SintraI just hope that makes Dassault desperate enough to sell the Rafale at very competitive prices to India..it really is the ideal fit for the IAF’s MRCA competition, but the only thing that may stand in the way could be high cost..
will the Rafale F3 have AESA ? if yes, which one? I tried asking some Dassault reps, and no answer was forthcoming.
Short answer, yes.
The radar will be the Thales RBE2 back end matted with a new AESA antenna.
http://www.defense-update.com/features/du-1-07/aesaradar_rafale.htm
http://www.dassault-aviation.com/fileadmin/user_upload/redacteur/presse/lbg07/defense/rafale/RBE2_AESA.pdf
SintraSorry if I necro-link, but did anybody see this?
I completely missed it (probably been travelling).
Russia and Brasil to do PAK-FA?
http://www.kommersant.com/p-12361/r_500/G5_Brazil/
Brasil and Russia signed a MOU covering a huge number of topics, one of those was collaboration on a fifth generation fighter. But knowing a bit about Brasilian military acquisition procedures i would advise caution to anyone who starts imagining Sukhois flying with the FAB colours. It can happen (actually it´s quite a real possibility) but let´s just say that it was easier for the Indian Airforce to choose, buy and operate an AJT than for the FAB to get a modern fighter jet…
Sometimes, the Brasilian Government and MOD can be bloody complicated. Well to be honest, most governments and MOD´s can be bloody complicated.
Cheers
Sintraso they’re getting 24 brand new F-16 Blk 50/52s and 24 second hand F-16 Blk 25s that will be upgraded? how many Lancers does Romania operate and look to replace with these fighters ? I feel that the Gripen C/D would be a better option for Romania than crash prone F-16s. was’nt the Gripen also in the race for their fighter replacement?
Read the second and third post.
SintraThis is a FMS notification to the Congress, it´s not a sale…
You can find identical notifications in the FMS site of possible sales to Brasil, Hungary, the Czech Republic, etc, Countries that ended up with Mirages, Gripen, etc.
The Viper his facing stiff competion from SAAB and Eurofighter GMBH for the Romanian deal. Actually the Romanian Defense Minister stated a preference for the Typhoon (ill bet that the Economy Minister doesnt agree).
SintraI think you mean “Let’s put in a stupidly low bid and we’ll make up the money by overcharging on the spares for the next 50 years.”:D 😀 😀
We aint discussing the Norwegian fighter contest and Tom Burbage words… 😀
SintraThe interesting thing, for me, off the Greek proposal is the seeming absence of conventional CIWS.
Either that means:
a) not only a complete loss of faith in the rapid-fire 20-30mm systems, but, a lack of belief in the new mid-calibre programmable/guided munitions
OR
b)VL MICA (probably backed by first-class softkill – emitter arrays to port and starboard of the mainmast?) has proven to be highly reliable and highly effective against AShM-representative targets. For a system that, owing to a limited guidance refresh window, not all that much was expected of that would be quite a result.
Apart from that the design looks hideously compromised to me. Whats it supposed to be?. 16 Aster30 do not maketh much of an AAW ship as has been correctly pointed out. 16 SCALP-N is equivalent to the striking power of a tactical fighter sqdn or two which might sound something, but, the Greeks already have (memory serving) air-launched SCALP, tactical fighter squadrons to employ them and most importantly targets for them mostly within tactical strike fighter range. The need to embark a few more aboard surface vessels who’s LACM reload/reattack cycle will be measured in days, against hours for the fighters, eludes me completely.
Especially so when those silo’s could be productively filled with more Aster30’s and the ship could have a significant land-attack capacity off the 5″ OTO gun and the shore-attack mode on the MM40s.
You can use the Sylver70 with the ASTER30. That´s 32 medium range SAM´s backed by 24 VL MICA, enough to make the odd fighter SQN leader think twice.
What strikes me has a bad decision his mixing the Sylver 50 and 70 VLS. Just use 32 “70´s” and here you go, a decent long range land strike capability, or decent AAW area “firepower”.
And i do think that the Royal Navy would be pretty happy to receive a few of these “Greek” ship´s, for the size/cost they are quite capable.
Actually the RN will be extatic if they get anything to replace the Type-22B3…
SintraSOC, do you have any idea of the actual number of operational SM variants? Also, what bases they might be operating from?
30/32 units. The first 24 fighters are part of the 23rd fighter regiment based at Dzemgi, near Komsomolsk-on-Amur, and the other 6/8 are in Tsentralnaya Urglovaya airfield outside Vladivostok. By the end of 2008 the entire 24 fighters will be delivered to Tsentralnaya Urglovaya. That´s two full regiments by January next year.
Cheers 🙂
SintraAnd what are NATO jets doing in Baltic?. Baltic countries are soverign countries but it does not mean they create military structures from outside. the same is true for entire Eastern Europe( Eastern EU does not have coast to Atlantic). No new military structures after end of previous Coldwar (1991). Russia-China resolved border conflict in 90s on basis that military should be far away from borders and they havent violated. Now Russia intendes to apply the same formula to all its neighbors and that will include redrawing of borders for alot of countries. so choice is either go back to what was pre-1991 or much wider scale coldwar.
A “cold war” with NATO backed by a defense budget that his 1/3 smaller than the British one?!
Going back to pre-1991?!
Now i´ve seen it all…
How old are you?!
SintraPutin? Why not just say Stalin Boil? Afterall those legitimate intercepts you refer to were well executed Soviet missions, not Russian… and Putin is the Russian Prime Minister now, not the President of the Russian Federation… that is Medvedev, though I am sure he would meet western aggression with the appropriate level of force. I mean if the Russians started shooting down B-52s there would be consequences.
He might start arming those bombers with live missiles.
Get a grip
There were no accidents until now, and what the western fighters have been doing his EXACTLY the same kind of thing that the old VVS did and what the Russian Air Force does when they have a chance… There are literaly tons of evidences of russian forces being provocative with their Western counterparts or with anyone else that has a foreign policy that it´s not to the taste of the Kremlin in a certain time frame.
Flying strike aircrafts over US Aircraf Carriers without warning and sending the photos by email his considered a joke?
And flying jet fighters over the Capital of the three Baltic States trampling their airspace and disregarding the instructions of Ground Control his what? A good humoured prank?
Russian General Ridicules NATO Over Lithuanian Incident
26 September 2005 — Russian Air Force chief General Vladimir Mikhailov today ridiculed NATO over what he called its slow response to the intrusion of a Russian fighter jet that crashed in the alliance’s member state, Lithuania.
General Vladimir Mikhailov said on Russia’s Channel One television that the incident highlights the weakness of NATO’s air defenses by saying: “Such a big airplane was flying over such a small country and nobody saw it — this is what I find surprising. The organization of air defense [in Lithuania] is deficient, although much-praised German pilots were on duty [that day]. They were probably drinking beer or doing something else. But in any case, by the time [the planes] were ordered to take off, the [Russian] plane was already on the ground.”
The Russian Su-27 crashed on 15 September while traveling from St. Petersburg to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. The pilot ejected safely. He is being detained on possible charges of violating Lithuanian airspace.
A NATO spokesman has said that two of the four German F-4 jets responsible for policing the airspace over Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania intercepted the crashing jet after the pilot had ejected and just before it hit the ground.
Lithuania’s air force chief has been fired in connection with the investigation into the crash.
(AP/Reuters)
And please remind me, when did the Abkhazia Air Force (!) received “Fulcrums”?
Actually, the Russian Air Force has no qualms in bullying every one that the Kremlin doesn´t particulary like, so do expect that strategical Bombers flying in nuclear bombing training profiles get a fair dose of atention, and if that means a few training “lock´s” by Raptor´s, Eagles, Typhoon´s and Mirages, tough luck
Talking about “live missiles” his just pure nationalistic jingoism at it´s worst.
SintraMirage III with an Avon engine and canards.
SintraYeah, but my money would be on the -132 Block 50 in a race. 🙂
Mine too 😉
SintraLets face it guys , the way the F-35 is going to be configured for the USAF its going to be much like the fat F-16’s we see , it will be used as a medium-long ranged BOMB TRUCK and that is where the design excels . It wont be a bad A2A fighter and i dont think any 1 is claiming that however its area of expertise is going to be bomb hauling which is what the current F-16’s (higher blocks) basically do . Nothing wrong with that i guess , you build to requirment .
EXACTLY
sferrin
On another note, the Block 50 132 engined his a very nice “Bird”, but i would be a bit cautious for the “highest performing F-16 in existence” title, it´s a two “seater” with a 9 ton clean weight, it has the best T/weight of the Viper family but not by much and it´s a bit heavy for it´s wings, i´l bet that a Block 15 will have a better instanteneous turn rate…
Cheers 🙂
SintraThanks totoro for the explaination . However i still would have my concerns when folks blindly compare the Gripen or F-16 to the F-35 ,The F-35 has been very well designed for the USAF’s and USN’s requirment of a medium-long range Stealthy PGM delivery and secondary A2A role . However take out the outrageous ammount of fuel and carry say(8000-1000 lb) and you have a very nimble Air-Air fighter with a T2W ratio which is very good . Carrying the extra fuel internally rather then with jugs is a better option as it preserves stealth and allows greater use of the fuel .
“A bomber his all fuel and no engines, a fighter his all engines and no fuel”
R.J.Mitchell (the guy who “invented” the Supermarine Spitfire)
There are some very good reasons why fighters dont have (normally) the kind of “fuel fraction” that the F-35 has. And the two best reason´s are weight and aerodinamical drag. You have to put the fuel somewhere, you can use a very large airframe (think F-32 “Monica”), a very large/thick wing, or a mix of the two (the F-35A solution) but whatever the chosen solution his, it alway´s translate into high drag. With external tanks there´s a choice, they can be dumped, with internal fuel you dont have that option. So in terms of range and “stealth” the massive internal fuel fraction of the f-35 his wonderful, in terms of pure performance it suc… Well, you know.
About the comparison with the MACH 1.5 maximum supersonic speed in “dry” of the “Tiffie” (the number is official, it was released in september 2006 in the old EF page, in the Austrian section, but you can find it in the new Eurofighter Swiss competition page), the T/Weight ratio it´s a very poor “standard” to measure speed, the magic equation his Thrust/Drag (think Concorde), and we dont have the numbers to make an acurate picture. But we can speculate 😉
Join the “extra” drag that the F-35 “fuel fraction” entails, then the fixed inlets optimised for subsonic/long range loitering performance and finaly look at the wings, more specifically the leading edge sweepback, it´s equal to that of the A-7 Corsair, compare that with the 53º “LES” of the Typhoon.
The F-35A it´s a wonderful machine, it has wonderful qualities but it´s not a “hot rod”, it doesn´t need to be. I wouldn´t be very surprised if the pilots find out that it has a lot of “Flying characteristics” similarities with the “original” hornet.
Cheers
SintraF-35 will do fine for Air defence missions very comparable to EF or rafale given its exremely low frontal RCS (comparable to B-2 bomber) integrated Active-Passive sensor suite , long range radar (claims of 90nm for 1^m2 target for Apg-80) and future weapon (Aim-120D , JDRADM etc etc) aswell as HMD , M-M interface and Situational awareness . Air dominance these days is a function of the NETWORK rather then the individual assett . If the Aussies can seriously gel together their WEDGETAIL fleet with FIGHTER fleet plus future GH BAMS fleet ( plus maybe they buy GH AEW to augment their wedgetail fleet) and P-8 fleet into on single nodal network with fast back end processing and SA then the platform becomes less important as is the case in USN where they really dont feel the lack of airframe performance of the Super hornet really affecting them against fighter threats .
Bring_it_on
You have just made a dam good post, and by the way, you have just shoot a very big hole in Lockheed Martin sales campaign… 😉
So after this (wonderfully put together) list of reasons why the “system of system´s” (or network if you prefer) his the dominant factor in the Air to air business someone might just ask “hmmmm, so why do need the F-35A”?
Just stick with the Super Hornet and network the entire Fighter/AEW/ELINT/COMINT/etc force. It´s a lot cheaper and way less risky…
(Actually, i´m playing the devil´s advocate here)
SintraWeight increases are if I remember correctly one of the biggest challenge to make the F-35 (especially B) alive, and I look forward for the first solid numbers. Those for the F-22 were never published. That aircraft is given with ~15 tons in public sources, but closer to 20t OEW following some sources.
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