Did this Terror attack involve military aviation? No?
Then take it to the “General Discussion” Forum.

Cheers

With a little R&D, an ASELSAN AESA radar and a TAEC Aircraft Engine Industry Corporation Engine I am pretty sure Turkey can field a YAK-141 based VTOL aircraft suitable for use on its LHD’s. It does not need to be a 5th Gen aircraft. 4.5 Gen is sufficient for Turkey.

“Little R&D”?! To develop a STVOL strike fighter?!!!
“TAEC Aircraft Engine Industry Corporation Engine”?!! Rolls Royce cooperating with Rostec and Yak?!!
You dont have a clue.

And what about those 2 ships? Are those big deck only to play Dominos*?

The RN intends to use only one of them while rotating the two ships, the specifications for the airwing specificaly calls for 36 deployed at maximum effort.

One of the main takeaways that I saw in the Danish eval was the acknowledgement that it takes more 4th gen to do the job of the F-35 on a purely airframe-hours comparison. This is because the F-35 is an 8k hours airframe from the factory and the F-18/Eurofighter is not.

Another amusing take from that evaluation, the Danish heavily used a 2014 German Audit Office document in order to calculate the Phoon sustainment costs, on that same document its stated that the Luftwaffe estimates a 8400 flight hours life service for the aircraft, this particular bit they´ve ignored.
Did i forget to mention that less than six months after the conclusion of the evaluation the Danish Defense Minister tweteed that the Flyvevåbnet would need more than 28 Dave airframes because with those numbers they couldnt handle all the missions that a 44 Viper fleet could? OH REALLY?! How about 38 airframes?

Nope, Typhoon and Rafale are significantly more expensive than F-35, SH and Gripen. Also please do not focus only on acqiusition costs, operating costs and costs for upgrades are also very important (i.e. life cycle costs).

Check official figures from e.g. the Danish competition, it clearly shows that Typhoons is more expensive. Rafale is probably in a similar ballpark.

Both are great a/c, in particular the Rafale is very impressive. However it is also more expensive than F-35/SH.

Look at the Swiss competition. Rafale won clearly the technical eval, and the Swiss air force clearly preferred it, but it was just way too expensive. Had the cost difference been minimal clearly Rafale would have won in Switzerland.

Official Danish numbers:

Typhoon life cycle costs per a/c: 2.1 billion
F-35 life cycle costs per a/c: 1.51 billion
SH life cycle costs per a/c: 1.59 billion

The life cycle costs of SH and F-35 are quite similar (5% difference) however Typhoon is 40% above the costs of F-35. I would say that is significant, in particular if you take into account that the F-35 is much more capable than the Typhoon. You need some pretty good reasons to buy a less capable platform at a 40% higher cost!

I am not sure about the Rafale, perhaps a bit cheaper than the Typhoon, OTOH Finland would probably go for the F4.2 version with significant upgrades which may push the price up a bit?

In any case my understanding is that they will use the first 4 criteria to “shortlist”, and then pick the most capable a/c. This is different from many other competitions that will typically shortlist and then pick the cheapest of those shortlisted (since all shortlisted will meet minimum criteria).
The F-35 is clearly the most capable, and also quite cost-efficient.

Only if Saab manage to convince them that Gripen E life cycle costs will be significantly lower (e.g. 30-40%) than the F-35, will Gripen E have a chance since a larger number could be purchased. However I believe this to be unlikely.

Since the SH is not cheaper than the F-35 and less capable there really are no reasons to select that one either. Thus the only fighter remaining is the F-35.

Another thing that could potentially turn things around could be politics — if, hypothetically, Trump keeps pulling the US further away from Europe, and EU at the same time decides to pull their act together and become independent, one may imagine a deal whereby Finland is leasing 64 Gripen E for, say, 10-15 years and then buys the 5. gen European a/c that should be available from 2035 or so*… however the chances of this happening is very low (but then again most people would have said 3 years ago that the chances of UK leaving EU and Trump becoming president were also very low!)

(*Belgium could do the same, BTW…!)

Dont use the Danish evaluation if you want to prove a particular point related to costs, at least without reading the documents proper and getting a good idea of how they’ve come to those numbers. Half of this board could do a better job.

That thing looks like an SR-71 had it’s way with a BD-5 and then was drawn by a caricature artist. It was supposed to combine STOL, lightweight, but also armored… all while being so small that one wonders where the fuel was supposed to be stored.

Me thinks the designer went to work for Iran on the Qaher-313 after the Skorpion was canceled.

Unlike the Qaher-313, the Skorpion was a serious design, think of Burt Rutans ARES.
The Polish Air Force made a tender for a small battlefield suport aircraft, it would be a subsonic, short range, STOL design, main job would be CAS and recon, two design teams answered, PZL with multiple iterations of the “SKorpion”, the initial versions were equiped with a pair of turboprops, and the Instytut Lotnictwa (IL) Kobra 2000. Lack of funds stopped the competition.

(you can see the design of the Kobra in this video, from minute ten onward)

By the late eighties, beggining of the nineties there was no end of small battlefield suport designs, Burt Rutans ARES, BAE SABA, Aeroprogress T720, Vought ATLAS, Skorpion, etc, not one entered front line service.

Cheers

Far too many competitors and actors in the MALE UAV industry. US, Israel & Turkey lead UCAV sales in the West. While China lead UCAV sales in the East.

Turkey?!