I wonder if ‘life’ will mean ‘life’ this time.:mad:

– the canards on the EF are not having a negative impact on vissibilty. All pilots I talked to confirmed this.

Yes I can confirm this. Pilots I have spoken to and those who have been able to write about some of their experiences flying the Typhoon all say the same thing, the cannards do not have any impact on pilot visibility.

GHT said:

In fact the gatling ares 20mm, but have a 6200/mn rate, it’s 4 times highter than the mauser 27mm, and the mauser even with more bulet weight can’t reach the gatling bullet weight/ratio!

He also said:

the major weakness of the gatling is the delay and sharpness, as rotative machine who need to launch rotation engine to shot cicles of burst, this delay is 0.6s stop after the cicle is end, so very efficient against groud light personel or troops, but ****y against armored and aircraft!

Blimey GHT you are coming dangerously close to making some sense. When you say 6200/mn, do you mean 6200 rounds per minute? Sorry just want to be sure.

the best gun who equilibrate the gatling rate with more heavy bullets is the DEFA 791B

Of course they are they are French, I’m suprised anybody else uses anything but. Now lets do a google search:

This looks good:

http://www.danshistory.com/rafale.html

No that was just out of interest this is what I really want:

http://klu.tigerteam-security.net/rafale.htm

Now that 2500 rounds per minute is a lot higher than the 1700rpm of the Mauser and its a bigger slug. Perhaps we could still put the DEFA into RAF Typhoons? What do you think?

I think that is the concept behind the much under rated RAF Tornado F3. An aircraft like the F3 is never going to turn heads at airshows, but in a real life combat situation an F3 armed with AMRAAM would defeat Mig-29 and Su-35

Have you ever seen a Tornado F3 perform at an airshow? You are right that it won’t turn heads like an F16, F18, Rafale, Typhoon, Gripen and of course we all know the ones that really turn heads at airshows are the Flankers and Fulcrums of the world if only because they have a bit of a reputation for, shall we say, dangerous maneuvering and playing lawn darts as a result.

What makes the F3 really turn heads is its suprising agility and the vortices above the wings and on the wingtips which, I think, go some way to proving just how tight the pilot is turning the plane. Also its acceleration is phenomenal at low altitude. The problem is when you get above about 20,000 or 25,000ft when the performance really begins to drop off. Thats because it used high bypass engines which are optimised for low altitude operations.

The RAF and BAe who developed the F3 from the ‘GR1’ bomber wanted to put new engines in it to transform its high altitude performance but the MoD said no. They said “you have got a bigger airframe with more fuel and better aerodynamics for better acceleration and a whacking great air intercept radar, what more do you want?” Well the RAF would have prefered a radar that worked for a start. They have been perfected now but at the time they had to fit ballast in the nose because the airframe was fully developed before the radar.

It just goes to show that with the F15 the yanks successfully turned an air superiority fighter into a top draw strike aircraft but you can’t do it the other way around. If the F3 had low or variable bypass engines and perhaps a little less weight (it weighed more than the bomber variant!) it would have been a belter at any altitude and wouldn’t have the reputation it now has. But and its a big but, you can’t afford to underestimate it if you are going up against it. If its pilot and navigator gets you below 20,000ft it doesn’t matter what you are flying, it will give you a nasty shock in close in fighting.

Therein lies the problem and it will take a while before people’s atitudes change. A lot of governments are still thinking in terms of sheer numbers and not enough about how the ‘numbers’ will accomplish the missions assigned to them. In an information technology world you will win if you have an information technology war machine. The Gripen was designed from the outset with information technology (military hardware style) right at the core of its capabilities. You don’t need much more than an off the shelf PC (admittedly you wouldn’t really want to run Windows on it when lives were at stake but they do! They really do) ground station to disseminate information gleened (is that spelt right?) by various assets and passed onto those who a) are equipped with the right kit to make use of it and b) those who need it the most.

The Gripen does all of this out of the box, does the Block 15 Viper? No of course it doesn’t but then again the Czechs are probably thinking the same thing as everybody else these days. “Not to worry, the yanks will look after us”.

Shakes head and gets on with some work.

PS. I still think the decisions they make should be respected.

Hamburger are you being deliberately sureal? Yes thats General Leopoldo Galtieri (please excuse my spelling if it is wrong) I don’t understand your point. Arghhhhhh!:confused:

Do you think this could be the start of a bad run for Australian sport? Or are the rest of us just getting better?

Not at all bad sir, you can see the F16 emerging over the different configurations. Nice touch.:)