Anyone who expects to sell airplanes to Japan should expect the Japanese to demand that they perform final assembly, if not full licensed production.

Thats not a problem for Boeing and Eurofighter, for LM it might be a bit trickier. There were some “news” (cant remember if it was in Flight Global or Aviation Week) about a proposal for something identical to the Italian JSF “Assembly Line”.

Are you guys ever this critical of Sweetman when he writes his articles without providing any sources?

Yes, the trouble his… when was that?
You may not like Sweetmans point of view, you may not like his reading of the numbers, you may not like him at all, but the trouble his that Sweetmans articles are full of checkable sources, the good old Loren almost never ever presents one.

Any news about Oman ? Read today the Omanis have indicated interest in F-16’s.

Yes, last year the Defense Security Cooperation Agency went has far has sending the usual FMS letter to the Congress for a Viper sale to Oman (here: http://www.dsca.osd.mil/pressreleases/36-b/2010/Oman_10-40.pdf).

Just look for the ones that didn’t…;)

Was that the canberra? Every one of the others were chosen after contests.

You could also look at it as natural development of the programme which is rapidly maturing beyond the expectations of its critics.

Either way its all good:)

“rapidly maturing beyond the expectations of its critics”

Talk about optimism! I am not exactly a “critic” and in my view the speed and pace of the Eurofighter development spiral is akin to a snail.

Think about the reason why Raytheon would add a two-way data link.
Crafty fellows, those.

The two way data link in a medium range AAM is an industry standard these day´s, every single new project flying or marked to fly in the next five years has it, nothing particulary “Raytheonish” about it.

This allows the F-22/35/etc to guild the 120D until it is very close to the target before the 120D goes active. Without the active seeker of the 120D, the target has nothing to jam until the last moments before impact. Even if the target starts effective jamming, the 120D will still have it’s datalink and INS that can continue to prosecute the mission till it’s seeker can burn through the jamming.

Then you have a SARH AAM!
And the only way to continuosly iluminate the target is to fly almost straight at it . If you are using any variant of the AIM-120 you may find yourself in the “not very confortable” position of ending up very close to the intended target, maybe a good argument for something with longer legs than the present AIM120, that or using something like an AWACs to guide the AAM.

This type of defense against an AAM will get even tougher once the NGM (aka JDRADM) comes online with it’s tri-mode seeker (EM, IR, & HARM).

Completely agree, but with the current economic scenario that particular project might end up like the AIM-95 or the AIM-97, not that an evolved version of the AIM-120 could not be upgraded with such a seeker (i have this feeling that we are going to see an awfull lot of future versions of the amraam, but this is another discussion).

Cheers

China was brought in in the second reply by Mr.Sintara that only China can produce fighters and double digit SAMs in decent numbers. when there is not factual basis for it. not in numbers nor in quality of weapons. and no one know how much labor & cost was used to produce those fighters. that tipping point of labor inefficiency has long term effects.

Where did i wrote “that only China can produce fighters and double digit SAMs in decent numbers”?