i didnt quite understand that statement:
If European nations doesn’t pay tribute to US, they shall become a 51st state, is that it ?

The oposite, the Western Europeans dont want to became the 51st state, so in is opinion, they should pay tribute… The arrogance of that statement is almost unbelivable.

Do you think Russians would hesitate to sell them MiG-29M2s armed with Kh-31s?
edit: TR1 beat me to it

Russia would have absolutely no problems in selling the Mig29 to Iraq, but selling the latest versions of something so sensitive has long range ARM munitions would be pretty much “of bounds I suspect, there are a lot of reasons for that, but one is obvious, has things are today, selling to Iraq or to the USAF is pretty much the same thing.

The first time that the SLAM ER hit a ship was in 1998, and the first flights (on a Norwegian Viper) of the Kongsberg JSM should be starting about now.

http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2014PSAR/albright.pdf
http://www.navy.mil/navydata/fact_display.asp?cid=2200&tid=1100&ct=2

Cheers

’81 & ’86??

LO was not even around so they did not have a choice…

But were the defenses of Osirak 81 and Bengazi 86 arguably inferior to Baghdad 1991? And Orchad 2006? And all those Israeli missions over Syria for more than a decade?
The fact is that justifying LO with “Q Package” is…. dreadfull, because countless other identical missions have been performed without resorting to LO assets, and Western Air Forces havent been slaughtered while conducting those missions.
Arguably Q Package failed by the exact same fact the A6 Intruder Lebanon 86 job was a disaster, and Ell Dorado Canyon in that same year was sucess, it was badly planned.
Q Package was a very “macho” raid of dozens of free fall MK82/84 equiped Vipers into downtown Baghdad in broad day light, to bomb a gigantic fixed target.
Today´s obvious answer to that kind of target is something like “JSOW/STORM SHADOW/SBD/whatever”, not B2 or even F-35A; hell, when the likes of Raytheon and MBDA are proposing PGM´s with 100 km´s+ of range costing dozens of thousands of US$ (and not the millions of a decade ago), why is anyone even considering manned assets to bomb something heavily defended AND fixed?

Package Q suffered relatively low losses and they could have continued, but they did not because they had a BETTER option that risked less aircraft & pilots per target.
Nobody is saying that LO is the ONLY way to do it, just the BETTER option that will cost less (per mission target) and risk less pilots. With the advent of pilot executions on the web and bad press for captured pilots, this is becoming a more deciding factor.

Costs? Well, we can say that one single of those three B-2´s that flew over lybia was (way) more expensive than the entire RAF CASOM program…
But yes, i do agree, LO is a capability multiplier, but manned LO against heavily defended fixed targets (Q Package job)? Today?

France plans to do without a stealth fighter. I think you know that.

That decision has not yet been taken, the two basic choices are for an entirely revamped Rafale and a UCAV or a completely new manned LO airframe, whatever is decided the first hardware will be arriving by the beggining/midle of the thirties; by 2030 the oldest Rafale airframe will be 31+ years old.
The Bristish are doing the exact same soul searching right now, the main diference is that they are seriously considering a post 2030 F-35 follow on order(s).
But whatever choice is taken, France will maintain a fast jet combat capability and they will do everything in their power to export it, that capability, whatever it becomes, will be an obvious competition to the F-35.

The Neuron/Taranis derivative is no substitute for ‘tactical fast jet firepower’. Its incapable of performing basic fighter missions that even something like the MiG-21 does routinely. Which is why the USN isn’t preparing to choose between the UCLASS and NGAD programs.
The UCAV type in development today will be useful but can hardly be called a Eurocanard replacement.

The Taranis and the Neuron are simply prototypes, whatever cames out of it will certainly be part of the Eurocanard replacement plans, if entirely or not, well, thats for the future.
I am expecting news this year, the 2015 British SDSR will throw quite a lot of light into the subject.

As for ‘bright future’, well… lets say, I don’t see it taking away any orders from the F-35 book at least. Vice versa may not apply (eg. Finland). 🙂

Strange how diferent perceptions people can have of the exact same thing, i´ve always thought of the Finnish Air Force Hornet replacement has an almost certain win for the F-35A!

Now a bit of “Sintra´s personal predictions” (if Aboulafia and Sweetman can make predictions, well so can I…)
The F-35A and the Gripen E are positioning themselves to partition the “western fighter export market” till ~2030. For the foreseable future the american aircraft will ocupy the high/midlle end (wich will take the the greatest chunk of orders), the swedish bird will ocupy the “niche” that was once the F-5A/E/Mirage kingdom, a lightcapableinexpensive (sort of) lower end. I am expecting a constant trickle of small orders from quite a number of countries for a very long time for the SAAB aircraft.
The Super Hornet and the two twins Eurocanards will still get (a few) orders from those places that cant/wont order an F-35A (think midle east), but that particular market is going to dry somewhere in the next decade (and if the American Administration gives the go ahead to LM to sell in the Arabian Peninsula, that market will dry out at a very high speed).

Cheers

That really doesn’t do much to change things. At a production rate of 11 per year the Rafale is barely more than a rounding error. Even combined with the Gripen NG total Western output of 4th generation designs will have fallen to a small minority of the market by the early 2020s.

True

The main source of F35 opposition is not about the actual F35. It’s about the likely outcome that the F35 will hold a near monopoly of western fighter market by the mid 2020 time period.
.

You are one and a half year late, that comment would hold water in 2013, not anymore.
Two Western fighter designs not called “35” have already got enough orders to get them into the “late twenties”, the Gripen till 2027, the Rafale till 2028, the chances of neither of them getting more orders for the next decade and a half are near zero. And whatever substitutes the Eurocanards will be flying in the beggining of the thirties. The days when Richard Aboulafia confidently predicted that LM would end up being the sole western provider of tatical fast jet firepower are trully dead.