Picard, do you have any actual hands-on experience with real radars, RWR, and IRST? Have you ever been part of a development team that makes those sensors? Because when you make such definitive statements like “And AESA can be detected by modern RWRs”, I’m wondering just how you would know that. Not only that, you seem to be blatantly cherrypicking your data, and your analysis is full of confirmation bias.

Its not rocket science. The illuminating power is many times greater at the target that whatever the reflection is. AESA or not but that is how radars work.

Older RWRs had problems with LPI because they where designed to spot higher energy pulses instead of the lower energy but longer endurance continuous-wave radar signals that usually are quadband today.

Its simple radar mechanics.

I dont think Argentina is on the radar for Gripen exports. It would fit them considering their financial status and Gripens anti ship capabilities, but would they afford it?

Chile however is a candidate for Gripen E (Currently operates F16A/B + some F5… and 10 F16 block 50).
Colombia is also a candidate (their Kfirs should be ripe for replacement as well).
Peru might be a candidate in the future (and they currently operate MiG 29 + Mirage 2000 with huge costs to keep them air worthy. Mirage needs about >600m$ to stay operational where 480m$ is to put them at M2000-5 standard and 140m$ is for planned maintenance and will only keep them operational until 2025. MiG 29s will also be retired in 2025).

In this lot Peru and Chile stand out as strong candidates.

My guess is they will focus on engines, hydraulics and actuators, ergonomy, and basic control theory on ATD-X. Not so much on the actual war fighting suite.

24dmu has been funded, too, correct? Should be good designs coming out of Japan.

To be perfectly honest, as long as they dont have unrealistic goals for range there will be space left over to fit avionic suites from the F2 which may be upgraded after IOC.

The primary aim for a 5th gen fighter is to reduce the detection range for the enemy. Shaping and RAM will do that to a very high degree. Current jammers and EW support will aid and be sufficient for the next decade or so.
Secondly they need good warning and targeting systems, current radars, IRST and EW/RWR-systems do that satisfactory today.

This means that if they need to rush the production they can have upgraded F2 avionics in a 5th gen body within a few years and a full 5th gen fighter (maybe with GaN based AESA, panoramic IR and next gen jammers) within 10 years.

I know that for Gripen many of those things where fallback solutions and similarily it is for Pak FA where Su35S avionics are fallback if the schedule is broken.

With its -unnecesarily- low wing loading Typhoon should not require as much AOA as F-16 for example, to make the same turn.

And thus bleeding less energy giving highe sustained turn rate.

…as much as small fighters tend to imply long range, see P-51 & Gripen E.
But on a 2nd thought small fighters is not compatible with internal bays, or they will look and fly like a brick,
i cant see how its possible to keep 6 aam internal on a stealthy Gripen, even F-35 only hold 4

It all depends on what you want to fit inside the bays and what you are willing to sacrifice for it.

For instance the wing roots are perfect to fit up to 2 AAM on each side without much addition to the cross section/drag. A small bay for another 2 AA missiles or SDB below center fuselage would also not add much to drag.

OTOH, if you want to fit 2x2000lbs JDAMs + 2 AAM below the center fuselage and demanding pretty extreme range then it will be a bulky design unless the aircraft is the size of the PAK FA.

So a small fighter that is designed to not carry more than 4 SDB/2 METEOR in the center bays and only have another 2-4 AAM in the other bays may very well be a slender thing.

Pretty misleading. Doesn’t look like the full burn was used. If you take 9s of propulsion from rest to Mach 4, that probably covers about 9-10km and maybe 11-12km if you reach Mach 5. How could you intercept a target 42km away doing Mach 1 away from you if your burn ends after 11-12km? That’s just for the C5, the C7 has a range increase. By the time you get to 12km, the target is at ~47km and your missile’s speed is falling at an alarming rate – drag will do that at Mach 4+. You’d be lucky to reach 40km at Mach 2 in the next 30s. Your Mach 1 target is now at 57km. I don’t even know if an AMRAAM flies at M2.0. Your target will get to 67km in the next 30s. Decelerating from Mach 2, the best you can hope for 55km (average M1.5 from 40-55km). Your missile is dead and the target is 12km away and I’ve assumed a very very very low drag missile.

NOTE: Interesting – when I wrote ” < M ” the text stopped.

I dont think it’s misleading.

The SLAMRAAM uses the Aim120C7 without an added boster. The engine can not throttle back. So that should be the whole thing.

Thx Peregrinefalcon.

Yes, metal printers are expensive but definitely a reality.

http://3dprinting.com/materials/metal/3d-printing-metal/

The Koenigsegg Agera One car used a 3D printed turbo housing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNedUZxP8NU

Haha, I was just thinking about posting that Koenigsegg video but i deleted that part 😀