toanThing is simple.
If Indian MOD and IAF generally agree with what Sir Stephen Dalton said, they shall pick out Eurofighter as the final winner for MRCA in September.
If they are not as impressed with Typhoon’s A2A capability that RAF has demonstrated during the exercises as Sir Stephen Dalton is, then Rafale will be the winner.
toanTrue, not exactly a new thing this, but iirc, only 5 gen birds (apart from Flanker variants and the venerable Shar) tend to sport it as a norm. I mean, what gen 5 bird doesn’t have TVC?
Ａ：F-35A and F-35C:D
toanInfo – Eurofighter Typhoon on Libya operations.
…”cruising at 40 000 feet, 0.9 mach, even with a war load of 4 Enhanced Paveway II 1000 lb bombs, a Litening III Targeting POD, AMRAAM and ASRAAM missiles.”
Interesting, lots more to read into here:
French air force pilots interviewed at Solenzara say that the current engine power allows them to fly all of their missions without limitations, and that on a seven-hour mission to Libya they can cruise at Mach 0.9 on a 50% power setting with a full ordnance load.
The two articles only tell us that both Typhoon and Rafale have enough military power to fly the heavy-loaded fighters to the safety limited speed (0.9 Mach) of their A2G weapons…….
toanI makes me think though that both Rafale and Typhoon will display at the limit of what a human can take and that all you can do is add in some tailslide type behaviour from this point forward.
Raptor/Typhoon/Rafale can only maneuver to the limit of a human at relatively low speed and low altitude.
I don’t think the limit of manned fighter has been reached, until a manned fighter can perform sustained 9 to 10G maneuver with supersonic (or even hypersonic) speed at the height of 40,000 to 60,000 fts one day:D
toanFrance Has No Interim MALE UAV Requirement
(Source: Forecast International; issued July 8, 2011)
PARIS — France claims it has no need to make a quick purchase a new medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) unmanned air vehicle for use in Afghanistan. Paris said there will be no short-term acquisition.
The French Air Force had been pushing for the near-term acquisition of the U.S.-built Reaper UAV. This purchase would boost France’s UAV capabilities beyond those offered by the EADS Harfang. The Harfang is currently deployed in Afghanistan.
Now that French troops plan to withdraw from Afghanistan, the need for a short-term UAV purchase is under review. Military officials have said France faced a capability gap between 2013 and 2020. France may still purchase a new MALE UAV in cooperation with the United Kingdom, but this UAV might not appear until 2020.
BAE Systems and Dassault are jointly offering of a new MALE UAV. This system could become available in 2016 if an order is placed in 2011.
toanFor UAEAF, the F-16E, which UAE has already paid the price for developing it, is much more certain than the specialized Rafale (output-upgrading RBE-2AA, M88-9, new cooling system etc….) it wants.
toanI wonder if the sea state of Mediterranean can be bad enough to make Charles de Gaulle unable to operate its own Rafales sometimes, what will happen for CVF to operate its own F-35C in the Southern Atlantic ocean (whose sea state is often much, much worse than the sea state of Mediterranean…….) in the future ?? Is it really a good idea for RN to choose F-35C instead of F-35B??
toanhttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2010723/RAF-fight-rough-seas-hit-French-carrier.html
RAF deploy extra warplanes over Libya as rough seas hit French aircraft carrier
By Mail On Sunday Reporter
Britain has had to deploy extra warplanes over Libya because France’s aircraft carrier becomes too unstable for jets to take off in rough seas.
The Charles de Gaulle has been so destabilised by heavy swells in the Mediterranean that its Rafale planes have been grounded several times.
It has increased the pressure on RAF top guns flying Tornados and Typhoons from the Nato air base at Gioia del Colle in southern Italy.
A French Ministry source said: ‘It’s a fraught situation out there, and problems happen all the time.’
toanThe maximal output of a fighter’s radar is not always proportional to the power that a fighter’s engine(s) can offer. Oherwise, the F-14 Tomcat and Tornado F3 wouldn’t have the two of the most powerful western fighter radars at that time…….
toan1. Indian wants to acquire the first MMRCA in 2014, the first MMRCA sqn during 2016, and the first domestic built MMRCA before the end of 2016 ~ The foreign customers won’t formally get their first F-35 until 2018 at least, even they place the orders for F-35 right now according to the Norwegian experience. And as for the possibility of Indian built F-35…….
2. Indian wants at least 85% technological transference and full rights of source codes for its MMRCA ~ Just ask UK, the only tier one VIP customer of JSF project, if it can get such rights and benefits from American……
3. IAF emphasizes the combat capability and performance at high moutain areas for MMRCA evalution (T/W ratio, SEP, climbing capability, subsonic and superconic acceleration/maneuverability/agility at the high altitude), which are not the upper hand areas for F-35 compared with the European competitors.
A perfect solution for MMRCA (F-35) ? Only if IAF scraps the requirement today and re-writes a completely new one (Something like: “Stealth is everything!! Others are nothing!!”) for MMRCA……
toanFrance and UK to delay drone decision – minister
(Reuters) – France and Britain are delaying a decision on a joint next-generation flying drone for 12-18 months to buy time to weigh their options, France’s defence minister said on Tuesday.
toanok, if you think that the UK is bankrupt and has no plans for the future then I can’t convince you that there is a role for a UCAV before 2030…..
There may be a role for a low end UCAV for RAF before 2030 ~ But it shall be from Scavenger project, not Taranis.
BAE have proven they can develop and fly advance designs with the autonomy required in a few years rather than decades…..
And the UK government has proven it is so poor that RAF are enforced to scrap Nimord MRA4 and has to retire the brand new Astor Sentinel R1 before 2015……..
And yet the UK (and probably France) cannot field an operational system despite the operational and cost benefits for another twenty years?
Because according to the opinion of the Air Commodore Mark Roberts, the R&D cost and procuring cost of a Taranis-like UCAV will be no less than a manned fighter like EF-2000 or JSF~ If the UK government today doesn’t even want to afford the operating cost of 5 sentinel R1 or the price of 48 Tranche IIIB Typhoons, then how could we anticipate that it will be glad to start such a great R&D and productional plans in the near future ??
toanThe service schedule of JSF for the foreign customers today is too late for MMRCA project ~ The foreign customers won’t be able to acquired its first productional F-35 until the 2018 at least, according to the Norwegian experience recently.
toanToan, I accept what you say about the time between the EAP and service acceptance of Typhoon, but there was the small issue of the end of the cold war and german reunification to take into account when considering why it took that long….
A: The UK is facing one of the worst defence cut in the history now and in the foreseeable future ~ Do you really think that the Taranis’ situation today will be better than the EFA / EF-2000’s situation in the 1990s ??
The formal development phase of EFA/EF-2000 was started just three years after the EAP had been towed out of the assembly hall at BAe Warton ~ and will UK formally start the formal development phase of a Taranis-like productional UCAV before 2014 with or without other European partner(s)??
Unless the UK has decided it will operate more UAS, more F35 than planned, then I think this is overly long for an in service UCAV……
A: Or unless our honorable UK government decides that RAF just needs fewer manned and unmanned warfighters (For example, no more than 100 in total…..) in the next SDSR once again ~ just like it has done in the past 20 years…..:diablo:
toanAccording to the RAF Yearbook, 2011, The Air Commodore Mark Roberts said that the R&D and procurement costs for a Taranis-like UCAV, 2030 won’t be cheap ~ Actually, it will be just as expensive as a newly built manned fighter if RAF wants it do all that a manned fighter can do. Although Roberts believed the operating cost and whole life-time cost of a Taranis-like UCAV shall be lower than a manned fighter.
A relatively cheap, simple, and unstealthy RPV with low-end UCAV function that is enough for the missions of Lybia, Iraq, or Afghanistan today will come out from the Scavenger project (or the Franco-British UAS now), and it might enter service at the time of around 2018.
Roberts also said that the Taranis today is nothing more than a techonological demonstrator ~ The RAF doesn’t even require it to show the capability of throwing the AG weapon in the future flight test, and it has already cost UK MOD 142 million pounds (which is roughly equal to 230 million USD today) for such a relatively simple and unarmed techonological demonstrator (In comparison, the UK Ministry of Defence had just invested no more than 80 million pounds in total to the two-engined and 10 tonne-class EAP demonstrator in the mid-1980s).
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