Given that the Meteor is a fixed inlet air breather with a one-way datalink & non-GPS INS, it stays relatively low.

It has a two way datalink, it uses a variable internal duct, its flight profile acording to severall MBDA public documents is freakingly high by comparison with its ancestor (the Matra MICA) and the GPS thingy is interestingly absent from the likes of the Standard SM2 and its being introduced in the SM6 for the anti land role.

Italy just joined the CAAM program, its Navy will be the launch customer for the CAAM-ER.
Thats the fifth user for a weapon thats not even in service! Good job MBDA.

http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articles-view/release/3/185068/italy-opts-for-camm-air_defense-missile.html

Well, as what you precieve as “left” i wouldn’t called left Democrates or Republicans. Just Neo-Conservative through and through. CNN is not a “left” Channel. Its Sure a Democrates Channel, but with a Neo-Cons angle nevertheless.
Part of Neo-Concervative is America first, over all and everything at whatever cost.
Just as Fox News here..
You Muricans don’t even have a freakin grasp about what Left is, you never had. Left is what the Sosial parties in several Eruopean(Scandinavian) countries have.
sometimes called Red Commies parties.. which show how ignorant Neo-Cons views many US people have.

A “Neo—Con” is a very particular part of the American right, once upon a time it was firmly entreched on the US Government, in Bush Juniors days, today whats left of the “Neo-Con” fringe doesn’t have any influence, a great big chunk of their main thinkers ended up in “never Trump land”

Thanks mrmalaya and thanks mupp.

I quite like the idea of a common airframe, common engine and national systems. It sort of worked out with the Jaguar.

ps- The comments on the article of day 20 (the one that its not behind the pay wall) are freeking unbeliavable, of the type that makes the worst trolls around here seem like well thought out decent chaps!

The FCAS team has chosen the planform and engine.
And i dont know what they´ve chosen because the article released today is behind a pay wall at Aviation week…

Cheers

Not necessarily. RuMOD has always been waiting for the AESA to be ready, it has just taken so long that the first several MiG-35 pre-serials flew with Zhuk-M2. Previously it was mentioned by AF officials that the first batch would be bought with the Zhuk-M as a stop gap, but then again this is Izvestiya, which has been wrong before.

Thanks, thats sensible and entirely possible.

So the reality remains that the Gripen E is still an expensive low performance alternative to a brand new F-16 or F/A-18.

In the last decade there was one single Viper deal with unit costs aproaching what the Brasilians paid and what the Swiss were offered by SAAB for the Gripen E, it was the 2016 offer to Pakistan for eight Vipers (http://www.dsca.mil/major-arms-sales/government-pakistan-f-16-block-52-aircraft), in that particular business the only thing that was bought were the airframes, no training, manuals, logistic suport, whatever, .
Every single other Viper or SH proposed sale surpassed by quite a decent margin the Brasilian and Swiss SAAB offers.

Some of them:
http://www.dsca.mil/major-arms-sales/oman-f-16-aircraft
http://www.dsca.mil/major-arms-sales/iraq-f-16-aircraft-0
http://www.dsca.mil/major-arms-sales/government-kuwait-fa-18ef-super-hornet-aircraft-support

And while i would caution in making direct comparisons between deals to diferent countries, in this particular case we have the actual Boeing offer to Brasil, the one that lost to SAAB:
http://www.dsca.mil/major-arms-sales/brazil-fa-18ef-super-hornet-aircraft

Its not merely more expensive, its vastly more expensive and with the caveat that the aircrafts would be assembled in the USA.

I am not aware of one single obvious public available document that clearly makes a case for the Swedish aircraft to be “expensive” by comparison with the Viper and/or Super Hornet.

So most of its advertised performance cannot be performed at the same time.

That happens with every fighter aircraft in the market.

Supercruise only when it is very cold and lightly loaded. Full weapons load only with very low fuel quantity. Full fuel only when lightly loaded with weapons. So it is much better just to get a new F-16 rather than something like this.

If we stick a Gripen E with every single bit of internal fuel, we´ll get 5.1 tons of external load till MTOW, thats plenty enough to get something like three external fuel tanks, a pair of Taurus LFK and two AAM´s. More than enough for almost everyone. And the Gripen has some quite obvious advantages over the Viper and the SH (just like they have their own strenghts).

Cheers

Thanks Hallo

One question, the F4 is going to field “THE” IFDL (more or less something based on what the Raptor uses) or “a” IFDL? And if its this last one (and i supose that it is), will it be using common standards to the rest of NATO (the ones that are being discussed now)?