Multi Role Fighters
Rafale and F16

Isn’t this just duplicating capabilities? Why don’t you just order double the amount of Rafales? Is it cost?

It is afterall a ‘dream airforce’. In any case if you have two different types the different maintenence requirements and spares infrastructure could possibly negate the lower cost of the F16s, assuming of course that the F16s really are that much cheaper. Mind you the F16 really is a beautiful plane so I can see why you’d have it in a ‘dream airforce’.

When I was playing Falcon 4 a few years back I played about with skins for it and did a 54Sqn RAF F16C to play with so you can see what I was thinking at the time………’if only they replaced the Jags with these babies’………….still never mind eh?

What do you think?

Ja. You have restored my confidence in the human race. I am glad I am not the only one to notice Carlo Kopp’s deficiencies in defence matters (scuse my spelling). A few years back you could get an Australian military aviation magazine over here (I forget what it was called now, sorry) which I bought and then stopped buying because of the cr@p that CK wrote.

Its a shame because apart from his articles the mag was a very good one but they made a mistake hiring him. You can’t find the mag here now because people stopped buying it. It was clear that he had a distaste of all things British that rivals our old friend PILOTGHT and it shone through in his articles. But the one thing that killed this mag for me was his reporting on the RAAF entry into service of the C130J. He stated quite catagorically that the RAAF were the first overseas operator of the type. It had entered RAF service nearly 2 years previous! :rolleyes:

Like I said if they had sacked the bloke and hired somebody who knew his business and didn’t throw in ‘X’ amount of his own stilted and bias opinions rather than actually reporting data; I would still be buying that mag today. 🙂

As someone said F5s would be good. Just a suggestion but with all the trouble caused by the Americans using Shannon airport on trans-Atlantic flights it could be a good idea to extort something out of the Americans for free. They should have some some good stuff mothballed at Davis-Monthan boneyard or elsewhere that the Irish could get. Any suggestions? B52s, Phantoms, Aardvarks, Skyhawks, P-3s. What else is out there?

But then there would be the small matter of operating costs. They would need something with loads of spares, and very cheap to maintain and fly.

I don’t think the F5 would be any good because of its limited range and capabilities. If sombody did an upgrade for it like they did with the Mig21 Lancer then it would be a much better idea but I also think it needs an engine upgrade.

Political considerations aside I still think the Hawk 200 would be a good choice. Its not supersonic but otherwise its aerodynamic performance is similar to the F5 and its load carrying capability is at least in the same ‘ballpark’. It is very cheap to operate and its POL requirements are to say the least ‘frugal’. It has a good radar (APG65) which can be made compatible with such weapons as AMRAAM.

This is an uncorroberated story but when the Red Arrows visited South Africa about 10 years ago they were intercepted by a couple of SAAF Cheetahs to escort them in. The Cheetah crews had to ask the ‘Arrow’s’ to lower their altitude because the Cheetahs were having problems getting high enough to meet them. If this is true it says a lot about the Hawks performance.