*R-13M, later complemented by the R-60 (both on single and double launchers). I wrote complemented, not replaced because even today some of the stored Floggers still “wear” the R-13M launcher rails
*Kh-23 (AS-7 Kerry B), initially equipping only the 57th Reg, intended for use in anti-shipping role.

At delivery, they were painted in light grey overall, with red bort numbers and grey radomes/dielectric panels. The roundel was the Warsaw Pact one (red star with yellow circle and blue dot inside)


Some of the (initially grey) planes belonging to Giarmata AB received basically 2 different camo schemes in the late 80’s, with bort numbers mostly red, but sometimes only outlined in white:
-one shade of brown, one green

-two shades of green, two shades of brown

The most popular and widespread camo was the “tiger”, applied in Romania to most of the (grey) ones from the 57th Regiment at Mihail Kogalniceanu. First planes to receive it were 3 or 4 in 1984, prior to the 23 August fly-by (national day at the time). They also received the present day roundel and white radomes. The rest of the fleet got the new roundel in the 1985-86 timeframe. Most Floggers overhauled in Bulgaria received camo (tiger camo for those in the 57th Reg., green/brown ones for those in the 93rd Reg.) but in both units some were left in the original grey.


The 2 attrition examples (UB #311,512) that came from Russia in Dec.
1996 had a different camo:

For more pictures see here:

http://cartula.net/modules/ipboard/index.php?showtopic=1796

and

http://www.skybird-ev.de/tour/romania/fe03—d.htm

There is also a very informative article “Whatever happened…to
Romania’s Floggers?” written by eng. Danut Vlad in AFM July 2004, if I remember correctly.
If you can’t get a hold of it, drop me a PM with your mail adress and
I’ll send you a scan.

Man thanks i really enjoyed that forum, the pictures are excellent, but i have to confess i do not like their camuflage except the gray one like this

R.A. Belyakov and the group of MiG OKB engineers had written that official book. I stick to the first hand source!

Yeah Sens and do not you think the books i have were not written with Belyakov help? both books i have have official information and both books are written in Russian.