The Brits can wants all they wants but since they only paid a pitance wants isn’t gets. And exactly who is it that is getting nearly 100% tech transfer on the JSF?

I was not referring to JSF when I wrote about nearly 100% tech transfer but other tenders.

But I think the Brits tied up themselves to JSF out of political reasons as well. They were one of (if not the) US key ally during the Iraq war and this probably made them think they could get their favour returned.

regards,
Cliff

Phalcon is fully autonomus & wont be dependent on ground radar.

Which AEW aircraft is dependent on ground radar? Please enlighten me!

If you need to hide your AEWC deep in the ground then what’s the point of having one? 😀 But given the Phalcon and all those data linked MKIs I can imagine that the PAF Erieye will be spending most of its time hiding in an underground bunker.

You are arguing like “I can’t see the trees because a forest is in the way”.

If you command all your fighters from airborne radar stations, such as Erieye, Falcon or whatever, you will loose not only a sensor but also your means of commanding your fighters if they are to be shot down. Therefore, an enemy would consider it as priority one to take out these aircraft.

If you command your fighters from a safe bunker deep down in the ground you’ll only loose a sensor if they take out your Erieye. You can easily switch sensor and feed the command centre with information from other fighters, airborne sensors, groundbased radars or whatever, and remain in a commanding position. It’s called netcentric warfare.

There are ofcourse pros and cons to everything. USA can’t use this kind of system since they need to be able to make expeditionary type of warfare (they don’t have access to suitable command bunkers all over the world). Therfore, they have choosen a different path which makes more sense to them. But where the Erieye system was developed, it was meant to be used in homeland defence where you have the advantage of using command bunkers and alternative sensor systems such as ground based radars etc.

Now, since Pakistan is probably thinking of using this to support their fighters in a war fought close to their homeland they have choosen the Erieye path. That does make a lot of sense to me.

Cliff

Landing on a road is something, landing on a carrier is another thing. Sorry but a grippen cannot do that.

Care to explain that a bit further glitter? The Gripen isn’t designed to make a usual coffe-on-your-table-while-the-airliner-lands-with-a-smooth-flare type of landing. It is designed to make a no flare landing which is exactly the same procedure as on carriers. Or am I wrong?

Lots of talk about present; but stepping beck a couple of hundred years – these are my thoughts of why europeans dominated the world (or most of it).

Europe wasn’t a very pleasant continent at this time. Most of the countries (if not all of them) had monarchy, and nearly all of these kings were driven by fame, glory and greed. War was more of a standard situation than peace at that time.

A war may have been started out of greediness, such as the swedish 30-years-war, but once started it got very hard to end it. Once the war machine got rolling you couldn’t simply make a halt and say that this will be enough. The commanders had thousands of men out in the fields requiring food and gold. Turning back was not an option since they’ve already taken all food rations so the only way was forward if starvation was to be avoided. (A good example of this is the swedish 30-years war in Germany.)

Now since most countries got quite annoyed of being run over by foreign troops they hired more soldiers. They constructed better equipment and basically got better in the fine art of killing each other. Problem is that their opponents got just as good.

At some point, when expeditions discovered America for one example, they realized that they could much easier get control over gold (as in Inca empire) or land (as in Northern America) on these new continents than they could in europe. The resistance was simply much weaker. So therefore they went for the new continents and claimed land.

regards,
Cliff

But Boeing has never questioned the safety of Airbus’ products.

No ofcourse not – Boeing would never do anything like that would they? If you were a little older you would have remembered the smear campaign against Airbus FBW. Guess who was behind that one…

Anyway, Foxtrot beats all.

You might want to back that argument up with some hard facts. Otherwise you’ll just be considered as another flagwaving nationalistic teenager and we have enough of those as is.

regards,
Cliff

Airbus lost because it’s contender the A350, is derived from an old design that’s half way through it’s life cycle, whereas Boeing went to Qantas with a superior clean sheet design for a more technically advanced and more fuel efficient airliner

So price is not an issue then?