Maybe it does house a missile under that fairing w/c can simply be jettisoned once WVR combat is about to commence. No need for actuators, swing-arms, etc.. just jettison the cover and the missile seeker has a clear view.

Sukhoi must have been listening to our discussion on relatively cheap stealth solutions a few weeks back 😮

How difficult would it be to “spoof” the radar emission of say, the PAK-FA?

I’m thinking, cheap drone sending out a signature that would match that of a Russian radar, and fool the ALR-94 into thinking it’s a the PAK-FA/Su-35/whatever… luring it in to shoot.

Think the flying equivalent of the blow up tanks the Serbs used.

Possible, plausible?

You realise that one CH53 has more lift capability than the whole IAC! Great fun!

I’m sure they would have taken it home if they could.

Oh sorry, I agree there will be some kind of Taranis purchase, but I’ll put it like this:

I don’t think the replacement will be like for like. It will be a case of “do less, with less”, although they’ll try and present it otherwise.

When I mentioned the 30 years, I was really thinking of manned frontline aircraft.

Hm – I’m not sure if we can say military power is directly proportional to front line fighter aircraft, which I do think face significant reduction across Europe.

What I generally see happening is a lean towards greater spending on naval, ground forces & transport – at the expense of fighter aircraft numbers.

It’s just a reaction to the current situation.

That’s how politics work – and politicians set the budget.

A silly example: my country experienced a recent prolonged cold snap. Our salt supplies were too low to meet the demand. I couldn’t even buy cooking salt in the shop.

Now – if the government, any government – had stockpiled a sufficient amount of salt away for such an emergency, say 5 years back, the local media would have had a field day and the government would have faced ridicule for such inefficient spending. They would have lost votes.

Instead, because the emergency developed the government was ridiculed for being so tardy and not foreseeing such an eventuality.

As it is with salt, it is with defence.

The best thing that could happen to the EF/F35/Gripen/Rafale programs is if the Russians really step up the tempo of Bear/Tu-160 flights and start making noise on the Baltic states borders.

If there’s a public fear, however justified, the politicians will rightly or wrongly justify greater defence spending on fighter aircraft/AA defences.

If not, well then the media will go to town on X government for spending Y amount on Z fighters, for which there is no purpose, while Soldiers die due to ill protected vehicles, a lack of helicopters, and while there are 60 kids per classroom.

Electorates and the media are reactionary, their concern is the immediate, they’re not great at seeing in the long term.

Three years from publicly displayed mock-up to first flight.£80 mn from the MoD (at 1980s prices – worth much more now), plus BAe money. Tornado tailfin, to save money.

It would have needed a lot more work & money to turn it into a real fighter, but it shows what can be done for a relatively small sum.

Do you think it would be viable for BAe to privately fund a prototype stealth airframe, which leveraged Typhoon engines & systems?

Say, for arguments sake – single engined and aimed at the export market (I doubt we’ll be seeing any other RAF fastjet orders aside from the EF&F35 for 30 years)

I’m aware of the Replica but afaik that was just a mock up and a “Plan B” if problems developed in the JSF program. I guess a big issue would be the F-35 and creating a potential market rival to one of the companies main projects, even if as I envision it, it was simpler and didn’t have all the F-35’s capabilities.

I don’t know that it’s a problem of optics, as you could just design the optics to integrate with the wind screen. It’s actually more a problem of packaging and field of view.

Meaning, you could probably integrate it with the windscreen if you wanted to, but you would need a longer windscreen, which might screw up optics for the pilot. 😉 What it comes down to, is it just doesn’t make sense, atm, to do that.

Ah I thought miniaturization might have made it more practical in that regard – i.e. it could be built into the back of the instrument panel without necessitating a horribly stretched screen.