England won WWII thanks to being and Island, it hold its ground until hitler was defeated, for Taiwan and the US the only way to repel an agression will be use a similar strategy, that will mean total air superiority over Taiwan, the upgrade of the Taiwanese fighetr force is a must to achieve that.

Taiwan as Japan are two unsinkale aircraft carriers, for the US losing them will mean Australia will be the last one remaining in the pacific.

yes, the rafale nay be more agile but so would those redbull air race planes
the sh has better radar, better weapons and has better sa in the system battlespace
heck even our old 25 yr hornets will give the rafale a run for its money

the rafale has poor radar and a2a missiles in comparison, come back and tell me in 2014 when the rafale has been updated and then you may have some points

You got me wrong, the Hornet is a good weapons system, but in terms of agility is not the best, with good avionics and missiles it will be a good answer to most modern aircraft, and since T-50s and Rafale are not so widely exported, the Su-30MKI and J-10s are still in the range of the threats the F-18E can handle.

Then again… to be fair, the 275 knot enveleope is not necessarily standstill. I’m sorry but one must give credit of capabilities where credit is due. And furthermore, s-m would have to be classified as covering all relative ranges of speed? (i.e., the full spectrum speeds at which air combat would actually take place, not just the optimal speeds one would wish combat to take place)?

Personally, I’d consider as viable a reduced RCS F-16X development program combining a Ventral Canard Vectoring-type system, similar to that tested during the CCV flights. Yes? No?

Planforming is a must for a modern stealth fighter, the supercruise and agility are already in fighters like the Su-35BM and Eurofighter but this alone won`t make them 5 generation
this yakovlev proposal had planforming and stealth
http://www.hitechweb.genezis.eu/stealth4c_soubory/image007.jpg


See how this concept traded off performance over stealth since its canards are at the same level of its wing giving better stealth but worse performance; however in the Gripen stealth demostrator the Canards are above wing level, this have been done to improve performance even at the expense of RCS signature losses making the SAAB proposal less efficient than Yakovlev`s in terms of RCS reduction but better in agility.

The F-22 hides completly its tailplane from a frontal RCS aspect, this does not happen with either both canarded aircraft.

got a link to it waxing the sh ? i havent heard this one
roe on the f-15 would be nice too, hms and such should have done the job
the euro18, what version fcs system did they have and did they have hms too ?

rafale was briefly raised to 100 ° with a speed of -40 knots
should we make a list of plane who can do this and probable not write off that amount of speed

-40kts…i heard rumors the rafale had a reverse gear or was it just falling out of the sky ?

The Rafale is indeed more agile, because even despite the F-18C is lighter than the F-18E, it has a smaller wing, the F-18E is much heavier basicly both aircraft are underpowered but retain the basic STR of 18 deg/s which indeed is better than both the F-15E and F-14 but is not as good as Rafale at this moment the Rafale is among the 5 more agile fighters surpassing legacy F-15. F-16s, F-18s, MiG-29s and Su-27s .
The Only fighters in its league are probably the Su-35BM, Eurofighter and MiG-35 and superior only the F-22 and T-50
The secret weapon of the F-18E is the AIM-9X and its HMD/S which basicly will equalize any superior agility.

One Pugachev Cobra wouldn’t cover the all advantage of Canards. The LERX keep the aircraft being stable while it’s within Hi AoA, but most maneuver accompany by a very small AoA in which canards provide more Cl than LERX especially when the speed under M3.

Everything will depend, you gave the SR-71 example, which is basicly a delta winged aircraft, the F-18 is not niether the MiG-29.
As i said to you LERXes are used on middle to low swept wings, a swing wing aircraft when it flies at Mach 0.8 it usually sweeps its wings at around 45 degrees, most LERXed fighters are in that range, the MiG-29 has a 42 degrees of swept on its wing; the Rafale of course uses relaxed stability to add a vertical vector to its wing and a canard to re-energize the wing.

Consider this the MiG-29C is stable, but almost has the same STR of the Rafale and at 3000m is supposed to be superior, consider it has a smaller wing; the MiG-29M is suppose to have relaxed stability and better agility, the newer MiG-35 has more powerful engines, newer Mig-29s must be quit agile.
The F-18 saddly was an underpowered aircraft among the 4th generation but still will get to a 40 deg of AoA quit easily.

What you fail to acknowledge is a fighter to be a fifth generation needs supermaneouvrability, so the ability to do the Cobra basicly is a must.

I can agree with you in some aspects but i disagree in the following.

LERXes are highly sweep but their wing are not; canards are usually high aspect but their wings low aspect it is the opposite.

Here we are talking what wing the aircraft have.

The F-18 Hornet has a very low swept wing this type of wing at low speeds gives excellent lift and requires less pitch up or in other words AoA to achieve lift, to illustrate we have the wing of a F-14, at low speed it sweeps forward its wing making them low swept so it does not need to get a high AoA to achieve same lift.
The Mirage III or any other delta wing tailess aircratf, suffer greatly at high AoA and at low speeds, in the Concord and Tu-144 they made it a double delta, the double delta works more or less like a F-18`s wing, later on they made the cranked wing for some STT studies but this wings suffers high pitch up forces rendering it unstable and stalling the outer panels of the wing which are less swept.
In the B-70 canards were applied.
Once the strakes were studied in aircraft like the F-5, the F-16 and F-18 were born.
The russians found the MiG-21 and MiG-23 inferior in many altitudes and speeds to the F-5s, they used Vietnam captured F-5s from the USAF and tested in Russia.

The best wing for low speed is not highly swept, most combat is in that region, the F-18 uses the LERX to reduce drag and create vortices.

Most Russian and American fighter are big and have powerful engines.
Most of Europe`s aircraft are smaller and with less powerful engines.

Then you need a wing with little drag, the Tornado tested Variable geometry swing wings, but these wings render too stable the aircraft at high speeds and relatively speaking are not the best wings for near transonic speeds
Being small aircraft, makes Deltas an excellent option and they can fix most of their troubles with Canards and relaxed stability.

Excellent wings for the transonic speeds are the ones seen in the MiG-29 and F-18, but these two fighters are supposed to reach higher speeds in the MiG-29 it needs to get to Mach 2.3, so a LERX will reduce its drag and at transonic speeds increase lift once it pitches its nose at 5 to 10 deg of AoA.

In the Rafale, Dassault gave it a huge wing with low drag and a canard for high AoA .

The end result is not much different, the Rafale is slightly better than a MiG-29C but the MiG-29C is not unstable, these differences are not because of canards or LERXes but of new materials.
The MiG-29C is heavier at empty weight but still its wing allows it to turn well in fact better than the delta that is the reason it has a good STR despite being stable.
To sumarize it, canards and LERXes are not so much different in fact both are strakes, however their difference lies in the type of wing they use and the type of pitch control desired, in the Rafale they want a delta, in the F-18 a Trapezoidal wing with low sweep.
In the F-18 they want tailplanes in the Rafale fully moveable foreplanes