Aviationweek: Navy Official Questions Need For JSF

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_generic.jsp?channel=aerospacedaily&id=news/asd/2011/08/25/01.xml&headline=Navy%20Official%20Questions%20Need%20For%20JSF%20Variants

Seems the air is getting thinner for the -B model.

Was it really a good idea to brand the IAF as losers ? Guess there are more subtile ways to make your point. 😎

Are you claiming that other aircraft are capable since decades of :

• hitting up to 6 time sensitive targets 50km away ?
• ensuring their own self defence meanwhile ?
• making his way through and evading dense air defense with no jammer/wild weasel support ?
• demonstrating all the roles with only one version ?

There is still a lot of misunderstanding about what Rafale is actually doing over Libya…

This topic stinks.

Well, we don’t know if those capabilities have any influence on the decision. If they go strictly by textbook (as they did in the technical evaluation) then they probably don’t care what the aircraft can do. Both contenders fulfilled the requirenments.

Next thing is how do they calculate through life costs ? Are weapons included ?
AASM’s are quite expansive. Are they even considering the purchase of AASM or are the aircraft compared with a standart armament of Paveway II from Indian stocks ?

The EF partners on the other hand don’t even have PGM’s on offer. They depend completely on the goodwill of the US.

I hope they stick to the september deadline. As much fun those endless discussions are, I just want to see a decision.

Well, one can’t deny that the Tiffy has a very simple aerodynamic shape. LERX are usually a more efficient way of improving high aoa performance than the vortex genenerators both M2K and the Tiffy sport.
And don’t get me startet about this abomination of an intake. :p

Why should anyone offer deep ToT for such a small order ? KFX 1-3 would be interesting, but now that 1 and 2 went to Boeing, it’s not worth it.
I just want to stress that no European company responded to the RFI for KFX-2.
No point in waisting money for such a non-competition.

Remember the tanker competition ? IAF selected airbus, but treasury gave them the choice of Il-78 or nothing at all.
Therefore having a plan B doesn’t look stupid at all.

MMRCA is now Typhoon vs. Rafale. So what’s wrong with discussing the merits of both aircraft ?
I like both aircraft. And since the peeps that clearly prefer one aircraft over the other dig up many interesting news pieces and pictures to prove their point I’m happy.
Sometimes I’m even a bit trolling to steer things up a bit :p

what happened?

rafales locked onto the Typhoons, fired (virtually of course) and scored, apparently, the Typhoons never (or almost, since they scored one kill) managed to lock onto the Rafales who had to have their noses pointed towards them (meaning, closing in) for the whole duration of the missile flight (semi-active missiles needing continuous lock from the shooter)

So in short Tiffies found themselves in a defensive position and the Rafales got the first shot off.
Now that’s something completely new to air combat that surprising your target nearly guaranties victory.