The Gina had indeed two different canopy types, the “lowest” was used with the original MB mk4 ejection seat, the “tallest” with the MB mk6. All the Italian Ginas had been retrofitted with the mk6 around 1975, so if you are modelling the “PAN” go for the tallest canopy.
The Browning were replaced lead weights that looked like “guns”.
Cheers

So… An extra fighter line to introduce a capability that Belgium has never expressed interest in? :very_drunk:

Facepalm…
Too much Chateaux Dassault…

It is well known that in the 90’s BAE pushed hard for the RAF to not get F-16s due to the fact that they saw it and F-22 as a threat to the Typhoon procurement.

Never ever heard that the RAF lobbied the RAF against acquiring the Viper in the nineties, and never ever read anything that sugested that the RAF ever considered the acquisition of whatever version of the F-16 for the Phoon missions.
The US lobbied the Eurofighter partner nations with evolved variants of the Eagle and the Hornet and in places like Air International or Flight Global a favorite “what if” in the nineties was “if the RAF acquires Strike Eagles…”, but it was just rumour.
The RAF evaluated the F-14, the F-15 and the F-16 in the seventies and decided to acquire the… Tornado Fmk3. Another favorite “what if” in the British aviation press in the late sixties, early seventies that might be connected to “Vipers in the RAF” was the “Spitwulf”, a few chaps in the industry and press made a bit of a lobby effort on a possible Anglo/German light fighter to complement the Tornado.

Cheers

. When? In 10 years? Hope it will not have to open its bays every ten mins in the meanwhile… (is that fixed btw?)

In the meanwhile it is unable ot use properly AMRAAM and completely unable to use IR missile on LBL mode, a prerequisite to execute properly air policing.

Anw what would CANADA do with stealth? Useful only for first day entry and OCA… Competely useless for canada.

Chill out Hallo, we might think that you dont like Dave :dev2:

If the ability to carry six amraam´s by Dave A will only be delivered in ten years, thats no problem for the Canadians. With the first airframe of whatever aircraft they choose being delivered in 2025, the IOC for their first sqn will be some nine to ten years from now. The longer the replacement program gets, the most likely an acquisition of Dave by RCAF his, its the youngets airframe in the competition, and whatever problems it might have now, they will be ironed by then.

Nicolas:
I chose the f16 over the f18 as the titles specifically mentions a fighter for the airforce. And given that the usaf evaluated both f16 and f18 and selected f16 for its better performance, I am naturally inclined to give the f16 higher marks. Of course if I was selecting for the navy, I would have chosen the f18 for its larger size stronger landing gear and twin engines.

The USAF evaluated the YF—17, not the F/A—18, two diferent birds.

Cheers

F-16, it’s really a no-brainer. Only plane which can compete is F-18, depending on what kind of qualities you need. In a blind call, F-16 all the way. If American types are not available, then Mirage 2000.

In the eighties the Viper was a AIM-9L, MK82, Maverick day only fighter. Both the Sparrow capable F-16 ADF and the Block 40 “Night Falcon” were delivered in the late 89 and IOC”ed” in 1990, so they are out.
Both the Mirage 2000C equiped with the RDI and the F/A-18C had a more robust avionics suite and a true BVR capability.

Cheers

You sure about that? The WE.177 could.

I also understood those nukes to be US-controlled nukes residing in other NATO countries.

The text that you are answering its… well… not particularly well written.
Instead of “Tornado” read “Typhoon”.
The WE.177 and two diferent versions of the American B61 are integrated into Tornado, no such job was undertaken for Typhoon. If the Luftwaffe, the AMI or even the RAF decide to integrate the latest B61-12 on the Typhoon its a straight technical job.

But im putting that out to show that 200hours annually is what people fly. So with SLEP, the F-16 could be flown for as long as what people fly brand new fighters for. Check my post #21 for links on F-16 new increased fatigue life. All this info on the increased life of the F-16 with the SLEP to 13,856 hours, which from the solicitation is a minor upgrade of the F-16 airframe, costing about 1.5 million usd in parts, is only known in 2017. So a lot of prior studies did not take this into account as it is simply unavailable at that time. Now with the previously unthinkable high remaining flight hours of F-16 platform, which i think is unmatchable by any other fighter, with its wide range of tried and tested weapons, electronics suite, AESA radar, conformal tanks, IMO it would be foolish for any cash strapped air force to pick anything other than the F-16 for their MRF.

In the philippines context, if they want to save money, they could always fly their SSA/LIFT platform more, which from botswana’s KAI offer is said to have 1/3rd of gripen life cycle costs. The more expensive MRF F-16 platform could be flown less, for QRA and important strategic patrols in spratlys area, which requires long legs. F-16 with conformal tanks would be ideal for such missions, saving fuel costs with less drag than small fighters needing external tanks. Take also into account the swiss gripen c evaluation, which is a more representative comparison rather than saabs glossy brochures, that put its performance worse than their current F/A-18C/D in various mission profiles.

https://quwa.org/2017/08/24/korea-ae…-aircraft-bid/

This is in the case of comparing the used F-16c/d with the newish gripen c. If you take the gripen E/F into account, you could even get brand new F-16V for less than the gripen E/F. Bahrain is getting 19 new F-16V with weapons, and support (10 advisers and 75 contract technicians) for 2.785 billion usd. Compare to the old swiss offer of 22 gripen E/F for 3.5 billion usd. In any case that is an amount the philippines could barely afford. And there would be very little difference in capability between a new F-16V and used F-16C/D upgraded to V standards. So it would be an acceptable tradeoff to go for used.

http://www.dsca.mil/major-arms-sales…rcraft-support

Reality check:
http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/bahrain/bahrain-to-buy-16-upgraded-f-16-fighter-jets-1.2108034