the F-8 was not launch by its nosegear and AFAIK, the F-8 gear was a maintenance nightmare because it used to broke quite often (in the french navy service at least).

Eventualy, the F-8 had definitly not the best gear design for a carrier capable aircraft.

The A-7 nose gear is a lot more stronger than the F-8 one I think.

Anyway, both the F-8 and A-7 gear was designed for aircraft carrier landings. That means that their fuselage was strenghtened where the gear are attached.

I really can’t see how you can do that with the typhoon. There is no room for a stronger nose gear :confused:

@ Phill : Your 8 years old sources about the rafale projected costs are obviously outdated.

And I suppose Dassaults professional experience has made the LCA a success?

Well, I don’t know, but what is certain is that the USA sanctions has made the LCA a nightmare :diablo:

My 18 ton figure refers to a nominal carrier plane, not a specific model. I was pointing out the weakness inherent in the design of a low slung intake.

18 t is just the weight of the typhoon with 5 t of fuel and 2 t of weapons… quite a usual payload.

On the other hand the French wanted to put in the least investment and at the same time take full development lead and the lion’s share of the work 50% if my reading is correct. That left Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain with the scraps and still paying out the same amount of cash as the French in investment. It wasn’t just the British who thought this was unacceptable and despite your dismissal of British (and for that matter German, Italian and Spanish) aviation design the French demands were indeed arrogant, politically motivated and designed to slow down the development of the Eurofighter whilst they worked on the Rafale. They succeeded.

BS ! All the expertise of Dassault on FBW delta fighter was worth the price…The other countries had obviously underestimated the difficulty to design such a flight control system from scratch. The result for the EF2000 > A painfull development 3 times more expensive than the Dassault design for exactly the same capabilities minus the navalisation ! good job :rolleyes:

Of course Dassault was asking a big stake… Their demonstrator was almost ready and they had already spent a sh!t lof of $ in the project + all the work on the 2000 and the 4000, 2 aircrafts that were unstable FBW delta design flying for many years. On the other hand, BAe and MBB had nothing more than the tornado (no delta, no FBW) and a few moke ups to put on the table. What would you have expected from Dassault ?

Also. Why does the Concorde not count and why not mention the Jaguar? Is it because that as an example they screw your argument that the British don’t want to work with the French?

The concorde is a delta design with primitive analog FWB but she has nothing to do with an unstable fighter (high AOA, low speeds and High G maneuvering are not really her cup of tea).
The Jaguar is not a delta design nor a FBW aircraft.

No way do the French have more experience than the Brits with high performance fighter design

However, they did. With the mirage 2000 (fly by wire and delta wing) and with the mirage 4000 (fly by wire, delta / canard)

How many delta wing FBW fighter jets did the british design before the eurofighter ? zero. (concorde does not count sorry)

Just look at how long it took for the eurofighter consortium to design their flight control system while on the other hand the rafale one was ready immediatly. At the time the first BAe eurofighter (DA2) was making its first timid flight, the rafale was making its first carrier landing trials on the Foch. That shows very well how late the eurofighter was, compared to the rafale.

If the Eurofighter developpement was so expensive and slow at the begining, it is because it lacked the expertise of Dassault.

lol

Raytheon produces the radar, APG-63V2/3. The radar is exclusive for the F-15. The APG-63V3 isn’t going on the Rafale. And very probably, neither would American weapons

.

Nobody talks about the APG-63v2 integration in the Rafale.

About risks : Yes, the RBE2 active seems more risky, but is it really ? Do not forget that the whole french rafale fleet (294 planes) is going to get it. Do not forget that the basis for the RBE-2 active is the AMSAR program (common program with the british for their eurofighters). Do not forget that if Singapore buy the Rafale, they will participate in the developpemet of the RBE-2 active with all the concequences (acces to the technology, source codes, possibility to upgrade the radar by themself or to integrate new weapons)

As far as US weapons integration is concerned, I think the only one with politics restrictions is the AMRAAM.

The rafale uses a standard NATO databus (that was not the case on the mirage 2000) therefore, NATO weapons (aka US weapons) can be integrated more easily than before.