MadRatMirage 2000 has 57.5% more payload capacity, and 2.78 times the range.
I see two big advantages for Mirage 2000!
Over the F1.M53, not over the F2 with an engine that was less efficient and a design twenty years older.
MadRatHow much energy can the ABL focus at 450km?
MadRatThat’s pretty much the argument Israel has against a single seat F-35 iirc. All that fancy smancy sh*t would do a WSO a world of good and let him prioritize the mission parameters for the front cockpit. (The real question for a two seater version should not be yes or not, rather if its two sets of controls or one.) I can’t understand the reasoning for not stretching the F-35 body when they already have a second, larger wing design approved for production. Constricting the land-based version to the fingerprint of the naval version (the LHA specs at that!) makes very little sense to me. It might be wise to reboot the F-35 program in a few years to settle these ‘features’, and get her done right.
MadRatthe other killer is perceived safety 3 engines is safer (no argument – youre talking to the man who wants the pilot when told number 6 is running hot to say which side
Are you saying you’d feel better if there were more engines? IMO more is better even if you’re likely to run into failures more often. It’s not much different than any other hardware with a MTBF rating. Never build everything from one bin and be disappointed when everything fails about the same time.
MadRatDo you like the idea of replacing the WSO with electronic eyes, imaging infrared technology, and smart computer interfaces? Should cut down a couple of hundred pounds and quite a bit of space compared to a two-seater. Or would you still prefer a second seat for a fighter?
MadRatThe Russians don’t get involved in anything unless its to c-y-a themselves. And sometimes they try to sneak out evidence and get bombed for it. And other times we leave them alone and they forget to bring their own water and other basic staples along for the trip. Tricks are for rabbits… silly Russians.
MadRatA french airbus had a catastrophic electrical failure not too long ago and lost everyone on board over the south Atlantic. It’s very tough to knock the aircraft industry and their standards. I’m merely saying every industry has tightened up their standards considerably over the past thirty years. But the airline industry as a whole never had low standards by any measure. When your standards are bulletproof as they are why not argue for one engine to save yet more weight?
MadRatThe safety argument of two vs four engines is no longer valid these days.
The statistics that make that argument are valid if you accept safety standards from the 80’s. If they upped the ante like every other industry then they’d argue against twins. IMHO it would be prudent even today for a third engine under the fin and an auxillary power grid within the jet, independent of the main, for transoceanic travel. We still see catastrophic failure of electrical systems on jets in this day and age.
MadRatA-380 tanker is the way to go. It should carry a lot of fuel may be it won’t have to land as much either.
You wouldn’t want to get caught in either of it’s vortex wake; might sheer you in half.
MadRatWould be a nice strike force to pulverize an Iranian nuclear facility. How much would it cost to pack them up and ship them to Israel?
MadRatCompare it to the M2000 available from 1982 and you get an idea, why it was not built for good reasons.
Dassault Mirage F1.M53
1974
CREW 1
ENGINE 1 x SNECMA M53-2, 5550kg dry and 8500kg with afterburning
WEIGHTS
Take-off weight 15200 kg 33510 lb
Empty weight 8024 kg 17690 lb
DIMENSIONS
Wingspan 8.45 m 28 ft 9 in
Length 15.53 m 51 ft 11 in
Height 4.56 m 15 ft 12 in
Wing area 25.00 m2 269.10 sq ft
PERFORMANCE
Max. speed 2335 km/h 1451 mph
Range 1200 km 746 miles
ARMAMENT 2 x 30mm cannons, 4000 kg of weapons, seven external stations
=============================================================================
Dassault Mirage F2
1966
CREW 2
ENGINE 1 x Pratt & Whitney TF306E turbofan, 9000kg with afterburning
WEIGHTS
Take-off weight 18000 kg 39683 lb
Empty weight 9500 kg 20944 lb
DIMENSIONS
Wingspan 10.5 m 34 ft 5 in
Length 17.6 m 58 ft 9 in
Height 5.8 m 19 ft 0 in
PERFORMANCE
Max. speed 2333 km/h 1450 mph
Ceiling 20000 m 65600 ft
ARMAMENT no cannon, unknown load
=============================================================================
Dassault Mirage 2000
1978
CREW 1
ENGINE 1 x SNECMA M53-5, 5550kg dry and 8790kg with afterburning
(compare: SNECMA M53-P2, 6560kg dry and 9690kg with afterburning)
WEIGHTS
Take-off weight 17000 kg 37479 lb
Empty weight 7500 kg 16535 lb
DIMENSIONS
Wingspan 9.13 m 30 ft 11 in
Length 14.36 m 47 ft 1 in
Height 5.2 m 17 ft 1 in
Wing area 41.0 m2 441.32 sq ft
PERFORMANCE
Max. speed 2333 km/h 1450 mph
Ceiling 17060 m 55950 ft
Range w/max.fuel 3335 km 2072 miles
ARMAMENT 2 x 30mm cannons, 6,300 kg (13,900 lb) of weapons, nine external stations
=============================================================================
Dassault Mirage 4000
1979
CREW 1
ENGINE 2 x SNECMA M53-2, 5550kg dry and 8500kg with afterburning
WEIGHTS
Empty weight 13000 kg 29000 lb
DIMENSIONS
Wingspan 12.00 m 39 ft 4 in
Length 18.70 m 61 ft 4 in
Height 5.80 m 19 ft 0 in
Wing area 73.0 m2 785 sq ft
PERFORMANCE
Max. speed 2445 km/h 1520 mph
Ceiling 20000 m 66000 ft
Range 2000 km 1200 miles
=============================================================================
Dassault Rafale
1986
ENGINE 2 x SNECMA M88-2 turbofans, 7500kg
WEIGHTS
Take-off weight 19500 kg 42990 lb
Empty weight 9060 kg 19975 lb
DIMENSIONS
Wingspan 10.9 m 36 ft 9 in
Length 15.3 m 50 ft 2 in
Height 5.34 m 18 ft 6 in
Wing area 45.7 m2 492 sq ft
PERFORMANCE
Max. speed 2070 km/h 1290 mph
Ceiling 16800 m 55000 ft
Range 3700 km 2000 miles
ARMAMENT 1 x 30mm cannon, 9,500 kg (21,000 lb) of weapons, 13-14 external stations
=============================================================================
Enlighten us, Sens. Other than it uses a huge wing area I’m not seeing its huge advantages.
MadRatFuel fraction is a factor, true, but the A-7D out-ranged the F-100D nearly 2:1 using a comparable-size airframes, twice the payload, and only about 200-gallons more internal fuel IIRC. The A-7D had twice the military thrust of the F-100D and an edge in wing area, not to mention its turbofan simply outclassed the latter’s turbojet. Your best specific fuel consumption rates figured greatly into your statistics.
MadRatIMHO, during the first 10 years of its service life the F-16A/C was little more than a sad joke – had NATO gone to war, it would have been shot down in spades by Mig-23s & Mig-25s, even without the help of new Mig-29s & Su-27s.
Nah, one new software tape and a missing piece of fire control hardware – that was already long since developed – installed would have given the F-16’s the Sparrow capability in time of war. It wasn’t like they didn’t have universal mounts for Sparrow to put them under the F-16’s wing. It was a political decision, one of those pseudo-truths, that justified the F-15 purchases once the F-16 program bore fruit. F-16 didn’t use Sparrow, but F-15 did, so we needed more F-15’s. You can be damn sure they would have given the Sparrow to F-16 once it was necessary. And later – when the point was moot – they did.
MadRat, that seems way too complicated.
The Mirage F1000 and Mirage F1500 would have been based on the original Mirage F1.
The Mirage F2000 would have been based on the Mirage F3, an airframe considerably bigger than the Mirage F1.
The Mirage F3000 would have been based on the Mirage F2, again even larger than the F3.
The Mirage F4000 would have been based on the Mirage F2, but using two engines like on the Mirage IV or Mirage 4000.
Seems pretty straight forward to me. They already had considerable time flying the Mirage F3 airframe, and the Mirage F2 was a shortened Mirage F3. The Mirage F1x00 variants were based on existing airframes with a short stretch to accommodate the new engine. The only real start from scratch was the Mirage F4000. Who knows, they may have brought these variants to market quicker, than they did the Mirage 2000, by a year or two. Perhaps Iran would be flying Mirage F3000 (rather than F-4E) and Mirage F4000 (rather than F-14) if they had made serious export agreements because they were ahead of the curve. You have to remember that Dassault was well respected worldwide for their aircraft at that time because of their openness to customizations. You wouldn’t have guessed Dassault was ever like that considering their asinine marketing with the Rafale.
MadRatWith the Mirage F1 and Mirage 2000, prior to the Rafale introduction, customers could pretty well customize every order. There was a paradigm shift within Dassault that has basically stifled any future exports. They want to sell one version. No customizations save for what is forced down their throats. They want customer lock in on weapon systems. It’s quite sad they have shifted their support so far to the right. Whole culture shifts like that for a company never work out for its market.
MadRatThat said, the under-rated Mirage F1 is a worthy runner-up from 1975-1990
I always thought that the F.1 should have carried an extra Magic over each wing like the Jaguar. The over wing Magic just spoke for itself and its french origins.
Furthermore, I thought Dassault would have been better off to scale up the F.1 and put the M53 into it rather than the Mirage 2000. They already toyed around with T30 engines for their two-seat F.2 and single-seat F.3 prototypes. (Note: F.2 flew quite a bit for testing, while the F.3 never was completed.)
I’m just not sold on the Mirage 2000 being the best that Dassault could have brought to market. In fact, design work the the F.2/F.3 was already done so it was a more natural evolution for Dassault to bring to market when the M53 came about. Considering they actually built a Mirage F1.M53! The french could have marketed four derivative versions: The french, riding the wave of combat success for the original F1 in the 1986 timeframe, could have marketed five derivative variants:
Mirage F1000 (Mirage F1C with M53-5, FBW, single-seat interceptor, Cyrano IVM radar, 2x DEFA 30mm, 4x MICA IR & 2x Super530, ifr probe)
Mirage F1500 (Mirage F1B with M53-2, FBW, two-seat multirole, Cyrano IVM radar, 4x MICA IR & 2x Super530, ifr probe)
Mirage F2000 (Mirage F3 with M53-2, FBW, single-seat multirole, RDM radar, Damocles, 2x DEFA 30mm, 6x Magic2 & 2x Super530, ifr probe)
Mirage F3000 (Mirage F2 with M53-2, FBW, two-seat multirole, RDM radar, Damocles, 6x Magic2 & 4x Super530, ifr probe)
Mirage F4000 (Mirage F3 with 2x M53-2, FBW, single-seat air superiority, Cyrano 500 radar, 2x DEFA 30mm, 6x Magic2 & 4x Super530, oversized drop tanks, ifr probe)
Why the F3 turning into F2000 and F2 turning into F3000? Marketing. The F2 being a two-seater and the F3 being a single-seater was design progression. Engineers fail at marketing, so you’d want to fix their little transgressions. The F1000 would have been the little sports car. The F1500 would be the poor man’s F-4E. The F2000 would have been the affordable interceptor while retaining a modest ground attack role. The F3000 would have been the luxury car, decked out with all the goodies. The F4000 would be the “unobtainium”.
Eventually all of them could evolve to the better M53-5 (and later M53P2) engines. F4000, because nobody bought it, would sit idle just like the original Mirage 4000. The F2000 and F3000 would have moved first to the RDI then to the RDY radars. All of them would have been perfect for toting around Damocles (to support launching AS.30) targeting pods, MICA, and exocet missiles. MICA EM could have made an earlier introduction on the F3000 because the rear seater could have acted as the WSO.
By 2000, the Armee de l’Air’s version could have their F2000 toting around four streamlined MICA IR & six MICA EM for the interceptor role. No reason F3000 wouldn’t have worked for AdA’s nuclear strike role. Both services could have slung bombs under wing on either F2000 or F3000 for the attack role. It’s my estimation that a navalized Mirage Fxx00 would have allowed the French Navy to retire both their F-8’s and Super Etendards long before Rafale. And because the Rafale still filled a niche beyond the Mirage Fxx00, you’d still have had plenty of reasons to move towards it in the future.
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