From the Australian MinDef site:

http://www.minister.defence.gov.au/Hilltpl.cfm?CurrentId=3643

The M1A1 AIM tank was selected for the following reasons:

* The M1A1 AIM has the best overall survivability of the options considered. It offers battlefield proven protection for its crews.
* The M1A1 AIM in Australian service will be very similar to the remainder of the large user community. It is part of a large fleet with stable, known operating costs, which will be in service beyond 2020.
* They will be configured as part of a fleet of 3,500 similar vehicles across the world. These particular vehicles will be very similar to over 2,500 vehicles operated by the US to at least 2020.
* The M1A1 AIM has the best potential to support network centric warfare. It offers a proven integrated and highly capable radio and battlespace management system.
* The M1A1 AIM is assessed to have the least technical acquisition risk as the vehicle type and configuration for Australian service is already in production. It is a proven design, which is already in contract.
* The M1A1 AIM is the right tank for Australian service. It is a highly survivable and affordable vehicle, with excellent potential for network centric warfare. The M1A1 provides the best value for Commonwealth dollar with low production and technical risk.
* The Foreign Military Sales (FMS) offer for the M1A1 includes, spares, training, support vehicles, Armoured Recovery Vehicles, simulation systems, radios and ancillary equipment as part of the overall package.
* The M1A1 that ADF will procure are essentially remanufactured vehicles. They have been returned to a zero miles zero hours condition. This will provide substantial cost benefits in comparison to purchasing new vehicles.
* The M1A1 Abrams weighs less than 63,000 kilograms (<63 tonnes) when fully combat laden. This is only slightly heavier than the Leopard 2 and is lighter than the Challenger takes that were considered. All three tank options that were considered are within 1000 kg of each other in combat configuration. In transport configuration the M1A1 will weigh around 59-60 tonnes.
* Additional Heavy Equipment Transporters and trailers will be procured under Project Land 121.
* The crane that loaded tanks in Darwin would be capable of doing the same for M1. We have an ongoing discussion about strategic rail transport in Australia and the issue of appropriate rolling stock will continue to be discussed.

“Is the Typhoon a waste of time?”
You can answer that question with yes or no. Yes because it is no longer the state of art compared to *** or no it is compared to ***?

Maybe you can give an idea, what you have in mind to answer that question?

My answer is, that from 2020 the Typhoon can be obsolete in the air-superiority role or an antidote against stealth is found.
The original Typhoon was designed to cope with the threads in the time-scale of 1990-2010. The end of the Cold War did shift that to 2000-2020 in a general assumption.

Well, I would like to split the answer between industrial and military aspects.

For the industrial part: I would rate it as partly succesfull. It brought the participating nations at least closer to the US in subsystems design.
And it provided BAe Systems, Alenia and RR with a ticket to stay in the game of fighter design and production.
For the German/Spanish part I think it was mostly a waste of time. The hard earned expertise is wasted, since here we have no follow on programme.
The Ulm MMIC facilitity could have been established without the Typhoon.
Many other jobs could have been preserved by local assembly of F-15/16/18/whatever.

From the military point of view it is a succes. Albeit late, it provides the partner airforces with an aircraft superior to anything Sukhoi, MiG or the Chinese have in production these days.
In my opinion it will remain viable till the end of the production run.

And all this just shows how pointless and obsolete Typhoon is. I hope that Tranche 3 will be cancelled. It is the biggest waste of money in history. Kind of like buying Spitfires in 1955.

No, it only shows that the Typhoon would need a follow on programme. The Typhoon is perfectly viable against any possible thread of the present.

Could you please stop for a moment with that Typhoon vs JSF bull # 21212 ?
If you like d!ckwaving, compare it to the SH or F-15 XX, since that would be the aircraft available *today*.
Was it worth the money developing the Typhoon instead of, say F-15’s produced under license ?
So, happy discussion ! 😎

Desagreeing here…

SAAB and Dassault ARE Europeans and there IS a lot in the pipeline from their teaming following their own latests…

My bad. There is no independent aviation industry in partner nations as an end result.

At the industrial level, both rafale and typhhon are failures as they didn’t manage to prevent the US to suck the european R&D budget with the F35.

This post wins the thread.

Sorry, Lockheed Martin is coming to the rescue………..maybe?;)

flightglobal.com/articles/2008/08/19/314814/…

Even if it would come close to the requirements, it doesn’t fit the timeframe.
So, no, the Fat Herc is no alternative.

Which brings us back to the question of the validity of these requirements. Not saying they are not valid. Just pointing at the Puma and Boxer and FRES problem, which all outgrew the 400M. And also pointing at the French dominated ‘get me into Northern Africa’ range and payload requirements the 400M is based upon, whereas the distance to the theatres the Europeans will probably operate in in the future is far far greater (like south-central asia, maybe even further east of Aden).

Well, Marder 2 vs. Puma.:confused: In my opinion it is a good thing we have an upper limit on vehicle weight. Prevents ever fetter and less mobile designs.

Even all those problems now may have a purifing influence. We get more standardized aircraft without all those extra stuff the various nations want.

Would a delay in the A-400M be really that bad ? I mean the British MoD has a shortage of cash…
Now they get money from airbus, instead of paying. Seems to be not the worst situation for me.

I guess a good indicator could be the tyres. Usually large low pressure tyres are used on aircraft with rough field performance in mind.